Enrico Lombardi
Anima. (carte e disegni)
From 25 February to 18 March 2023
The Exhibition
“All authentic works of art have a soul, an original secret core, a roughly hidden starting point, to which the primary reflection from which everything arises and develops is entrusted. In my work, the soul has always been made up of black and white pen drawings. The drawings contain all the process of formal reflection that underlies my images, together with all their visionary rumination. Almost everything about what the work on canvas will be like is already decided in them: composition, construction, light and shadow. Except the color! However, I still wrote it in the past, sometimes, looking intensely at the drawings, to choose what I will transport to another dimension and in another technique, I feel like a vague, mysterious suggestion to the color itself, which will then push me in a chromatic direction rather than in another. For these reasons I consider my pen drawings works of capital importance in the economy of my creative process.
In this exhibition, next to them, my works on paper (glued on wood) will be exhibited. These works, executed with a fresh, signic, dynamic technique - as opposed to the meticulous and secret one that produces the monumental stasis of my paintings on canvas - also fall into the "soul" category: a "posthumous" soul, we could define it , and not "original", as they never come at the beginning, but later, at the end. Normally, they arise from a reflection following the work on canvas, a further meditation; as playful, playful, erotic variations of images that I have already created in large dimensions. Like their echo that bounces between the mountains of the gaze and tries to prolong itself as long as possible in the throats of the soul. (free translation from E.L.)
The Works
The Artist
Enrico Lombardi, painter and writer, was born in Meldola (Forlì) in 1958. After attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, for over forty years he has carried out an intense exhibition activity in Italy and abroad, accompanied by a uninterrupted reflection on the status of the image, consigned to his "Notebooks". Among his most recent exhibition commitments we note the participation in the 54th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, in 2011, (Corderie dell'Arsenale di Venezia) nominated by the philosopher Carlo Sini; in the spring of 2013, the double retrospective, "Inattuali", with his friend Giorgio Tonelli at the Museum of the City of Rimini; the preparation of the personal exhibition "Esercizi Spirituali" in the spaces of the Museum of Lugo-Ravenna (2014) and in the Casa Ariosto Museum of Ferrara (2015); the great personal exhibition "Acheropita" in the halls of the Museum of Bagnacavallo (RA) in 2018. From 2020 he begins an exclusive collaboration with the Piero della Francesca Gallery in Arezzo. In the summer of 2022 and during the winter of 2022/23 he participates in the exhibition "Sogno o son desto?", at the Magazzini del Sale in Cervia and at the Rimoldi Museum in Cortina D'Ampezzo, curated by Claudio Spadoni and, during , the review on Still Life in Romagna organized by Franco Bertoni at the Ugonia Museum in Brisighella and the exhibition "Art, between presence and elsewhere", curated by Marco Di Capua in the Le Muse Cultural Center in Andria (BT). Also in autumn 2022 he sets up "Time lines", an important anthology of the works of recent years in the prestigious spaces of the Magi 900 Museum in Pieve di Cento (BO), presented by his philosopher friend Rocco Ronchi and the scientific curator of the Museum Valeria Tassinari . The spring of 2023 sees him engaged in setting up the solo show “Anima. (papers and drawings)” in the Galleria Pallavicini 22 in Ravenna and in the curatorship of the group show “Apparizioni” in the Galleria Michelacci in Meldola (FC). The numerous and qualified publications in collaboration with critics, philosophers and writers among the greatest in our country and the participation in major national reviews confirm the quality and continuity of his presence on the scene of the new Italian painting.
