"The suspended song of painting" is the title of the retrospective, curated by Claudio Cerritelli, dedicated to Gastone Biggi on display at Palazzo di Città until February 28th.

The exhibition, organized by the Department of Culture and Entertainment of the Municipality of Cagliari in collaboration with the Gastone Biggi Foundation, which can be visited every day except Mondays from 10 am to 6 pm, is a real highlight of the new cultural course desired by the Councilor Maria Dolores Picciau, together with the other initiatives planned in these first six months of mandate that have allowed the Cagliari public and enthusiasts, who follow the most stimulating exhibitions from all over the island, to discover artists of extraordinary value whose works were never arrived in the capital.

The works on display represent the synthesis of the artistic path of the Roman painter, who was so tied to our island that he dedicated several works to her, but also writings and poems.

Exponent and main theorist of Gruppo Uno formed in 1962 and of which the famous critic and art historian Giulio Carlo Argan was the promoter, Biggi was, in addition to a very active painter present from China to the United States, a lover of classical and refined music writer of poems and art history texts, revisited in his own way in highly suggestive publications such as “Bisny. From Byzantium to New York ”, a collection of his reflections on all the great Western art.

The exhibition is a surprise crescendo on the four floors of the museum in the heart of Castello, where we pass from the figurative works of the period 1947-57, when the artist was hospitalized due to the injuries sustained following the torture suffered by the Nazis, by chance he discovered the passion for painting, up to “Canceled”, the “Informals”, the “Continui” and the gradual liberation from the figurative datum.

It is possible to admire the dark atmospheres of works with an expressionist imprint such as "The deportees" as well as subsequent canvases that are a prelude to new stylistic choices.

In the 130 works on display, Biggi's entire artistic path is traced, always moving around the point as a distinctive feature of his painting in a continuous, coherent, harmonious research around color, rhythm and space.

Each cycle or series is thus representative of a pictorial moment of the Master and is often connected to personal events such as travels, readings, encounters: this tells some of its most significant such as "Variables", "Tangentials and Rhythms", "Heavens and Days" , "Campi", "Songs of memory", "Lights", "Tabule and Constellations", "Icons", "Cosmocromie", but also the series dedicated to New York, which Biggi visited four times and which mark the recovery of figurative painting.

A return that is confirmed in the top floor of the museum where you are enveloped by the triumph of colors of works such as "Red Universe" and "Christ in New York", the version of GuernicaRock that marks the artist's pop turn. They are paintings immersed in the confusion of metropolitan subways, drowned in the smelling tar of the streets, in the noise of crowds in clusters, in the neighborhoods glued to the great bridges.

An exhibition that is worth visiting to discover the art of an all-round Master, who has been an important witness in the history of Italian art.

LP

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