Exhibition view: ANNAMARIA GELMI “Caro Spartaco”, 2019 | Loom Gallery, Milano

CARO SPARTACO, THE PERSONAL EXHIBITION OF ANNAMARIA GELMI

In the vast panorama of contemporary art there are artists such as Annamaria Gelmi who continue, without stopping, a research work.
An international artist but little known to the general public, Annamaria Gelmi is the protagonist of a personal exhibition in Milan, of which Alice Traforti tells us all in this post.

Annamaria Gelmi’s solo show in Milan

Annamaria Gelmi: Doppia Rotazione, 1977 – Acrylic and china on cardboard, cm 100 x 80 | Courtesy Loom Gallery & The Artist

Dear friends,
today I would like to tell you about the personal exhibition of Annamaria Gelmi “caro Spartaco” underway by LOOM Gallery in Milan (in via Marsala 7, from Tuesday to Saturday from 12 to 19) and extended until 11 January 2020.

The note that immediately gives “color” to the whole exhibition is the emotional aspect declared in the title, in open contrast with the geometric rigor of the figures that Annamaria Gelmi leaves to floating on a neutral background.
These works, created by the artist in the 70s, speak to us of a shared commitment in life and art in favor of the rights of humanity and women.
An activism that the artist, after the failure of 1968 and in full feminist atmosphere, chooses to express through a language that wishes to lay new foundations, thanks also and above all to art, to reorganize an idea of society based on stable, coherent and indispensable rules under the sign of a creative and respectful freedom.

Thus, in about twenty works, including drawings, acetate sheets and transparent plexiglas sculptures, we see circles, squares, rectangles, triangles and lines twirl in unpredictable rotations, projections and free combinations of the same.

All the signs traced by Annamaria Gelmi build a new “dreamlike as well as rigorous space, composed of mathematical sequences and equally full of improvisations, where the traits and shapes respond and evade the construction logic at the same time, experimenting visual rhythms that are close to events of reality “.
What Annamaria Gelmi designs is an ideal space, where to start a more aware future.

Those who stop to observe these works cannot help but wonder how a square can be light and gloomy, substantially remaining a set of linear elements.
Annamaria Gelmi, in a recent interview of mine, answers this question as follows:
“The sheet of acetate or Plexiglas on which the image is painted is considered by me only as a field of intervention and not as an overall image. The rest is done by the observer’s vision. ”

Here works constructed with ruler and compass allow each observer to be surprised, rediscovering the subjectivity of their point of view in a set of formulas that are just waiting to be experienced.

And Spartacus? “Philosopher, sociologist, poet, writer, beloved husband” reveals the artist’s heart where it seems to be pure rationality: each work becomes an emotional path where we can read the joys, bitterness, aspirations and contradictions of women’s life, of wife, mother, to whom we can finally juxtapose ours and those of humanity.

Annamaria Gelmi: Struttura ambiente, 1976 – China on plexiglas, cm 120 x 80 | Courtesy Loom Gallery & The Artist