Umberto Pettinicchio - Ascension

The work drew on an informal aesthetic language. The devastation brought by the Second World War left a deep mark on Western civilization that, in the visual arts, also manifested as an inability to communicate. For some artists, this problem resulted in a total rejection of any visual language, leading to the birth of Informel. The various Informel movements are certainly linked to American Abstract Expressionism, especially regarding the gestural component, but they go further in their rejection of any figurative element, even geometric ones. Their research is instead directed towards gesture and the material with which they compose their works.

The artist Umberto Pettinicchio often explored the human figure in his pictorial research, which initially led him to adopt an Expressionist style. Later, his painting became increasingly abstract until he definitively arrived at Informel. Only a vaguely perceptible trace of the figure remains, while, from a formal point of view, everything is transformed by the artist's gestural painting. Pettinicchio's gesture breaks down the dimensional planes and transforms the human figure into an amorphous material marked by thick black strokes. What Pettinicchio does seems like a kind of brutalist operation along the lines of Dubuffet, but while the Frenchman gave much greater emphasis to material, our artist instead resolves everything through the application of paint.

Umberto Pettinicchio was born in Torremaggiore in 1943. He studied in Milan at the Brera Academy and began exhibiting in his first solo shows in 1969. Among these, his appearances stand out at Nuova Sfera, Milan, 1973 (introduced by Carlo Munari) and 1977; at Trittico, Rome, 1974; and at Il Castello, Milan, 1975 (introduced by Raffaele De Grada). In 1976, he opened his studio in via Bolzano, where important series of paintings would be created. In the 1980s, he regularly exhibited (at Salotto, Como, 1980; at Il Castello, Milan, 1981; and at Il Mercante, Milan, 1982), while also participating in important Spanish exhibitions (Sargadelos, Barcelona, 1982; Piquio, Santander, 1982; and the VIII Madrid Biennale, 1983).

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