Umberto Mariani. Frammenti da Bisanzio. Atto terzo

In conversation with Russian icons from the collection of Intesa Sanpaolo

A new appointment at the Sala delle Colonne, Gallerie d’Italia in Milan – the venue for themed exhibitions on major contemporary artists for some years now – pays homage to Maestro Umberto Mariani.

In an evocative conversation between past and present, fourteen of the artist’s works are juxtaposed with a group of five 17th- to 18th-century pieces selected from Intesa Sanpaolo’s collection of Russian icons, considered by scholars to be the most important of its kind in the West.

For some time now, Umberto Mariani (born in Milan in 1936) has been underlining the interconnections between the pared-down style of his work with different themes and moments in art history.

The fold is the distinctive leitmotiv for his La forma celata series, in which Mariani works with lead sheets which then undergo an intensive colour treatment. Exquisite in visual and tactile terms, the fold is no longer superficial but becomes an image, a concrete shape, an “icon”. It was featured widely in his previous works, as a painted motif covering and concealing the letters of an alphabet with no powers of communication, making it “voiceless”.

The iconography of the saints and Biblical figures belonging to the Eastern tradition are defined by their drapery and colour palettes. These elements allude to a condition in which metaphysical geometrical forms create mystical representations, leading to an abstraction in space-time.

The artistic encounter springs from what appear to be formal, almost secondary motifs. All this demonstrates how an artist like Mariani – who experimented with pop art in the 1960s before progressing to a type of painting that cancels out the value of significance, without ever denying the strength of representation – aspires to establish pictorial and symbolic values that transcend matter, illusion and visual deception, revealing the inexpressible, the ineffable and the unknown hidden behind the folds of reality.