17 July 2020 - 6 p.m. exhibition opening

Seventy works by Costantino Ruggeri realised at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s.

They are at the heart of the monographic exhibition on the artist friar proposed by thePavia City Council Culture Department in collaboration with the Brother Sun Foundation. Saturday 18 July the opening in the exhibition space at the Broletto in Pavia; the exhibition will remain and can be visited until 4 October.

The title is "From matter to form“.

The works show interesting proximities with the successful poverist current founded by the critic Germano Celant recently passed away.'Matter becomes form' marks the birth of the Arte Povera movement in 1967 baptised by the art critic himself, who characterises it with these words: "...in reducing signs to their minimum, in impoverishing them to their archetypes".

In the historic exhibition entitled 'Arte povera - Im Spazio' held at the La Bertesca Gallery in Genoa, Celant presents the artists and the theoretical foundation of the new current that stands outside the art system. The names of Fabro, Bignardi, Boetti, Kounellisto which will be added later Paladin, Merz and others.

The fledgling current is identified in these words: "First comes man, then comes the system".

"Celant speaks of a 'poor art, engaged with contingency, with the event, with the anthropological conception and with the real man," they explain at the Department of Culture. "The meeting point between the absolute of beauty and the relative of the forms in which it is indicated, represents an ever new starting point in the experience of an artist, difficult to express in words because it must be expressed in situations, essential signs, unpredictable openings, always new, in solutions as rigorous as they are free and liberal.

In this sense, the exhibition intends to valorise and promote the work of material recovery carried out by Costantino Ruggeri, a Franciscan friar but also an artist attentive to all the rupture movements that arose as a reaction to the socio-political climate of the 1970s.

Ruggeri graduated from the Brera Academy in 1962 and made friends with fellow students Roberto Crippa, Lucio Fontana, Gianni Dova, Marino Marini, Alberto Burri. Starting in 1964, Ruggeri developed a lively dialogue with matter, with walls, with spaces in relation to light. Through this research, Costantino arrives at the most humble materials: packaging cardboard, cellophane, thread, polystyrene, wooden boards that he finds in landfills and unused material deposits.

The first works from this period are the White Shapeselaborated with recycled objects that are striking for their essentiality. Followed by the Black Shapeswhich are rarer and act as a counterpoint to absolute white. But the most accomplished formulation of Costantino Ruggeri's innovative conception of sculpture can be identified with "Cells"three-dimensional works in which he uses thick cardboard by folding it into the shape of a parallelepiped, completely covered with a layer of plaster and white paint, which makes the artefact immaculate. - La Provincia Pavese, 9 July 2020 -