BY MEKA BOYLE
From Pier Paolo Calzolari’s eighth floor apartment in Lisbon, large windows, over 30 feet wide, look out over the Tagus River. Every morning, the 82-year-old artist watches the sunrise sparkle in pink and orange ripples across the water and cast a glow across the city. It’s a sight that never gets old (a successor to Venice’s lagoon, Riva degli Schiavoni, of his youth, and, later, Vienna’s Danube River). During sunset, he turns to face the opposite windows: “I can see—and be wrapped in—the magnificent light of Lisbon’s sunsets, losing myself in dreams made of those colors,” he writes in an email. For Calzolari, it all comes back to light, not in the general sense but in the specifics: how it catches across a building, a body of water, a machine.
Portugal is a wellspring of inspiration for the artist. When he first visited in the 1980s, he observed that Lisbon had the air of a faded bouquet. “Everything carried the charm and the scent of a forgotten world, suspended outside of time,” he reflects. When he left, the memory of the place lingered. Then in 2016, he returned during a trip across Europe with his son, took in the jacaranda trees, and the windy coasts, and decided to stay.
Pier Paolo Calzolari, Untitled #16, 2016.
Image courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery.
Today his day-to-day pace is slow, keeping rhythm with the ancient city: walks along the river dreaming of unrealized projects (of which he says he has many), and afternoons spent in his studio. “In truth, I carry a large suitcase with me at all times,” he shares. In it he keeps various bits of ephemera and objects that he has acquired over time—some find their way into his works. “The contents of this suitcase grow little by little through the pilgrimages of my life,” he adds.
At Marianne Boesky’s 507 West 24th Street gallery in New York, “Saudades,” features 12 casein-tempera paintings made in the months after the artist moved from Italy 10 years ago, each work containing such ephemera he gathered during his travels around the city. Here, flannel, buttons, gauze, copper wire, thumbtacks, and wood come together in various ways. Some works (Untitled #16, #17, and #21) feature small, white feathered brooms, sourced from local street markets. While in Untitled #10, it appears as if small feathers are drifting down the sand-colored canvas. And a delicate piece of wire wraps around Untitled #4, 2016, casting a shadow against the pale pink canvas marked with beige dashes.
Pier Paolo Calzolari, Untitled #10, 2016.
Image courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery.
A pioneer in the Arte Povera movement, Calzolari is known for his use of everyday objects and elements like fire, frost, and breath, metabolizing his unconventional materials in everything from paintings to installations and sculptures to performances. As a result, many of his works exist in the middle ground where such mediums converge. Take one untitled work from 1969, in which a rectangle metal sheet hangs on the wall and a candle flickers atop a tiny upturned corner, its wax drippings landing on a small metal scrap on the floor below. Or Senza Titolo, 1986, a black canvas that rests on the wall above an assemblage including an audio recorder and a refrigerator motor; a resulting streak of frost runs vertically down the center of the painting.
“Saudades” is a meditative conglomeration of the artist’s past experiments, and a return to the city that has only shown his work a few times throughout his storied career. (His 2012 exhibition across Marianne Boesky and Pace’s spaces marked the first time his work was shown in New York since 1988). The title (which translates to “nostaglia” in Portuguese) is just as much a synthesis. “I carry Venetian melancholy and infuse it with that of Lisbon,” he says, listing out his various inspirations: “the reflections, the muted sounds, the murmur of the waters, and the shadows that stand out clearly, even as they are surrounded by diffused light.”
“Pier Paolo Calzolari: Saudades” is on view through February 28, 2026 at Marianne Boesky Gallery at 507 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011.
