The Top Art of Luigi Malice

The Top Art of Luigi Malice

by M A. Mamone

During Luigi Malice's long life as an artist, particularly important is the period between the end of 1968 and the beginning of the 80's. Such a production is characterized by a search analogous to the area of TOP ART, that at the end of the 60's had a large and very interesting growth in the U.S.A. thanks to important artists like Charles Himman, Sven Lukin and the English Richard Smith. The works were named "Shaped Canvas", primary structure derived from experiences of elementary tridimensional abstractionism. The word "TOP" is an abbreviation of "Topographical" that according to "pop art" uses the object in a topological sense, that is the object that occupies space. This movement means a lot to figurative arts, whose production goes beyond the Informal and ranges over the experimental Literature too, fixing the arrangement of words into sentences. It's also evident the connection between topography and pop art just because words and images are used in the same objective ways. Al-though shaped canvas concern sculture, rather than painting, an artist like Malice, a skillful painter, tests his ability to try a new artistic experience, matching perfectly colours and chiaroscuro. Top Art works are carved in wood, on which different materials are often placed in order to define the artistic resolution or a sculpture that makes use or chiaroscuro technique and encroach upon the painting. These works are also defined by the aim of occupying space, and work into a whole entity. Ceroli and Pascali, and to some extent also Piero Gilardi, expanded their work in Italy so much as to enviromental dimension and so doing they solve the problem of space reality. Ceroli attains the scope through human silhouettes; Pascali determines the space by re-creating the world through a wide range of techniques and materials. Luigi Malice instead, recreates nature, both as landscape and womanly idols, to furnish a part of space changing it in a fantastic place through a thick physical dimension. This innovation by Malice can be included in the creative Kinetic area of Victor Vasarely who wanted to define movement and its lenght of the same as some thing linked with space illusion. Victor Vasarely fixed the plastic unity into two poles, crepuscular and undulatory, and from this speculation threedimensional works came out, afterwards they were put on a level surface, giving rise to super positions and transparencies. Malice is interested in Top Art and turns it into a personal style. At the end of the 60's Malice was already in Reggio Calabria and here he produced works following his previous Neapolitan trend and also introducing some innovations in a place where figurative tradition enjoyed great favour. But Malice applies his mind to something new: he knows Art must be set again, as to the objectiveness of its inspiration and on the other hand must meet the urgencies of its diversification by supporting new experiences. His new choice, after having attached the shaped canvas ideas, goes beyond the Informal gestuale art reaching a position very near to Simeti's' who used, plastic sheet an organic macro-molecular compound, firm but delicate as a skin. Malice's exhibition at the Colyseum in New York and the one at the Glezer Gallery in 1968 were warmly received by critics who knew and appreciated avant-guard to such an extent that one of his works ("Sinusoid on the screen") was acquired by the WILLIAMS COLLECTION in Baltimore. This composition Produced by the use of foam-rubber on shaped wood resemblers closey to Castellani's works ("Superficie bianca" and "Superficie gialla") and the same style Malice recreates the emotional vision of the object, by using more diversified ways to convey the light. Malice's exhibition in Milan, at Studio Palazzi in 1984, was more remarkable. These works produced between the 70 's and the 80's are characterized by a continuous light perception revealing itself as a unique chromatic value, a determining factor of a certain dynamism in images that can escape our observation. Every work is unique.. in the sense that it is the beginning and the end of its universe which the spectator refers to through his own feelings. Malice's artistic endeavuor is a long meditation on both space and time which the Artist poetically brings about even when hi's work turns into design and furnishing object value. It shouldn't sound strange if later on the Artist came back to informal painting, and this is not a contradiction since his Top works always keep the choice of colour typical of the, artist's inspiration. In fact his coming back to painting can be singled out in his latest Top production revealing itself as soft coloured but always in comply with Malice's informal chromatism. All this shows us how a differentiation in production, when it comes from an artistic inspiration, it keeps the main directives of an artist whose silent atmosphere of the production - during the years between 1968 and the 80's - was a sign of a sumptuous revival of the Artist's pictorial chromatism.