The Pictorial Informality of Mediterranean Light

The Pictorial Informality of Mediterranean Light

by Rosella Alberti

I' ve known Luigi for ten years and I had the possibility to follow the evolvment of his work, he has recently exhibited in Naples, in Florence, in the suggestive City Hall of Carmignano, and in Venice at the Studio Art Due Gallery, as well as the "Seconda Triennale Internazionale d'Arte" at Chamalières.

I find it necessary because of the present circumstance to develop some considerations, inevitable on the Artist's works, that are inevitable to do justice to the work of the Artist.

Some years ago Giuseppe Andreani while looking through a catalogue of the Artist had the intuition to entitle the introductory essay Informal Evocations" and actually if we weigh the thirty-years of Malice's pictorial production we find it is a continuous unsteady evocation "of intentionality and appeal (ambiguously obscure and apparent, archaic but innovative that runs through under current intimity) close to the informal artistic culture" (G. Andreani, Luigi Malice: Evocazloni lnformali, Mirelli, Napoli 1990).

Even though this pictorial search and this informal evocation of Malice could be arrived today by his own admission.

When I approached Malice's work, his way to be a painter reached another goal. In those years the Artist brought closer his brief but intense period of conceptual sculpture shapes from the years 70-80. But the strong tension made sublime in the white plastic surface (the sculpture in Malice modelled waterproof cloth on profile shapes) exploded again in the years when Malice was Principal of the Fine Arts Academy in Reggio Calabria and he was again transported by excitement of colour and painting. Naturally that experience was sufficient to enrich his neo-informal language. The importance of light is the guiding thread, the substance of matter, not only of all his work, but also of his Mediterranean culture. In fact light is not the only primary element of his creative sensibility, but it's the summing up interaction of natural environment. It is by the means of light that comprehension of reality is understood by our conscience.

If in Malice's sculptures the brightness defines a sequence of outlines and profiles, today a different light passes through the Artist's work. No more the neutral,objective and abstractive one - the white as physical syntesis of optical chromatism- on the contrary the solar light: warm, natural and dazzling that impacts sensitiveness and bluntly transforms into matter through colour. And if the Malice conceptual uses light as source and pretext of colour, Malice neo-informal uses colour to convey light. Well, while in the paintings of the years '60-'65 light was diffuse and clear as in a morning hour created an effect of suspension due to a report nearness and farness of the object, in today's work you can note a total and global sentiment of nature.This total epidermic contact with reality brings to the surface the mediterianean quality of Malice's painting, besides never disappeared In this sense, looking at Malice's work one thinks of Morlotti naturalism. The same energy, the same metaphorical impasto that turn into land, light, environment. Yet Morlotti plays his land, the Po land, with its muddy greens, earthly browns, somewhat the redness of flowers, while Malice plays the Mediterranean land with, its solar yellow, the bright green, the sea blue depth. And if Morlottis' images gain the same earthy density of landscape, Malice's neo-informal image acquires the density of pure colour. This is the most important fact we can infer from the latest artistic production of Malice. Colour "shapes" emphasize those of thought and converse with them through the pretext of title of the paintings. And Malice creates culture and not only in Calabria. In this way of conceiving art, the Artist expresses the musicality of his work. And malice's neo-informal pictorial experience (and post-informal too) in spite of critical theories, it still is a territory well alive and not yet completely explored. We must wait for the next chapter.