Perhaps no artist today conveys so poetically the precariousness underlying the apparent stability of life and culture than Ettore Spalletti. “Poetically” does not mean softness of thought or the search for elevated but ultimately empty gestures: here it is a question of an artist building a bridge between himself and the world in a decidedly concrete manner and using all the strategies known to him, from physical beauty to conscious historical references, to achieve this end.
Beauty is notoriously difficult, if not impossible, to define. But Spalletti’s work offers visual pleasures appreciable by everyone: delicate and almost sensuously tactile surfaces, colours and forms just sufficiently different from familiarity to intrigue and make the viewer wonder at them anew.
And though his highly seductive colours are almost but never quite natural – no sky was ever as powdery blue as his, no black in nature was ever like his polished marble – they clearly hint at the very reverse of Keats’s Grecian Urn: that beauty is not all we know and all we need to know. (see biography)
Senza Titolo – 1999
impasto di colore su alabastro
50 x 50 x 10 cm
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Eco Rosso-Azzurro – 2006
colour impasto on wood, gold foil
150 x 150 x 4 cm
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Inseparabili Dittico – 2002
colour impasto on wood, gold foil
150 x 300 x 4 cm
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Senza Titolo, Sottosopra – 2000
colour impasto on alabaster
30 x 30 x 38 cm
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Piccolo Movimento, 6 – 2001
colour impasto on wood
150 x 16 x 16 cm (nr. 6 elements)
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I colori si toccano – 2005
colour impasto on wood
40,2 x 80,4 x 4 cm
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Colonna, marmo – 1992
colour impasto on white ivec marble
136,5 x 18,8 x 20 cm
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Il colore e l'oro, rosa tenue – 2010
colour impasto on wood, embossed frame, gold foil
100 x 100 x 3 cm
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Il colore e l'oro, rosa livido – 2010
coloured impasto on wood, gold foil
100 x 100 x 3 cm
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Colonna persa – 2000
coloured impasto on wood
250 x 32 cm
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Ettore Spalletti, IN – FINITUM
Palazzo Fortuny, Venezia – 2009
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Ettore Spalletti, mostra Studio la Città - 2007.
Installation view
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Ettore Spalletti, mostra Studio la Città - 2007.
Installation view
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