Josef Albers is one of the fathers of an analytical and concretist vision of painting, now definitively freed from the mimetic datum. In the thirties Albers and his wife Anni are called to teach at Black Mountain College, an experimental school that wanted to continue the ideals of the Bauhaus in the United States. Albers is a keen supporter of abstractionism as an essential function of the human spirit: art concerns the knowledge and application of the fundamental laws of form with particular attention to light as color. Gentle Venture from 1957 is part of the “Study for Homage to the square” series. The series, to which Albers devotes himself for most of his artistic career (from 1950 to 1976) collects studies dedicated to the shape of the square, it is about squares of pure colors placed one inside the other. Gentle Venture is a “sweet speculation” based - starting from the center - on the combination of gray and three different types of yellow, while the second investigates the relationship between blue and green. The methods of realization and the materials used are explained by the artist in each of his works, to underline that every aspect in the pictorial language has meaning and value, and that everything comes from the colors. with a spatula it makes the pictorial surface homogeneous and flat. It is the interaction between colors, which Albers chooses with the utmost care based on the effects of transparency, intensity, warmth and depth that they activate, that determines the shapes. Thus Albers proclaims not only repetition as a method of experimentation and research on form, but also the autonomy of color and of the pictorial language itself.

Politipo 72 is part of the homonymous cycle that Alberto Biasi begins in 1965 and which he will continue to develop throughout his artistic career. Polytypes are PVC lamellar structures, in which Biasi experiments with the infinite possibilities of formal modulation of the optical-dynamic object, to suggest the impression of movement. The artist plays on the different perceptions on the part of the observer, obtained thanks to the densification or rarefaction of the points and lines of the structure. Moving in space, the observer can in fact perceive dynamic or static images, based on the choice of moving or observing the work from a fixed position. Biasi articulates his art according to certain research canons: the spectator's interaction with the work becomes a fundamental and movement - in its passive sense of virtual motion - leads the artist to experiment research on visual perception and individual reaction. to the light stimulus. In the nineties, in fact, the Polytypes were enriched with further pictorial elements, in the form of insertions of color, traces, shadows, allusions that support the articulated structure of the layered surfaces. By deepening the research on the luminous impact of natural light, Biasi develops new solutions with hypnotic effects, created through twisting, overlapping of tops, intertwining of foils and strips. The game between spectator-actor and work becomes more and more articulated and free, confirming the absolute variability of perception in the spectator.

Max Bill, is considered the father of concrete art in Europe, founder in 1944 of Konkrete Kunst, a movement of artists, graphic designers and architects gathered for the purpose of creating non-figurative works based on very simple formal elements: orthogonal lines and primary colors without shades . Inspired by the art of Kandinsky and Mondrian and influenced by modern scientific thought, Bill develops his own "objective" creative method, where line and color are subject to the rigid application of mathematical formulas. In fact, starting from the mid-thirties, mathematics became the primary source of inspiration for Bill. Schwarzes viertel, fourth black, is an emblematic example. The work on display, dated 1959, has a lozenge shape, it is a white square rotated by 45 degrees inside which there is a longitudinal black section that corresponds to a quarter of the surface. The titanium white color - spread with a spatula and replaced by the cream white used since the 1930s - plays a fundamental role in Bill's works: moving away from the theories of Kandinsky and Malevic, white is in fact considered by the Swiss artist as a all effects.

The work is part of the series of monochrome surfaces created by Castellani in the sixties. As for Fontana, also for Castellani the dimension of time (and even more of space) enters the picture. The three-dimensionality of his works is characterized by an alternation of extroflections and introflections of the canvas, created starting from a complex frame structure. This is in fact a wooden grid on which the artist sticks an ordered series of nails, the ends of which are covered with plastic caps, to avoid piercing the canvas that is spread over. After this operation Castellani drives the nails from the front and applies the acrylic paint in several coats on the canvas, sanding the surface to obtain greater homogeneity. The result is a structured form in protrusions and depressions impressed on the canvas, which thus assumes a spatial value. In the work on display there are 99 uphill points and 88 downhill ones, to create a monochrome structure in which the light value makes and undoes the image, depending on the exposure and lighting of the same. It is the observer himself who activates the potential dynamism of the structure: the work can in fact be considered as part of that initial nucleus of works connected to the optical-visual theories, supported by Castellani in the early sixties.

Piero Dorazio is considered a completely original and coherent figure in Italian art and one of the leading representatives of international op art. The three works exhibited here, Blue Call, Ascolto and Semperverde 2, are among the most representative examples of his textures from the early sixties: dense networks of color which, transforming into luminous filters, create elaborate optical games. The surface becomes a field of chromatic activation thanks to the superimposition of an intertwining of crossed lines - irregular and undefined - on a background given by glazes, working in each work on different shades of colors. Dorazio's painting was not born as a composition made of signs but, in the same way as Castellani, as a structure whose points have neither a temporal succession nor a spatial hierarchy. This is also demonstrated by the double signature (at the bottom and, overturned, at the top left) of Evergreen 2. The work does not have a line, it has no top or bottom, it has no contours, it is potentially infinite. What Dorazio creates is a “timeless” plot, immobile but dynamic. The movement is given by the light, which radiates from the texture itself. Dorazio's art of the 1960s is characterized above all by the bursting of color on the canvas, a characteristic that the artist will continue throughout his subsequent production. Dorazio thus experiments with the combination of multiple colors and studies the effect that the composition and decomposition of the same gives to the work, based on the morphology of the stroke and the flexibility or linearity of the stroke. The main accusation leveled at his painting in recent years is that of "decorativism" - and actually often the distinction lies in the subjective perception of the work and in the quality of execution.

Spatial Concept, Attese, 7 Cuts is one of the works by Lucio Fontana exhibited here belonging to the famous series of Tagli begun in 1958. Alongside the usual wording of "Spatial Concepts" that Fontana attributes to these works, he adds "Attesa" or "Attese" , based on the number of cuts on the canvas. How to explain these references? The dimension that Lucio Fontana explores is both spatial and conceptual at the same time. The first is investigated through the gesture, which cuts through the canvas, re-establishing the continuity between the space beyond and that on this side of the work's plane. The second, through a contemplative state, of concentration, of waiting precisely, which precedes the gestural one. The sense of waiting is explained by Fontana himself in a letter to his friend Bardini in 1959: «either I am a“ saint ”or I am a“ madman ”!!! / But maybe I am a saint, I have endured too many oppressions that at this time I should be in an asylum, instead these "waits" give me peace !!! in many years of work this is the happiest moment for me! ». Waiting therefore for Fontana is a pause, a timeless space necessary for the preparation of the gesture. Concept Spatial, Attese, 7 Cuts from 1963 stands out for its purity: the canvas - painted in monochromatic oil - is crossed by 7 clear cuts , made with a concise and clean gesture , typical of Fontana's gestures, also documented by the famous photographs by Ugo Mulas. Beyond the canvas we can see the black gauze that the artist has affixed on the back to screen the light, to accentuate the cuts and shadows created by the light itself, but also to provide the visitor with the key to access infinity , all 'indeterminate and to the void .

The work Rete Spaziale Rosso, Attesa , created by Lucio Fontana in 1965 and exhibited here, belongs to the famous series of Tagli begun in 1958. In Concepts Spaziale the red chromatic background houses a single central surgical laceration of the canvas. The cuts for Fontana, as he himself writes, are “above all a philosophical expression, an act of faith in the infinite, an affirmation of spirituality . When I sit in front of one of my cuts, to contemplate it, I suddenly feel a great relaxation of the spirit, I feel a man freed from the slavery of matter, a man who belongs to the vastness of the present and the future ".

Enzo Mari - author of Structure 731 of 1963 - is considered one of the most important designers of the twentieth century, also conducting research on the psychology of vision and the methodology of design. In 1962 Mari took part in the exhibition “The responsive eye” which gives shape and definition to the trends that deal with kinetic, programmed and optical art. Structure 731 represents one of the most emblematic works of op-art and kinetic art: made up of 400 square spaces within which as many square plastic shapes are embedded, at different depths. In her Dynamic Structures, among the most intense and significant works of the period of adherence to programmed and kinetic art, Mari uses modules varied only in color to experiment with her proposals for serial and dynamic programming. The design method is based on modular prefabricated elements and the use of poor materials - such as wood, aluminum, plastic - that allow for ease and great communication effectiveness.

During the 1930s, Marino Marini gradually abandoned painting and graphics to devote himself to sculpture. He immediately defines the themes most dear to him: among these the horse and the rider are part of a series, to which the sculpture you see on display belongs, which will become one of the most emblematic lines of research for the artist. Marini explains that: «There is the whole history of humanity and nature in the figure of the rider and the horse, in every age. It's my way of telling the story. He is the character I need to give shape to the passion of man (…) ». This small sculpture probably belongs to the first tests of the Horse and Knight series, to which the sculptor has been dedicating himself since 1935. In fact, a single piece of chalk dates back to the same year, entitled Piccolo Cavaliere, which coincides with the bronze work that today we can admire it in the Invernizzi Collection. Marino Marini's unscrupulous inventive freedom reinterprets Etruscan-Roman antiquity in an expressionist key, giving life to an archaic classicism stripped of any kind of monumentalism, typical of the thirties and forties. Marini completely overturns the classic concept of an equestrian statue: the two figures in fact appear joined to represent a primordial symbiotic unity between human and animal. Over the years, the horse and the rider become increasingly dissolved forms and almost expressionist tragic figures.

In the fifties, after a period of neo-cubist influence, Ennio Morlotti turns to an informal painting, which finds its expressive figure in a balance between naturalism and abstraction. Centaurea Selvatica from 1957 is commonly included in the artist's phase called "abstract naturalism". Attention to nature is combined with the exaltation of the chromatic mixtures, in their physicality. The pure chromatic material becomes the creative principle of visible reality: by means of the brush and the spatula, Morlotti applies high mixtures of color on the canvas, to suggest a total and enveloping immersion in nature. In Centaurea Selvatica the surface of the canvas - composed of a dense aggregation of pasty and dense brushstrokes in dark tones, mainly oriented towards greens and reds - corresponds to the natural environment. Nature becomes primordial, violent, in continuous metamorphosis, made of color, matter and light. The spatiality in the work is suggested by the chromatic mass that occupies a large part of the pictorial surface, however allowing a glimpse of the brighter and less dense underlying layer on the sides.

The Invernizzi Collection possesses a significant nucleus of works by Carlo Nangeroni. The artist, born in New York, moved to Italy at a young age with his brother. In 1944 the two are forced to flee to Switzerland, on suspicion of being American paratroopers. In Bellinzona, Carlo Nangeroni meets Lino Invernizzi for the first time. The artist says: "They put us to rest in a hall that looked like a stage with all the straw mattresses. I had a bad foot because of the mountain and I had taken a rest and then I heard music, like a radio ... and there was this gentleman who was Lino Invernizzi to whom I said that it wasn't exactly the music I wanted to hear ... And then we started chatting. There an amazing friendship began ". Before returning to the United States, where Carlo Nangeroni lived from 1946 to 1958, the two meet again in Genoa, and then meet again in New York on the occasion of the Nangeroni exhibition at the Meltzer Gallery. Returning to Italy in 1958 and abandoning the experiences of a material-expressionist matrix, the artist in the early sixties directs his research towards a new geometric rigor, centered on the chromatic-perceptive variations of modular structures, always based on a precise geometric construction. space. The circles completely invade the plane through a cellular texture, to create real dynamic paths. "This iteration of the circular element - says Nangeroni - corresponds to a trellis-guide which I then unwind on the surface". "Repeating the circle fills the surface, thus providing an indication of the possibility of expansion beyond the edges of the support".

Robert Delaunay is considered one of the fathers of abstract art, together with his wife Sonia Terk and the Czech painter František Kupka, among others. Starting from Cézanne's research and Picasso's Cubism, Delaunay pushed, between 1912 and 1913, towards the dissolution of the subject represented through the prismatic effects of color seen in terms of light. This is what Apollinaire defined Orphic Cubism in the same years. Between 1925 and 1927, the years in which Paysage was created, abstraction in Europe already took on a mature dimension. However Delaunay, after his first abstract tests, recovers the link with the figurative element. The process of abstraction for the artist starts from the urban landscape, a real datum that remains recognizable: the houses, the bridges, the factories in the distance, the masses of vegetation, the stretch of water. All these elements, which give life to a complex architectural fabric, are expressed through geometric shapes, straight and curved lines, plastic components of an abstract language that coexist in a dynamic relationship with color. The dynamism of Paysage is an optimistic reflection on the urban environment through the new technological vision of the world that carries within it all the influences of the research of the greatest artists of the beginning of the century to which the abstractionists are indebted: the analytical painting of Cézanne, the post-impressionist painting, the experience of cubism.

In 1930 Mauro Reggiani was in Paris, where he came into contact with the non-figurative avant-garde by meeting Arp, Klee, Kandinskij, Ernst and Magnelli. Back in Italy he decides to suspend the pictorial research he had started earlier and to suspend the public exhibitions of his works. The decisive turning point in Reggiani's painting - towards a process of emancipation from the real datum - in fact began to mature two years after his stay in Paris: in 1934, together with Bogliardi and Ghiringhelli, he signed the Declaration of the exhibitors, on the occasion of the first exhibition of the Italian abstractionism held at the Galleria del Milione in Milan. In this same exhibition Reggiani presents, together with various pictorial works, his first graphic works. In these etchings, as in the one belonging to the Invernizzi Collection dating back to 1935, Reggiani inaugurates a new conception of space, which develops from a pile of surfaces.

Gerhard Richter is considered one of the greatest living artists, a staunch supporter of the still current power of painting in the 21st century. Although the artist in his long career has gone from figurative painting (portraits, landscapes, cities, mountains, clouds) to the intuition of the value of photography as a pictorial element, he has always alternated these moments with other periods dedicated to abstract painting. "Abstraction is everyday life for me, it's as normal as walking or breathing" he said. As the artist's catalog raisonné documents, from 1966 Richter began to explore a wide range of gray monochromes, generally referred to as “Gray Paintings.” This production, which greatly increased in the 1970s, has often been interpreted as a reaffirmation of purity Attracted by color neutrality, Richter creates a vast amount of paintings - different in size, hue, degree of visibility and brushstroke orientation. "Gray is the epitome of non-statement," says Richter, ' it does not trigger off feelings or associations, it is actually neither visible nor invisible ... Like no other color it is suitable for illustrating 'nothing ". it wants to allude to nothing but itself, or paradoxically, to the nothing that the color gray has the power to illustrate.

Victor Vasarely's research is based on a form of geometric constructivism which, starting from concretist experiences, makes a fundamental contribution to the affirmation of kinetic and visual art. In 1955, on the occasion of the Le Mouvement exhibition at the Denise René Gallery, Vasarely published the Yellow Manifesto, a program of "movement" and "kineticism". Between 1960 and 1965 the artist then devoted himself to a series of works in which his “plastic alphabet” evolved, creating a system based on a grid that establishes modular relationships between shapes and colors. This period, which corresponds to the production of the Alphabet Plastique and Folklore Planetaire series, is characterized by the reintroduction of color. In the first series, to which G.D.4. belongs, each painting is based on 15 starting shapes that derive from the circle, square and triangle. The variations on these basic forms are developed and painted using different color and tonal scales. Each "plastic" unit inside the grid has a first and second floor. What Vasarely creates is a programmed language that allows infinite permutations of shapes and colors to give life to unique works. In the case of G.D.4 Vasarely makes a combination of shapes - the circle and the square - dialogue with a precise choice of colors - red, blue and purple.