PAOLO FOSSATI

A very young Massimo Pellegrini (the average age of first exhibitions is now resoundingly dropping) makes his debut at “Punto” with a series of works in which there is a precarious and intelligent balance between ambiguously composed photography and painting. The ambiguity is studied and intended. Where the pictorial sensitivity snags in the photographic weft, the sumptuous and arabesque line of certain floral styles, certainly Art Nouveau, appears. From real image to emotional formulation and the discovery of a kind of cultural archetype that recognises its meaning and its moment in the styles of the early twentieth century: this is Pellegrini’s itinerary. In him these three moments are balanced, though not always in a convincing manner, like the tiles of a game, and I would grumble about that which is a slight problem with many young artists: that of reaching their solutions more by logical calculation than by profound conviction, or by style as necessity of trial and verification. But having said this, and it must be said, Pellegrini is intelligent and his ambiguity wisely kept in check. The suggestion of a persuasion that is structured within and beyond the image is hot and well carried. It may then be permitted to doubt that all the sins of the twentieth century are enclosed in the cruets of Tiffany or Gallé. But it is important that one begins to more broadly study the ambiguous nature of the culture that informs our visual processes, and Pellegrini is heading in this direction.

(In “L’Unità”, 11 May 1966)

Essays