ENZO ARCHETTI
BIOGRAPHY Enzo Archetti was born in Monticelli Brusati (Brescia) in 1946; zodiac sign : capricorn. He started to nourish an interest for Arts during his High School years. He then enrolled at the Faculty of Humanities and, still attending University, he also attended drawing and etching courses at the Academy of Carrara in Bergamo for two years, under the direction of Longaretti. Regarding painting he was able to try other techniques later on, from oil, acrylic and fresco painting, to collage and to the mixture of different techniques, being able to keep a very clear and easily recognizable pictorial identity, though. He graduated in 1970 and he then worked as a teacher until 1990. From that moment on he has dedicated himself full time to painting, graphics, installation art and sculptural structures. His first personal exhibition took place in Brescia in 1973. Something like 80 more exhibitions have followed it both in Italy and abroad. Archetti has always considered painting as a language, a way to tell his way of being and that of the others’. At the beginning of his art he built a relationship with what is real, then he started to face the past, the music; he described pieces of infinity and of reflections. He claims to be a painter who depends on Painting: it is painting which rules, which lays down her laws. All the Artist can do is to obey. He lives in downtown Brescia where is also located his atelier. Archetti’s Art has been a topic of discussion in the most important newspapers, specialized magazines and National and cable TV channels. PERSONAL EXHIBITIONS Archetti mounted his first personal exhibition in 1973 in Brescia. Around 180 more shows have followed in various cities. Among them: in Brescia: “La Loggetta” Gallery 1973; in Iseo: Azienda di soggiorno 1974; in Rovato: Castello Gallery 1978; in Montecampione: “La Pleiade” Gallery 1981; in Melegnano: “Broletto” Gallery 1981; in Brescia: Art-expo 1983; in Bagnolo Mella: Biblioteca Civica 1985;
in Brescia: AAB Museum laboratory of visual arts 1983,1984; in Modena: Centro Studi “L.A. Muratori” 1984; in Salò: “La Colonna” Gallery 1987; in Cermenate: Centro Forme 1989; in Tokio: Forni Gallery 1991; in Brescia: Pieve di Urago Mella 1995, 1998, 2002; in Verone: La Meridiana Gallery 1989, 1993, 1995, 1999; in Milan: Velasquez Gallery 1982, Sugarte Gallery 1991, D’Ascola Gallery 1990; in Chiari: L’Incontro Gallery 1987; In Gioia del Colle (Bari): Centro D’Arte Locus Solus 1992; in Squinzano (Lecce): Gallery 992, 1993; in Brescia: Palazzo Martinengo “valori:arte e sport” 1994; in Vicenza: “Vicenza Arte” 1995; in Sarezzo: Villa Usignolo 1996; in Martina Franca: “La Pietra” Gallery 1999; in Brindisi: Il segno contemporaneo Gallery 1992, 2001,2002; in Rimini: Hotel Gradisca1999; in Borgo San Giacomo: Palazzo Ferrari 2000; in Lumezzane: Torre Avogadro 2000; in Fasano (Brindisi): “Arte Studio” Gallery 2001; in Bari: Artefiera 2002 in Monticelli Brusati: spazio Espositivo “alla Costa” 2000; in Osnago: Concetti d’arte Gallery 2003; in Crema: La Galleria 2003; in Bergamo: Gelmini Gallery 2003; in Beirut, Académie Libanaise 2004 ; in Kuwait City, Modern Art Museum 2004; in Sogliano Cavour, Galleria Esprit 2004; In Agnadello: Dimensione Arte 2006; in Firenze: Museo Archeologico Nazionale 2007,2008,2009;
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in Milazzo: Palazzo D’Amico “Arte oggi” 2009; in Pescara, Arteitalia Gallery,2009; in Pescara: Teatro D’Annunzio “Omaggio ad Archetti”, 2009; in Brindisi: Il Segno Gallery “Contemporary live art” 2009; In Verona: San Fermo “Arte e Colore” 2009; in Brescia: Biblioteca Queriniana “Le parole dei pittori” 2009; in Monticelli Brusati (Brescia): Tenuta “La Montina”, 2010; in Brescia: Freccia Rossa “Ventata d’oro” 2010; in Brindisi: Exfadda “Maestri d’arte contemporanea” 2010; in Messina: Royal Palace Hotel “Artisti di fama internazionale” 2010; in Paris, Carrousel du Louvre,“Art Shopping”, 2010; in Amsterdam,“AAF Art Fair 2010” He has then taken part to domestic and international exhibitions through the Art Galleries he collaborates with: Arte Fiera di Bologna (8 times), Fiera di Bari (5 times), Fiera di Padova, di Montichiari, di Vicenza, Miart di Milano (3 times), Exhibition of Seibu and of Mitsukoshi in Tokio; Expo-reproduction of Art in New York, Sidney, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Dallas, Toronto. In 2004 the Modern Art Museum of Kuwait City bought one of his works of art; in 2005 he painted a picture of about 40 squared meters, in a public spot in Brescia about «Life that rolls by»; in the same year the Museum of Art And Spirituality of Brescia included his work “Cielo cosmico” (Cosmic Sky) in its collection. From 2001 Artequadri Gallery of CamposamRiflessi d’infinito 120x100x4 tela piero has been managing the distribution and the exhibition of Archetti’s works at Galleries, Ateliers, Exhibitions, both in Italy and abroad. In 2007 he made “La grande parete” (The Big Wall), a work of art of 7,20 x 7,30 meters, placed in the hall of “Centro delle idee” of Pandino (Cremona). In 2010 he exhibited 30 works of art of big size in the hall Curtefranca, at Tenuta “La Montina” in Monticelli Brusati.
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THEMES The themes Archetti dealt with were in the beginning about the analysis of the landscape as space and as Eden: it was a search for possible worlds. At the end of the Seventies this theme was enriched by female figures: the woman, very often a wife, stands as the emblem of poetry, of joie de vivre and anxiety. In the Eighties he started to face the past: Archetti got into it with full consciousness to discover the present; he read back the History of Art to update it. At the beginning of the Nineties the “archettian” investigation developed the theme of time overwhelming man: the artist builds his images on walls able to tell ancient stories in order to destroy them and to recreate a new order afterwards. In Archetti’s opera informal and figurative, feeling and reason take turns and then melt together. The painting tends sometimes to complete through sequences: the idea itself expands so that each painting, which stands as a complete work of art, becomes also part of the whole. Archetti rediscovers the archaic forms of writing, the pages of the diaries, the amazement coming out from niches and zipped openings, the books fully embroided with ancient echoes and mysterious shapes. At the end of the Millennium, somehow full of dark omens, Archetti got inspired by the essence of the knowledge of the world and of the sense of life of two outstanding people: Federico Fellini and Piero della Francesca. Characters who were very far from each other, yet so close in the subtle game of glances that refers to other possible worlds. In the year 2000 a burst of color took place in Archetti’s opera: the theme now is Towards the golden age, which tends to sum up the unthinkable and the heavenly dimension that each and everyone of us would like to reach. It is a period extremely free in the stroke, in the color mixture, in the thickness, in shapes. One goes beyond what is real, to a place where the figures do not measure themselves with their past anymore, but only with the contemporary world and with themselves. After that, comes the theme “Symphonies”. Archetti, in his introduction of his 2002 catalogue wrote : «… symphonies are colors which chase each other, which overlap, they are white clouds, women who break off from gold. Symphonies are story to be told. They are falling leaves, light blue spheres, they are the colors of the sky, yet of the earth, of the sea and of its depth as well.» From 2005 to 2007 he enriched the content of his works of art narrating pieces of infinities, as shown in the volume “Frammenti d’infinito” (Fragments of Infinity). They are works of art that chase space, lights, empty spaces, silence, something beyond the real world. In 2008 the theme of infinity melted itself in Riflessi D’Infinito (Reflections of Infinity): atmospheres were full of brightness and lights. It was an exchange of energies between the characters (figures or elements) and the surrounding world. They were reflections bouncing as if they were coming from far away, very far away. The reflections of Infinity brought us the VENTATE D’ORO (waves of gold) as well: they are some golden casting of material full of positivity and optimism thrown down from above. The Waves of Gold are brightly sparkling and they stand as a shiny dissent to those forms of art which base themselves on negative performances. Una ventata d’oro 100x100 tela
Mauro Corradini – HOVERING BETWEEN REPRESENTATION AND ABSTRACTION Enzo Archetti is hovering between representation and abstraction, like his education was hovering for a long time between humanities and the artistic search. Active for more than 30 years, Archetti has defined his current style through a simplification of shapes, a painting that echoes walls and lime, a painting in which images, figures, icons of an anxious memory stand out against a bottom ground made up of traces, somehow corroded and made different by the passing of time, to the quest for the “opening” (as Montale would say). This path that comes to its highest, smooth, free synthesis at the turning point of the two Centuries has thickened up with symbols and traces in the last years; the memories between truth and dreams are still readable, rendering the measure and the character of Archetti, the walls full of humours and traces that stay still in the background; something has nevertheless changed, the stroke is firmer, the figures show themselves with an inner anxiety: the object of Assolo, its restless shade extended on the wall, the thin thread coming out of the shade, they all seem to define a dimension of wanted unsteadiness. He now moves from the serenity of La nota migliore (the best note), 2000, to the new anxiety. The game of the symbols refers back to memory, to the figures who appear in a mental universe, real and ideal figures at the same time, figures that seem to stand against the frailty of lumps and traces: life, of whom arts becomes a metaphor, can be found in these contrasts and in these contradictions. Archetti goes again along the same route of a meditation deeply rooted, thanks to which everything appears spread with nostalgia and memory, with symbols that open up to the magic of painting on one hand (lumps, stripes, overlapping, thickness) and to the mystery of living, echoed through hints and suggestions on the other. As if Archetti were to suggest, without lingering too long on symbols, which make up the vital space of our existence. Ventata d’oro 40x50 tela
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