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Seventy works by Costantino Ruggeri created at the turn of the sixties and seventies.

They are the heart of the monographic exhibition on the frate artist proposed by the Department of Culture of the City of Pavia in collaboration with the FoundationFrate Sole. On Saturday 18th July the Broletto di Pavia will open in the exhibition space; the exhibition will remain and can be visited until 4th October.

The title is "From Matter to Form".

The works present interesting surroundings with the fortunate poor current founded by the recently deceased critic Germano Celant. "Matter becomes form" marks in 1967 the birth of the Arte Povera movement held in baptism by the same art critic who characterizes it with these words: "...in reducing to the minimum, in impoverishing the signs, to reduce 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 lies outside the art system. In the exhibition appear the names of Fabro, Bignardi, Boetti, Kounellis, to which will be added later Paladino, Merz and others.

The newborn current identifies itself in these words: "First comes man and then 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 to 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 always new starting point in the experience of an artist, difficult to express it in words because it must express itself in situations, essential signs, unpredictable openings, always new, in rigorous solutions as much as free and liberal".

In this sense, the exhibition aims to enhance and promote the work of recovery of materials carried out by Costantino Ruggeri, a frate Franciscan but also an artist attentive to all the breaking movements that arise as a reaction to the socio-political climate of the seventies.

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

The first works of this period are the Forme Bianche (White Forms), elaborated with salvaged objects that are striking for their essentiality. They are followed by the Black Shapes, which are rarer and counterbalance the absolute white. But the most complete formulation of Costantino Ruggeri's innovative conception of sculpture is identified with "Le celle", three-dimensional works in which he uses a thick cardboard folding it in the shape of a parallelepiped, totally covered with a layer of plaster and white paint, such as to make the object immaculate. - La Provincia Pavese, 9 July 2020 -