An exhibition in Rome celebrates Ettore Spalletti two years after his death

The National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome is currently hosting the exhibition Ettore Spalletti. The Sky in a Room, curated by Ã?ric de Chassey and in collaboration with Studio Ettore Spalletti, the first to celebrate the great master of contemporary art Ettore Spalletti (Cappelle sul Tavo, 1940 - Spoltore, 2019) a few years after his death in 2019. The exhibition includes a highly selected corpus of works, including painting and sculpture, that rewrite the spaces of the Central Hall, transforming it into a landscape intended to express the sense and scope of Ettore Spalletti’s artistic research, the protagonist of a solitary path characterized by traits of uniqueness in the history of Italian contemporary art, since when, starting from his beginnings in the 1970s, he traversed the whirlwind of the avant-garde from a detached, original and strongly coherent perspective.

Strict choices and a very clear visual education set a limit to primary geometric forms and colors of choice, such as blue, white, gray, pink and purple. Likewise for sculptural forms, such as the column, an element of tradition, the ellipse, the basin, and the amphora. But it is a limit that tends to infinity, where the artist’s golden rules have the power to amplify the expressive power of his works, from the drafting of pure color to the studied interactions with surfaces and environmental dynamics.

“Ettore Spalletti’s early choice of monochrome,” says curator Ã?ric de Chassey, “as a privileged medium for creating paintings, sculptures and spaces has proved over the decades to be particularly felicitous. Instead of setting a limit, it has opened up unforeseen possibilities for boundless experience of the infinite through concrete reflection on specific materialities.”

The color blue, which dominates the exhibition, in the form of monochrome occupies the space and is intended to invite the viewer to immerse himself in this landscape and take part in an emotional experience. The vibrations of the blue color follow the changing light and atmospheric situations, while the viewer’s time also acquires a meditative dimension. One thus grasps the presence of a metaphysical tension that has characterized Spalletti’s research, on an artistic and personal level. The questions about the incorporeal dimension that the art object possesses subtend a deep spiritual involvement, the same one that guides him in his intent to translate the supernatural into something tangible, to bring heaven into a room.

“I have curated this exhibition,” says Ã?ric de Chassey, “with the aim of allowing visitors to the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art to experience that profound joy, that sudden experience that I felt when visiting exhibitions conceived by Ettore Spalletti when he was alive, although I know full well that it will be a different joy now.”

In the exhibition, works from the Ettore Spalletti Studio sit alongside other works from the National Gallery’s permanent collection, displayed as inserts in the Time is Out of Joint exhibit.

The exhibition is open until February 27, 2022.

For all information, you can visit the official website of the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art.

An exhibition in Rome celebrates Ettore Spalletti two years after his death

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