Verses 1990-2019

 

INTRODUCTION

curated by Beatrice Audrito

 

 

Abruzzese by birth but Roman by adoption, Oliviero Rainaldi lives and works in the Principality of Monaco. He has been attending Versilia since 1990 and this land, which has always been a destination for artists and sculptors from all over the world, is dedicated to dedicating to Rainaldi a great personal exhibition entitled Verses 1990-2019.

The exhibition traces the last thirty years of the research of Oliviero Rainaldi, an internationally renowned artist, focusing on the most representative works. About fifty works of small and large size, belonging to different creative periods, tell the evolution of the artist through the study of the human figure, the pretext for conducting a wider, intimate and systematic investigation of man, declining the thousand aesthetic-formal possibilities. A refined selection of drawings, paintings and sculptures organized in a thematic path that highlights the great faith that Rainaldi places in art as an instrument of knowledge of the world and search for truth, pursued through a careful study and reworking of historical subjects and themes , mythological and religious. This is how the large canvases dedicated to the Virgin - a contemporary reinterpretation of the classic iconography of the lying nude -, the pictorial cycle of the Conversations, which accompanies Rainaldi's pictorial production since 2000, the works dedicated to the representation of the Saints and the stories biblical, or the cycle of Malebolge, inspired by Dante's poem of the same name in the infernal circle. Food for thought for a detailed investigation of man in his relationship with history and the material and spiritual universe of which he is a part, which lead Rainaldi to finely reinterpret classic culture, updating its messages.

Without ever ending in the mere stylistic exercise or in the vain repetition of the form, Rainaldi declines his art in a great variety of aesthetic-formal solutions, using the most heterogeneous materials: from canvas to cardboard, from cement to plaster, to terracotta. To guide Rainaldi in the choice of the expressive medium is the idea, the starting point of each design reflection, then declined by the artist in painting, sculpture or drawing with absolute freedom of expression, making unusual materials and supports interact so as to often confuse them the boundaries. The works on display reveal the culture, acumen and sensitivity of an all-round artist who, even in the midst of expressive maturity, still has much to say.

Each work by Rainaldi is like a mystery to be deciphered, its simple and dry language, cleaned of any decorative tinsel, outlines with fluid and simple traits faces and enigmatic figures that sometimes appear waiting, like the figure of Jesus in Golgotha, other times in the making, like the elusive and changing bodies of the great triptych Conversations. His sculpture preserves the simplicity and elegance of primitive sculpture; it appears suspended, out of time, like the figure of Adam in Fallen and Human Baptisms, where the clarity of the lines of the bodies, sculpted in the material as if just sketched, places the sculptures in a mythical and primitive dimension. A language that Rainaldi dominates with skill and great compositional awareness, as a result of a sort of dematerialization of painting and sculpture in favor of an "other" dimension that looks to the sublimation of form.

 

 

 

Photo credits

Nicola Gnesi - Barbara Cardini