Anthological exhibition of Ignazio Gadaleta, a Molfetta artist considered since the eighties one of the leading exponents of aniconic painting, before the turning point towards the dimension of environmental art in the Third Millennium. Scheduled at the Diocesan Museum of Molfetta from January 23 to April 19 by the initiative of the Diocesan Museum Foundation, the exhibition historically synthesizes all of Gadaleta's work, of which 23 representative works can be admired spanning from 1979 to 2021. Therefore, we move from the years of his early formation to the present day through the consecration of the eighties and nineties, a period marked by an intense national exhibition presence and a growing attention from critics and some of his illustrious exponents, Enrico Crispolti above all, who has followed the artist from Puglia for almost forty years, but also Luciano Caramel and Gillo Dorfles.

In his over fifty-year experience as a painter, adhering to the deepest motivations of art-making, with his meticulous research method based on the "tissular" linguistic structuring, on the richness of textures and rhythms, Gadaleta expresses his mastery aimed at the "construction of chromatic perceptual intoxications".

Artworks, although reproducible thanks to the photographic medium, must be observed directly, without mediation and without filters, in order to fully savor them. Thus, while the details of the paintings will be 'photographed' and reproduced in a 1:1 scale in the book, the view of the works 'live' will be fundamental for interactive understanding, with the only condition of being open to the sensitive and letting oneself be pervaded. "Practicing a 'poetics of seeing', each viewer can relive the traces of the gestures of my painter performances, gathering in silent meditation to elevate and transcend spiritually every mere material contingency, beyond any temporal convention," writes Gadaleta.

In recent years, the artist has matured the awareness that his entire work is as a whole an "infinite prayer". The intertwining of thoughts and joyful acts are not only those of the author, but also those "in the harmonious sharing" potentially infinite of all those who observe and interact with it. The artist responds to a vocational 'call' and his work "for structure and experiential lived can present analogies to that of the devotional prayer of the Holy Rosary, with the succession of invocations punctuated by the parallel action of the slow rhythmic progress of the fingers on the beads of the rosary".