Eliseo Mattiacci

On the occasion of the finissage of the exhibition “Eliseo Mattiacci. Measurements” hosted at the Galleria Poggiali (in via della Scala), the Museo Novecento dedicates to the artist from the Marches a meeting with art historians and critics Pier Giovanni Castagnoli and Bruno Corà on Saturday 24 February at 6 pm.

The appointment is part of the new “Guest” cycle, a series of conferences organized by the Museo Novecento, which opens up to the city and beyond by hosting the protagonists of contemporary culture in its rooms to explore the major themes of art. From time to time the guest may be an artist, a work, an author, a collector, a gallery owner, a journalist.

During the conference (anticipated by a visit to the exhibition at the Poggiali Gallery at 16.30-17.30) Pier Giovanni Castagnoli and Bruno Corà will retrace more than fifty years of Eliseo Mattiacci’s work, from the first works related to the Arte Povera environment to exhibitions in the La Tartaruga and L’Attico galleries in Rome, from international experiences to the most recent works.
The artistic director of the museum, Sergio Risaliti, will speak and Lorenzo Bruni, curator of the exhibition “Eliseo Mattiacci. Measurements“, presenting the publication created with the exhibition.

Eliseo Mattiacci

(Cagli, 1940)

lives and works in Pesaro. Moving to Rome in ’64, he participated in the renewal of Italian contemporary art in the second half of the 1960s. In 1967 Mattiacci made his debut with his first solo exhibition at the La Tartaruga gallery, presenting a 150-meter flexible pipe in yellow “Agip” painted nickel-plated iron that modifies the space and invites the public to modify it. In those years there was a strong need for unconventional spaces for contemporary art, which allowed greater freedom of action. The Roman gallery L’Attico-garage by Fabio Sargentini marks a turning point: in the action of ’69 Mattiacci enters it with a compressor that crushes a path of pozzolan earth. On the occasion of the Paris Biennale in 1967, Pino Pascali presented the gallery owner and art dealer Alexandre Jolas to Mattiacci; thus arises the possibility of exhibiting one’s work outside the national borders, in Paris and New York. In 1972, the Venice Biennale of Art dedicated a room to the artist’s work.
In the Eighties, Mattiacci’s research focused on the use of metals – which he defined as “living” materials – for large-scale works of cosmic-astronomical inspiration: the works “High Astronomical Tension” from 1984, installed on the Kunstforum of Monaco, and the “Solar chariot of Montefeltro”. The latter, together with other works, is set up in his personal room at the Venice Biennale in 1988. The artist constantly seeks a dialogue with space – be it a natural landscape (like a quarry), or an environment designed by ‘ man (like an archaeological site) – and for this reason many works are born site-specific. Mattiacci’s work also focuses on visible and invisible physical energies – such as the force of gravity or the magnetic attraction of large magnets – powered by a constant tension ideal for removing weight from the heavy matter itself. An exhibition strongly linked to this research is the one set up inside the Trajan’s Markets in Rome in 2001. Among the prizes received, the first prize at the Fujisankei Biennale Hokone Open Air Museum, in Tokyo in 1995, and the Antonio sculpture prize Feltrinelli of the Accademia dei Lincei, in Rome in 2008. In 2016 the MART Museum of modern and contemporary art of Trento and Rovereto dedicates an important retrospective exhibition to the artist.