Alessandro Negri’s solo exhibition

11th November 2023 – 21st January 2024

Alessandro Negri’s solo exhibition collects the artist’s artworks from 1967 to 2023, illustrating all the important stages of the painter lifetime work. Negri left a mark in Robecchetto con Induno history.

The natural shapes troughout their tangles had always touched the artist’s imaginary and Negri uses these tangles as a personal style. He included them in domestic places from the beginning of his career and he has introduced them as knots between feminine and masculine human figures, branches and roots since few years ago.
The pictorial gesture represents the way nature is affected over time. The canvas is not more a static support, but it represents the background of a complex of images in transformation, these images projected in motion towards the observer.
The earthy colours fill up the first paintings underlinig the tight correlation between the artist and the depicted landscape. Throughout the years these colours become more dilute and varied, they are enriched by drops that cut the canvas vertically. In the late paintings Negri uses white, black and purple tempera that only partially cover the canvas, creating many empty spaces on the surface.

The artwork composition becomes from packed to essential, human figures seem to dance on canvas showing their movements through Negri’s rapid and confident gesture

BIOGRAPHY

Alessandro Negri, was born in 1936, he lives and works in Robecchetto con Induno, Milan.
He studied at Brera Art Accademy, attending the nude painting class and he also attended the Public Institute of Art of the Sforza Castle in Milan.
His youth is largely influenced by the figurative art tendencies of the postwar period. These are the years of Morlotti’s art, the naturalism of matter, of Birolli and Capogrossi and the importance of their scratch. These are the 60’s, the decade of the abstract expressionism of Pollock and de Kooning, the pioneers of Pop Art.
During Negri maturity, the artist switches from figurative paintings to gesturality and scratch dynamism. The subjects he portayes become rarefied, they are restricted into a geometric order.
His scratch is a defence of the figure against space. Negri’s art is strictly tied to the countryside in which he lives, nature is the most important recurring theme of his artworks.

BIOGRAPHIC NOTES

1964 – sala espositiva Delle Fonti, Boario Terme
1965 – Studi della Cappa, Milano
1965 – sala espositiva Delle Fonti, Boario Terme
1967 – Centro Culturale Vercellese, Milano
1967 – Galleria Albizzati, Abbiategrasso
1968 – Galleria Merlo, Vigevano
1969 – Galleria la Cornice, Legnano
1969 – Galleria Merlo, Vigevano
1971 – Galleria la Cornice, Legnano
1975 – Galleria la Cornice, Legnano
1998 – sala A.V.I.S., ex Chiesa, Noli
1998 – sala Consigliare, Celle Ligure
1999 – sala espositiva I.A.T., Arenzano
1999 – Biblioteca Civica, Arenzano
2002 – sala Consigliare, Premià De Dalt, Barcellona
2002 – Galleria d’arte 2000, Milano
2003 – sala Consigliare, Pontinvrea
2003 – sala Consigliare, Robecchetto con Induno
2006 – Villa Cambiaso, Savona
2006 – Biblioteca Civica, Arenzano
2007 – mostra di Alessandro Negri e Daniel Tavares, Sala Consigliare, Celle Ligure
2007 – sala espositiva a Sbragi, Cogoleto
2011 – Laboratorio Sperimentale Arti Visive, Milano
2012 – mostra personale “Segni e trasformazioni dell’esistenza”, Hotel Due Mari, Sestri Levante
2013 – “Il concerto mistico della natura”, Palazzo Robellini, Acqui Terme
2013 – mostra personale “Dissolvenze”, Spazio Espositivo Sant’Erasmo, Sestri Levante
2016 – mostra di Alessandro Negri e Igor De Marchi “La luce attraversa il nero e altri colori”, Castello di Galliate
2017 – “Grovigli”, Spazio E, Ghemme
2018 – mostra collettiva “L’immagine e il sogno nell’arte”, Buscate
2019 – mostra collettiva “Espressione libera”, SAC – Spazio Arte Contemporanea, Robecchetto con Induno
2020 – mostra collettiva “L’umano, tema e variazioni”, SAC – Spazio Arte Contemporanea, Robecchetto con Induno

SITO WEB:www.alessandronegri.net
EMAIL: negrial36@gmail.com
INSTAGRAM: negrial36
FACEBOOK: Alessandro Negri

SAC
Web: www.spazioartecontemporanea.com
Mail: info@spazioartecontemporanea.com
Ig: spazio_arte_contemporanea
Fb: Spazio Arte Contemporanea

In Negri’s artworks we always find a representation of tangible things, from the nudes and the human figures of the academic studies to the Ticino and Sesia Valleys and rare Liguria landscapes, from these subjects to fascinating shapes of plant life at which his inspiration frequently leads to. In his paintings Nature plays the leading role and it is depicted through its aesthetic value, excluding any ideological and symbolic intent.  A bush, a tangle of foliage, a contorted roots knot become sources of the artist’s inspiration and lead him to examine and fix fleeting light effects,  suggestive chromatic mixtures and a chaotic but at the same time harmonic tangling up of lines

Giuseppe Castoldi

Trees knots, intricate roots, grapevine tangles constitute the world of Negri imaginary and inspiration in which the artist hides himself. The artist knows every secret of this hidden world. Alessandro has tryed to understand the vitality of the mysterious plant life since he was a child. He concentrated on it in order to understand the sense of hidden life as Piranesi did.
Alessandro analyses and re-elaborates the natural world he observes using discipline and order. He seems to play the role of a naturalist that studies life, he acts like an entomologist that examines the immense insects world, he behaves like a geologist that investigate the subsoil. Alessandro investigates all the aspects that the human mind conceals.
Roots spread like our senses throughout mysterious roads, covertly chasing life essence, depicting at the same time waves to be discovered, wefts that are baffling and sensitive like our soul.

Dott.ssa Maria Grazia Vanola 

The gestural capability in depicting the natural and human subjects touches the observer. The artist act represents the way Negri projects himself in order to be recognizable as a man of his historical period. The artist behavior seems to be uncontrollable if we superficially analyze it. As a matter of fact there is a huge capability of the artist to address his behaviour to the final result, in a mutual dialogue between gaze and movement that permits to share an emotional universe. This universe becomes a vibration and an emotion and trace back to the persons we are, to the artist himself who is the only actor who is able to let us participating to our gnosiological and practical integrity.

Federica Mingozzi 

Alessandro Negri has never been influenced by temporary trends. He has always been coherent, he has never genuflected to the art consumerism, to the celebrity as a goal. As every artist he meditates on other artists works. Analysing Negri’s art, I think about Mondrian’s tree , which was transformed by the artist in a lattice of improbable shapes. This lattice led the artist to a true and extreme physical and ethical abstraction that made the reality, also the invisible one, more rational and readable.
Negri reveals the mystery hidden in human dreams throughout his infinite calls to natural shapes. Everything turns into new shapes. Human bodies seems to methodically deform.
Various shapes assume appearances that only art can make comprehensible. They become poetry while they are naturally perceived.

Mario Carnaghi

The shots are important in your paintings, they beat time like a metronome.
They stand your ground to your will to go in depth, they make every artistic period unexpectedly ending with a revival characterized by a silent and sly break.  Closing a period means for you to come back.
Come back to your path, to the roots of your gesture and paintings that, as I told you once, are digged into the canvas.
It is not a coming back to proceed, but a process of reviewing and chasing images on more time.
Shapes , details that represent the artist in his youth as a lover of beauty and nature.

Gianmaria Garavaglia