GIANFRANCO ZAPPETTINI

Opere anni 70

March -may 2015

In this exhibition in E3 gallery, there are two signi cant periods of Gianfranco Zappettini’s work on show, “bianchi”, the white paintings and “tele sovrapposte”, layered weave paintings, both of which, in the 1970s, earned him a leading role in Analytical Painting. Each of the two series of pieces has a room to itself in the gallery, providing each with a setting like that of the early 70s, when galleryowners, curators and museum directors feared not boring the public by groupingvery similar works together – probably due to a public at the time that wasn’t so easily bored, not feeling that they had already seen, judged and archived art. The challenge to the viewer, was to leave their visual habits behind and enter the new ground of more accurate observation: works that upon rst appearanceseemed – apart from their format – one after another , all seemingly alike, butthat in reality were not the same.

They could not be the same for two reasons: rst, because they were all done by hand “manufatti”, handmade, and thereforeeach an original, and secondly because by looking closely it was clear that they only resembled each other, this mostly attributed to the use of the samecolour. The public accepted the challenge and strove to relearn to use their eyes, distinguishing between the various areas of white, dodging the deception of the monochrome,

discerning between di erent re ections of light on surfaces depending on the materials used, appreciating the value of di erent formats: horizontal, verticle or admitting to the supremecy of the perfect square. This was the fundamental contribution of Analytical Painting of which Zappettini was one of the founders and principle representatives: reeducating spectators clouded by so much antiquated and familiar painting allowing themselves simply to be amazed.

In addition to this, for Zappattini and the strictist of the analyticals the painting wasn’t a unicum but rather a piece of a wider mosaic – the series – that representedthe real work to which the artist aspired, in order to become part of art history.

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