Credito Valtellinese Gallery is hosting the first exhibition dedicated to Ercole Monti's paintings. The exhibition includes approximately sixty oil paintings the artist has painted since 1970 and a small section of works belonging to the first period, which he realised in 1946.
Ercole Monti was a painter and an architect. He was a solitary artist who spent fifty years of his life in contact with the greatest Italian and foreign artistic movements of this century but never showed his works to the public.
Various painting charms influenced Ercole Monti. He formed in Rome, where he had been born in 1927. There, he met the Roman painters Montanarini, Ziveri, Guzzi, Avenali, Socrate, Savelli, Afro.
In 1948, since he and his contemporaries were interested in knowing the European painting currents, he moved to Paris, where he made personal choices, different from those of his Roman colleagues. He became keen on Bonnard and Ensor's style. He also met them in Ostenda, in 1948. Subsequently, he would develop a passion for Permeke and Pirandello, but neither of them would predominantly influence his style.
Monti travelled a lot and met most of the greatest architects of this century, among which Alvar Aalto and Carlo Scarpa. However, being an architect did not prevent him from painting incessantly. In fact, in the '70s, his main subjects were the great yellow, grey, blue seashores. About this very fecund period, Monti said: "I remember I painted from life. I began drawing and I tried to represent not what I saw, but my emotions when seeing it. Then, I drew again and tried to synthesise what I drew until extracting the essence, the main emotion…Finally, I realised that the only way to survive to painting is to be in contact with the visible object and make it mine, forgetting what I'm looking at. That is the abstract part. It is the same shapeless freedom that I also find in jazz music and that makes me extraordinarily happy".
Monti often painted places where he had lived and worked, Rome, Venice and Ortisei. After the seashores period, Monti spent a lot of time in Venice, where he realised the great Florian paintings, the "Procuratie", the Venice facades, the ships, the Lido shores. Later on, he painted the Roman indoors and Ortisei mountain paintings. In the '90s, he enriched his list of works with figures, tables and still life. In '95, he began painting "Fields" and realised the great lands.
His painting was both real and abstract (I do not like abstract painting. I do not like real painting. I like middle course, where emotion discovers a visible world"). The colours he used often became the real subject of his pictures. The subject was placed after. The real subject is the work matter, the support of the canvas and the quality, the density of the colour. Monti often realised his works under the influence of a particular colour charms or obsession. Colours often appears in the title too (e.g. "Great Ochre Field" of 1996) The colour is so important that it often determines different visions of the same subject (e.g. Alba Adriatica seashores. In 1974, Monti painted Blue Deckchairs, while in 1975 he painted Yellow and Brown Deckchairs).
Monti 's painting has always been a private art. He said: "I had to analyse internally what I discovered during my life, this world of mine that I had been creating during years. It is perhaps for this reason that only now, when he is nearly 70 years' old, Monti decided to exhibit his works.
A brochure published by Skira Editions and including texts by Jean Leymarie, Fabrizio D'Amico, Fabrizio Crisafulli, Anatolij Najaman Tito Amodei and Elena Cardenas Malagodi integrates the exhibition.
Elena Cardenas Malagodi is attending to the exhibition.
Public transport to the gallery: underground MM Cadorna, Tram 24-19, Bus 94
Information at Credito Valtellinese Group Gallery:Phone 02.48008015
Mounted and co-ordinated by Kriterion,, Via Motta 6 - 20144 Milan - Phone 02.43980453
Press Office Studio Irma Bianchi:
Via Arena 16/1 - 20123 Milan - Phone 02. 89404694 - 89400732 Fax 02. 8356467
[Technical schedule]
