Untitled #17, 2016
Milk tempera, broom, on canvas
47 1/4 x 47 1/4 x 8 1/4 inches
120 x 120 x 21 cm
507 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011
For inquiries, please contact Beryl Bevilacque:
“Bologna, Paris, Berlin, Milan, Turin, New York, Lisbon.
From Crete to Morocco and Giudecca, Calzolari is an artist who travels
and who transports his viewers.”
– curator Stéphane Vacquier
Marianne Boesky is pleased to present Saudades, an exhibition of paintings by Pier Paolo Calzolari (b. 1943; Bologna, Italy). Made in 2016, shortly after the artist moved to Portugal, the 12 paintings featured in Saudades draw on the ethos of Arte Povera to examine the quality of light and sense of peace Calzolari found upon his arrival in Lisbon.
A leading figure in the Arte Povera movement, Calzolari is renowned for the material inventiveness and formal originality of his expansive, genre-defying practice. Working with equal fluency in painting, sculpture, installation, and performance, he embraces alchemy and art history while examining the potential of light, the essence of memory, and the poetic character of the natural world and the urban environment.
Light is a driving force in Calzolari’s practice, and his work often reflects the specific quality of light found in the place where it was made. The artist’s fascination with light began during his youth in Venice: “I was hypnotised by its waterfront, the Riva degli Schiavoni,” Calzolari said. “I used to look at the balconies made out of the very white Istrian stone that you see in Venice. And I was dazzled by the white of the sunlight reflecting off the lagoon, which was constantly changing.” Always searching for a way to reproduce that same brilliance in his art, Calzolari began working with frost, activating refrigerator units to blanket copper wires in a thin layer of pure, luminous white. In the early 1980s, Calzolari moved to Vienna. There, as he observed the shifting reflections on the Danube, he began to embrace expressionism, emotion, and vibrant colors—golds, blues, reds, and greens. In Crete, then Morocco—among other locales—Calzolari continued to translate the characteristics of the places where he lived into his work.
The paintings of Saudades reflect the particular atmosphere of Lisbon. Onto the surface of the identically scaled casein-tempera paintings, Calzolari incorporates a host of found and industrial materials to create subtle textures and focal points for contemplation. In Untitled #8—a composition inspired in part by a bust of a veiled woman—gauze and copper wire produce a delicate horizon line while thumbtacks conjure the twinkle of stars. In Untitled #7, subtle oil color striations capture the shimmering Iberian sun on rippled water as a scrap of gold-leaf plated brass casts shadows on the surface below. In Untitled #16, #17, and #21, Calzolari affixes small, feathered brooms—acquired at street markets in Lisbon—to the surfaces. “Poor” objects, like brooms, as well as the industrial and household materials—flannel, buttons, gauze, thumbtacks, and wood—that appear throughout many of these paintings have recurred in Calzolari’s oeuvre since his early association with Arte Povera. The artist’s continued use of metal—gold, copper, brass, and lead—speaks to his fascination with alchemy. In Saudades, Calzolari elevates these materials, transforming them into fleeting visions of the particular warmth and freedom of the place where the Rio Tejo meets the Atlantic Ocean.
The exhibition’s title, Saudades, is a Portuguese and Galician word. Saudade doesn’t have a direct translation in English, but it speaks to a bittersweet melancholy or longing for something unnamed. Rather than the saccharine sentimentality associated with the word “nostalgia,” saudade instead captures—according to poet Edward Hirsch—the memory of something lost or “a yearning for something that might have been.” With the paintings in Saudades, Calzolari—as he has for nearly 60 years—conjures that which is fleeting and transitory, that which will inevitably change or disappear: the passing flint of golden light on the water, a warm memory briefly felt, the afternoon sun though the studio window
ABOUT PIER PAOLO CALZOLARI
Calzolari's work was the subject of a solo exhibition, Casa ideale, at the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, Villa Paloma, Monaco in 2023–2024. His work was featured in a survey of Arte Povera, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev for the Bourse de Commerce, Pinault Collection in Paris, in 2024. In 2019, Calzolari was the subject of a major retrospective, Painting as a Butterfly, at the Madre Museum in Naples, Italy, curated by Achille Bonito Oliva and Andrea Villani. Calzolari’s work is included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Sammlung Goetz, Munich, Germany; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; and Palazzo Grassi, Punta della Dogana François Pinault Foundation, Venice, Italy, among others. He has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Documenta IX, Kassel Germany; Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, France, Venice Biennale, Italy; Ca’ Pesaro, Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna, Venice, Italy; the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France. The artist lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal.
