SCARAMOUCHE loves ALINE is pleased to announce the opening of its gallery in Milan. The inauguration of the exhibition spaces in Corso Porta Ticinese will take place April 5, 2019 with the show NUVOLO. The Crucial Years – the artist's first solo show in Milan in more than 60 years – on view through July 26.
A pioneer in his use of silk-screen printing applied to the visual arts, Giorgio Ascani (1926–2008), nicknamed Nuvolo as a teenaged partisan during WWII, is the architect of one of the most extraordinary and singular artistic journeys of postwar Italy.
Following his in-depth studies and experimentation with new materials, Nuvolo was among the first in Europe to innovate the technique of serigraph. Surpassing the limits in the use of mechanics and reproduction series, he created unique and unrepeatable works. The poet and critic Emilio Villa was enthralled by the artist’s process and coined the term Serotipie: an artifice of language, a rhetorical form therefore, to define not a technique but rather pictorial works. Extraordinary works without equal, the Serotipie are the cornerstone of an articulated exploration that the artist conducted throughout his lifetime.
The exhibition presents a curated selection of works from the 50s to the early 60s, the noted crucial years. These are the years that follow Nuvolo’s time spent with Alberto Burri and his influence, the transfer of his artistic and cultural life to 1950s Rome, the decisive meeting with Villa – who followed his work from the very first debuts – and then with Cagli, Colla, Mirko, Twombly, Peggy Guggenheim and many others. They are the years of dedicated and intense passion, of incessant work, years of creation, of grand exhibitions. The term crucial (crux) indicates the intersection of Nuvolo’s pictorial cycles that overlap, influence, permeate an irregular but harmonious continuum scanning his limitless artistic pursuit.
NUVOLO. The Crucial Years reunites works from some of his most revealing pictorial periods: the Serotipie (1952–1992), the Scacchi (1953–1957), the Bianchi (1957–1960) and the Bianchi Collages (1958–1964).
In these same years, the artist continues to innovate as the fabrics and animal skins salvaged from old clothing and remnants, often painted, become the material of his art, and a treadle Vigorelli sewing machine the instrument of a new geometric–spatial orchestration. On view are notable examples of Cuciti a macchina (1958–1963), which together with the Daini (1960–1962) and the Tensioni (1962–1965), are among the artist’s most representative and experimental works.