Gastone Novelli

Gastone Novelli, a leading player in avant-garde movements of the 1950s and 1960s and a precursor of new generation artistic languages, is the protagonist of a new exhibition at the Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation in Milan.

"Making paintings", says Novelli "is acting within a language, it is the search for a possible universe, and above all it is not popular action; it is political action because it is a rejection of what is pre-existing, or choice. It is, nonetheless, discussion. New ideas kill what is comfortable, the habits of the past, but any restriction imposed on what is new, which is experimentation, is also an anti-revolutionary action- it limits the future possibilities of knowledge".

Published as the catalogue to the Milan exhibition organised in collaboration with the Novelli Archive, the book represents the most extensive and up-to-date monograph dedicated to the artist. Edited by Flaminio Gualdoni, artistic director of the Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation, and Walter Guadagnini, there are more than 230 works, some of which have not been seen before, with the aim of giving an account of Novelli's extraordinary personality and recognising his innovative contribution to artistic experimentation and cultural debate. The publication also includes, in addition to paintings, drawings and sculptures, Novelli's texts and notes, as a means of demonstrating his creative journey and great poetic and moral dimension.

As Arnaldo Pomodoro remembers: "in what was probably his last theoretical text, dated August 1968 with the provisional title, Permettere all'uomo di esprimersi and published posthumously, Novelli says: "Painting is also expressing by signs what we can't express, or don't know how to express, by actions. This can be one reason for going on, even though the warehouses of the world are already full of things to look at. Faced with new art people blindfold themselves, fearing that their world, built on comfortable and uplifting ideas of beauty, will go to pieces. This is another reason to continue, because in this way we reach a first outcome, a first purpose if you would have it, of art as 'revolutionary' experimentation. In addition: the more language, or sign, worlds, are experimented and communicated, the broader will be the field of possible knowledge available to users".

The publication includes critical contributions by Arnaldo Pomodoro (Gastone Novelli), Flaminio Gualdoni (Novelli), Walter Guadagnini (Gastone Novelli. Neodada e dintorni), Giorgio Maffei (Novelli e il libro), Brigitte Ferrato-Combe (Simon e Novelli: l'immagine della lettera), the catalogue of works, an artist biography (by Maria Bonmassar) and an anthology of texts by Gastone Novelli.