(born Bologna in 1943)
Mothia He, 1983, signed Calzolari on the reverse, salt and lead on panel, 80 x 40 x 3.7 cm, (AR)

Photo certificate:
Fondazione Calzolari, Fossombrone (PU),
archive no. A-CAL-1983-8

Provenance:
The artist’s studio
European Private Collection

“I look at how the light would hit the marble balconies and try to represent it. […] I thought I was quite good, but I always had the same problem. As soon as the painting was done, the light would be completely different. I was chasing something that was continuously changing.”
Pier Paolo Calzolari

This is why, since the end of the Sixities, Calzolari concentrates his creative research on the use of painting in a profoundly unconventional way. The developing of a concept of “art” as a place of transformation leads the artist to make use of ephemeral, poor, untraditional materials, focusing on their expressive and creative possibilities. Thanks to his pieces with frost, burned wood, salt and dried tobacco leaves, it is possible to define this highly regarded master of Arte Povera – one of the most important artistic movements, which emerged in Italy in the 1960s era – as an “activator” of materials and senses, whose aim is to contaminate art with life and vice versa.