Paolo Conti – Apparizioni

Paolo Conti - Apparizioni

Apparizioni – 2001

enamels on canvas

cm 18×24

Paolo Conti was born in Bologna in 1938. After the first experiments, he has been working since the 70s with the use of steel scraps from industrial-derived molding. In the 1971 solo exhibition at Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara he exhibited the first cycle of the ‘Galvanized’, works in which the metallic forms still take on a strong symbolic connotation and then investigate the self-reflective role of art.

His personal exhibition at the ‘Festival dei Due Mondi’ in Spoleto in 1972 and the exhibition curated by Renato Barilli at ‘La Nuova Loggia’ in Bologna, a gallery with which he establishes a lasting partnership will bring him to attend artists such as Sergio Romiti, Paul Jenkins and Georges Mathieu. (Mathieu himself will invite Conti to the XIIIL Salon de Mai of Paris in 1988).

He exhibited at Arte Fiera di Bologna (1975, 1976, 1977, 1998); in 1982 he was invited to ‘Arteder’, Bilbao and in the early 80’s he began an important partnership with the Galleriy Fabj Basaglia in Bologna, which brought Conti’s works to Europe in Cologne (1987, 1991 and 1992), Hamburg (1988) and Basel (1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992).

In 1987 we mention his solo exhibition in Venezia at the Galleria Il Traghetto and in 1989 the first major anthological exhibition at the Museo del Castello di Caterina Sforza, Forlì. Those are years of intense international exhibition activity: Lima in Peru; Santiago in Chile; Montevideo in Uruguay; Asuncion in Paraguay (1989-90); in Frankfurt, Galerie Ranu Raraku (1992); in Bremen, Galerie Skulpturegarten (1996); Worpswede, Galerie Alte Rathaus Dialog 1 (1997); at the Ghana National Museum (1999); in Vindhoek, Namibia at the National Gallery of Modern Art in collaboration with the Italian Embassy (2002).

In 2002 and 2003 he was invited to exhibit with the artists of International Kineticism in Roma at the Museo di San Salvatore in Lauro and at the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna at Palazzo Collicola, Spoleto.

In 2004 he was invited to the exhibition ‘Painting Europe, Between Kineticism and Constructivism’ in Genova European City of Culture, with Francisco Sobrino, Horacio Garcia Rossi and Ben Ormenese. In 2005 he exhibits at the anthological exhibition ‘Archeologia del futuro’ edited by Renato Barilli at the GAM in Cesena; in 2006 at the Palazzo Gradari Museum in Pesaro and in 2009 at the large anthological exhibition edited by Vittoria Coen at the MAGI Museum in Pieve di Cento.

In 2014 the Paolo Conti Archive was born. In 2015 the ‘Conti-Galvanizzati 1970-1973’ retrospective curated by Valerio Dehò at the PoliArt Contemporary in Milano anticipates the release of the first volume of the ‘Catalogo Ragionato’ in 2017, the catalogue collection presented at MART in Rovereto by Gianfranco Maraniello and Renato Barilli. In 2018 he exhibits at the personal ‘80/l’erosione del tempo’ inaugurated at the PoliArt Contemporary in Milano with the presentation of Vittoria Coen and Giovanni Granzotto.