Umberto Pettinicchio - Cotton

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 resulted in an inability to communicate. For some artists, this problem led to a total rejection of any visual language, which translated into the birth of Informel. The various informal movements are certainly linked to American Abstract Expressionism, especially regarding the gestural component, but they go further in terms of the rejection of any figurative element, even geometric. Their research is instead directed towards gesture and the material with which they compose their works.

The artist Umberto Pettinicchio has often dealt with the human figure in his pictorial research, which led him, initially, to acquire an expressionist style. Later, his painting becomes increasingly abstract until finally arriving at Informel. Only a vaguely perceptible semblance 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 large black strokes. What Pettinicchio does seems like a kind of brutalist operation along the lines of a Dubuffet, but while the Frenchman gave much greater emphasis to the material, our artist instead resolves everything through the application of paint.

Umberto Pettinicchio was born in Torremaggiore in 1943. He trained in Milan at the Brera Academy and from 1969 began exhibiting in his first solo shows. Among these stand out his appearances at Nuova Sfera, Milan, 1973 (introduced by Carlo Munari) and 1977, at Trittico, Rome, 1974, 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 see the light of day. In the 1980s, exhibitions were always regular (at Salotto, Como, 1980, at Il Castello, Milan, 1981, at Il Mercante, Milan, 1982), also enriched by important Spanish exhibitions (Sargadelos, Barcelona, 1982, Piquio, Santander, 1982, at the VIII Madrid Biennale, 1983).

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