From 13 June CUBO hosts Maurizio Bottarelli's private show entitled To disperse the boundary and presents a body of paintings donated by the Emilian artist to the artistic heritage of the Unipol Group.The works encapsulate the most representative stages of Bottarelli's creative path and highlight the artist's relationship with the evolution of city, national and international art. Relationships which, however, should not be understood in terms of an alignment, of a conceding adhesion to the trends of the moment, but rather of comparisons marked by divergence from, very often in terms of a problematic laterality, if not actual opposition to current fashions.
Bottarelli's entire output arises from a profound reflection on the problems of the human condition, with existential implications perceived as intermediaries of the consciousness of living, the root of an identity that is difficult to define. The head, the nude and the landscape emerge within his path as the best themes for developing this reflection. However, the most original factor is in the interconnections, in the reciprocal relationships the artist is able to establish between these themes, such as to make them consistently interchangeable. Themes through which Bottarelli himself explores the generative possibilities of matter.
The itinerary develops chronologically, starting from Porta Europa where works on head and nude are exhibited. Their apotheosis is the Senza titolo of 1972 which was jokingly christened by the famous art critic Francesco Arcangeli as 'Nero', one of the finest examples of this phase of research. It is perhaps his most representative work, considering that the critic himself wanted to exhibit it at the Italian Pavilion of the Venice Biennale of the same year, dedicated to the alternation between Work or behaviour.
In Torre Unipol, we analyse the more mature phase of the artist's research and it is from the motif of the head that Bottarelli directly extracts that of the landscape, intended not as a representation of a natural scenario, but as an exploration of the human subject. Here we witness a return to the landscape always understood as an existential metaphor and the reopening of a romantic space, in which we pick up a nod to William Turner and the naturalism of Gustave Courbet, aiming to reaffirm the drama of the subjective condition faced with the forces of nature. Works such as Paesaggio islandese (1991), Immagine da immagine chiave (1992) along with Tasmania (2005) belong to this period.
A relationship with matter therefore traced as a kind of reversal, from concentration to dispersion, reaffirming the restless attitude of his work in every outcome.
Tour virtuale della mostra
