Revisiting an artist’s poetic landscape, and to reexamine, observe and take-in their aesthetics and essence in a time that follows their creative production, is certainly a risky act. It is, nevertheless a risk worth taking for the sake of honouring the talents and pioneers of today’s expressive languages and means. In Claudio Olivieri’s practice, the pictorial gesture was necessary, mandatory, and the least risky of acts. Only a few years following the artist’s passing, and about fifty years after his first appearance in the art system – contextualising Olivieri’s drawings and paintings means dealing with a timeless creative figure. This timelessness – in other words, being eternally contemporary – ten, a hundred, a thousand years in the future – is tangible evidence of a thinker who was ahead of his time. Olivieri’s paintings demonstrate a style that was entirely revolutionary in the 1960s, with its unique and innovative modulation of colour and use of spray-paint – a tool that we are all familiar with today, but rarely operate as accurately and skilfully as he did in his works. Furthermore, presenting the audience with works of monumental scale and boundless, vibrant colour – thus entirely immersing both gaze and body – is a precious gift, that leaves significant traces upon time and space.
Rossella Farinotti
