PESCARA – by Goffredo Palmerini – Opens on Sunday June 16th at 5.30pm to Pescara, Aurum Museum – Largo Gardone Riviera, la 36th personal exhibition “GENESIS: 1,2,6,7,8” of the painter and sculptor BRUNO DI PIETRO. With a highly evocative theme, the Ark and the Universal Flood, the exhibition unfolds in 30 small and medium-sized themed works in mixed media, as well as some wooden installations. He will report at the vernissage ALESSANDRO MASI, art historian, writer and journalist. They will intervene with short communications GAETANO BASTIeditor of the D’Abruzzo magazine; REMO DI LEONARDOjournalist and dialect poet; RENATO MARINIartist and gallery owner; EUGENIO CANCELLIarchitect; FRANCA DI BELLO, artist. The journalist moderates MILA CANTAGALLO. The exhibition is accompanied by a printed presentation with a critical text by Alessandro Masi and a contribution from Armando Ginesias well as biographical and professional notes on the Artist.
The Abruzzo artist, who spent time in Milan, Paris and Venice, in 50 years of activity has created around 4,000 original works including paintings, sculptures (bronze, steel, marble, Maiella stone, plexus, wood), installations, compositions, drawings and graphics. All production of Bruno di Pietro it is cataloged and archived in 7 well-defined periods including places, themes, techniques and pingenti modus. The themes covered by the artist in his personal exhibitions are always singular and intriguing, with a wide range of works on display.
In a dense critical review on the art of Bruno Di Pietroon his eclecticism, on his extraordinary “active conscience, capable of becoming lyrically composed, but also hypothetically rebellious, as when he confronts the great themes of our era by talking about Covid, the environment, the energy crisis, the natural catastrophe, of the end of the universe”, so among other things he notes Alessandro Masi: “There is a single time, a whole, a genetic thread that keeps all of Bruno Di Pietro’s artistic production linked from start to finish, almost as if it were a trace, an individual figure that makes all his works a single story, a structured, explicit and coherent collection […]. Bruno Di Pietro is an artist with a long history behind him which begins way back in the 1960s in the shadow of great masters such as Pompeo Borra and which matures over the decades (also on an international level with his frequent travels) in a path underwear that is increasingly original and distinct from others thanks to its anxiety of trespassing. […] His painting is metaphysical like that of Mondrian, but graceful like that of Legèr; he distributes the space for symphonic masses like Malevič, but then he ironizes time like Depero: he is a Schönberg and a Stravinsky together. In other words, Bruno Di Pietro experiences the risk of painting with the awareness of the fall and salvation, of the finitude of the gesture and of the broad horizon to which it is destined, of finite time and that which could still continue towards an Elsewhere […]”.
Bruno Di Pietroa versatile artist with a multifaceted intellect demonstrated by his creativity also in the poetic field, underlines this in the preface to the GENESIS exhibition: “The works on display here are the input that a Palestinian olive bowl found while browsing in a Christmas market a few years ago gave me. The object exhibited here can very well be classified as a wooden sculpture; it presents itself as an artisanal work. But I wouldn’t be here talking about it if nature hadn’t enjoyed drawing, in the hollow of the bowl, wonderful optical illusions with animals that remind me of rock figures. Looking carefully at the hollow, on one side I find sections of a lion’s head in the attack phase. On the opposite side there is the head of a bridled but very figurative horse. In short, a wooden masterpiece, which overflows my imagination. Driven by this artistic vision, I elaborate fantastic visions with biblical scenes in a few moments. The imagination retraces atavistic times with that Noah, the man favored by God who, in anticipation of a universal flood, builds the Ark in which to embark every possible pair of animals of that time and place. All this led me to a rereading of Genesis and suggested a themed exhibition and, in some way, to reproduce the Ark in miniature. And so with scraps of Brazilian wood (Lapacho), guided by compositional experiences acquired over time and driven by a vague intuition, I am going to summarize some verses of Genesis”.
Regarding the works exhibited Bruno Di Pietro note: “We contemporaries, stressed beings with specific reference to creatives, can say and give in the field of the arts in general only “the essential”, that is, a vague idea of what we would like to represent, unlike the historical works of the glorious Renaissance. Certainly works with large dimensions create a spectacular setting and arouse wonder. But in visual art, as in poetry, for an artist just that little, but intense, is enough to represent and express what he would like to communicate: Munch’s “scream” is an example of this (83×66 cm), so like “M’illumino d’immenso” by Giuseppe Ungaretti. My themed works on Genesis are medium and small in size, made in oil on canvas and various resins on aluminum foil, others on transparent liquid crystal glass plates. The little that I have materialized for you – he adds Pietro’s – although in its simple essentiality it should presumptuously give input to the viewer of what I want to say, it is then up to them if emotionally involved to give themselves in some way (add) everything that is not there, that cannot be seen or is missing but perhaps it is noticeable and if you find it it leaves you with a feeling of well-being that pushes you to own the work. In my flood, among the waves there are no bodies scattered like in Doré’s engravings, but you feel the tragedy, the fear, death and destruction among the roar of the waves, because you know that that work is there to represent the universal flood to me. And this is how the work is completed in its own image and likeness and evaluated in any way one wants to understand it. This reflection – concludes the Artist – may be one of the many aspects of why contemporary visual art remains an enigma to many. And in any case it is not a dogma.”
Bruno Di Pietro was born in 1947 a Manoppello, in the province of Pescara. A multifaceted painter, he is constantly searching for themes to explore, painting techniques and materials to use. Not an easy artist and not inclined to disciplines and submission to academies, free and generous spirit, intuitive, attentive observer, extrapolates and absorbs every positivity that surrounds him. In 1969 he emigrated to Switzerland, but in 1970 he already returned to Italy and settled permanently in Milan, where he attended the Brera Academy (1971-’73) with Prof. Pompeo Borra. In 1971 he signed a contract with Ursole Gallerylocated near the Stock Exchange, in the financial heart of the city, where he also exhibited his first important solo exhibition, curated by Patrizia Bonetti And Antonino De Bono. The following years lead him to Paris, for a long time. In the French capital he attended the “Maison Americaine” on Boulevard Raspail and here he learned the techniques of gravure, the engraving. In an old printing house in Montparnasse he collaborates and follows the techniques of screen printing. He creates an impromptu series of milk paintings and watercolours, now present in the collection, in Milan and Paris. He travels to various European cities, visiting exhibitions and museums, in particular leaving some of his works in galleries in Brussels, Charleroi, St. Moritz and Baden. Returned to Milanthanks to the experiences acquired, he opened an art studio, first in via Claudiano and then in Corso Sempione 17.
A long series of events, awards, collective and personal exhibitions characterize the artist’s activity, in galleries and prestigious settings in Milan, but also in other cities in Italy and abroad, which it would be long and pedantic to list here. Stay at London, Vienna And Bratislava. It is often a Venice, where he created various drawings and oil works, extemporaneously. From 1980 to 1990, his works were exhibited at trade fairs in Milan, Monza, Palermo, Rome, Naples and Lucerne, curated by Paolo Colombo. In his sometimes frenetic activity, he does not neglect Abruzzo, his homeland, where he periodically takes his works on display. Currently, simultaneously with the exhibition Genesis to Pescarathe artist exhibits at the Michetti Museum a Francavilla al Mareguest of MuMART, and at Centauro Chieti. Several prizes have been awarded to him in recognition of the activity and artistic excellence of his works. Bruno Di Pietro he has been a founding member of the Contemporary Art Group ATMOSFERA 7 since 2016. His painting, in recent years, ranges from impressionism.
At the vernissage of the exhibition, Sunday 16 June at 5.30 pm, the video makers will take care of the filming Nicola Genovesi And Massimo Cavutoand the photo shoot Maurizio Alfonso And Tonino Iacone. After the inauguration, refreshments will be offered Lampato cellars of Pianella. Entrance to the exhibition is free, opening from 9:00 to 20:00. For information and appointments: 333 5957400 – 085 454 9508.
