Pino Pinelli

Pinelli is the most important representative of the Pittura Analitica movement. An adjective that contains within a dose of Cartesian rigour, but we must not allow this retro-thought to mislead us. Pinelli fills this analytical quality of his painting with the purity of pigments, actually contradicting every possible form of coolness. The surfaces of his works are wrinkled, furrowed (as if they were ploughed clods of land), folding, mountainous, with traces of volcanic activity (Mount Etna with its lava flows) contained within the boundaries he has set for himself.
On the premises of the MAMM in Moscow (this is the artist’s debut in Russia), Pinelli displays some cornerstones of his research stretching out over five decades, with a preponderance of red elements that perhaps recall history that has marked the years in a certain Italy, in a certain Europe, in a world that had to come face-to-face with the Cold War. With those who were “pro” and those who were “con”. Using a semiotic language made up of scales, atoms and acute angles, the artist travels beyond geometry and enters inside a territory of freedom that coincides with space; yet this freedom is not without reins, he has found an internal measure to these object artworks so that the ovals, the atoms, the crossings, the scales are never numerically more than necessary as they self-adjust themselves according to an unsaid law.

Texts by: Marco Meneguzzo, Francesca Pini

Moscow, MAMM, September - October 2016