REPRESENTATIVE  ARTICLES

Max Pellegrini

CAROL CHEH

As an artist, Max Pellegrini has always been an exuberant explorer. His youthful prints, paintings, and mixed-media works of the 1960s reflected the styles that were influential at the time—Pop Art, psychedelia, rock’n’roll posters, and the films of avant-garde director Federico Fellini. In the 1970s, he went on to study the techniques of various old masters he admired, creating images in the style of Manet, Monet, Renoir, and Hals, among others. As he matured, Pellegrini continued to incorporate a wide range of cultural and stylistic influences into his work, including classical Greek mythology, Roman Catholic iconography, literature, film, opera, Surrealism, and Art Nouveau.

In the art world, Pellegrini is also something of an outsider; not hesitating to pursue his own eccentric passions, he has remained one step removed from the scenes and dialogues that have defined his time. As a result, his work feels uncannily familiar at the same time that it seems slightly off-kilter. In the 1980s, Pellegrini’s varied investigations began to coalesce into a distinctive style and look that is all his own—combining rich colors, textures, and patterns that draw equally from psychedelia, Surrealism, and Art Nouveau with representational narratives that reflect the artist’s own idiosyncratic thinking. With his broad overview of art history and contemporary culture, Pellegrini has developed a unique point of view in which he is able to blend disparate references to provocative, ironic, and sometimes humorous effect.

One work that showcases Pellegrini’s unique abilities is Rimembranze: dal ‘Bacio’ del Canova alla ‘Salita al Calvario’ di Hieronimus Bosch passando per le ‘Quattro stagioni’ dell’ Arcimboldo (Remembrances: from Canova’s “Kiss” to Hieronymus Bosch’s “Road to Calvary” by way of Arcimboldo’s “Four Seasons”) (2009–10). Here, the artist announces in the title all of the sources he has drawn from: a religious painting by Bosch, a striking composition by Arcimboldo, and an iconic sculpture by Canova depicting Eros and Psyche in a dramatic kiss. The result is a beautifully graphic, free-associative collage in which romantic love and the passage of time are foregrounded, while the complexities of redemption loom in a shadow behind them.

In Presepio (Nativity) (2010–11), Pellegrini tackles the religious iconography of his native Italy. In a novel move, he de-emphasizes the actual nativity scene, placing it in the lower center of the painting and rendering it in a murky brown tone, while a glorious depiction of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome looms above it in bright blue, capturing the viewer’s focus. As Pellegrini ruminated in a recent interview, this shift reflects his questioning of conventional means and symbols of worship and his constant search for his own authentic relationship with God.

The artist’s cheeky humor is shown to great effect in the diptych, La Regina della Notte trasforma Leda in cigno e uno scoiattolo preannuncia tempesta (The Queen of the Night turns Leda into a swan and a squirrel predicts a storm) (2013). A famous figure from Mozart’s The Magic Flute opera appears to enact a skewed version of a classical Greek myth—instead of being seduced by Zeus in swan form, the Queen of the Night turns Leda herself into a swan. Meanwhile, a squirrel sits square in the foreground of the painting, staring at the viewer. This elegantly absurd tableau pokes some good-natured fun at the natural human urge to search for greater meaning in symbols and references.

Pellegrini has said that his favorite painting—and one that he constantly strives to emulate—is Giorgione’s The Tempest (c. 1506–08), a mysterious, evocative work that has long been famous for inspiring endless debates among scholars and aficionados, all of whom have their own theories as to the meanings intended by the artist. With little historical information recorded, no single theory has emerged as definitive, and the painting remains to this day inscrutable and entirely open to all interpretations.

Through his lush, generous imagery, filled with the fruits of a lifetime of intellectual discovery, Pellegrini provides plenty of grist for contemplation at the same time that he reminds us to question convention and to laugh at ourselves. In the artist’s own words: “The ‘wrestle with the angel’ is always unequal and already lost from the outset. The work is earthly. God unreachable.”