The exhibition narrates an unrepeatable season of postwar Italian art in which the affinities among the three artists merge into a single, vital energy
Three personalities, one shared tension toward space and light. At the National Archaeological Museum (MANN), from December 11 to January 30, the exhibition “Riccardo Licata, Gino Morandis and Tancredi Parmeggiani. Stories of art and friendship” tells of an unrepeatable moment in postwar Italian art, when theoretical affinities, aesthetic visions and personal stories merged into a single, vibrant energy.
Curated by Giovanni Granzotto, with the contribution of Stefano Cecchetto, and organized by Il Cigno in collaboration with Studio d’Arte GR, the exhibition brings together around eighty works tracing the paths of the three masters from the 1940s to the mid-1960s, years in which their artistic research intertwined within the fervent context of Venetian Spatialism.
Licata, Morandis and Tancredi shared studios, ideas and visions, they signed manifestos and debated light and line
At its core lies not only an artistic dialogue, but also the friendship that united them: Licata, Morandis and Tancredi shared studios, ideas and visions; they signed manifestos and discussed light and line, pursuing an art capable of transcending the limits of matter. A symbol of this harmony is Tancredi’s portrait of Licata, a unique piece that conveys the strength of the human and poetic bond.
In Licata, suspended signs and vibrations float through the pictorial space like notes of a secret music
Riccardo Licata’s early Spatialist experiments, between the late 1940s and early 1950s, reveal a language in formation, gradually freeing itself from figuration and evolving into his “magical alphabet”: suspended signs, vibrations that float through the pictorial space like notes of a hidden music.
Gino Morandis moves from lyrical tones toward a painting that is at once cosmic and natural
Gino Morandis, by contrast, begins with the lyrical tones of his temperas from 1948–49, where light and color blend into a rarefied equilibrium, anticipating the chromatic fields of later years, where painting becomes both cosmic and natural. Tancredi Parmeggiani completes the trio with a journey encompassing all his creative seasons: from drippings and primavere to the serre and tributes, up to the final ironic cycles of witticisms and madmen. In his work, matter is charged with feverish vitality, a dramatic tension that perfectly captures the sensibility of his era.
The exhibition at MANN, supported by the Euromobil Group, with backing from Orler TV and Petrone Oleodinamica, restores to the public a fundamental page of Italian art. It stands as a tribute to three leading figures of Spatialism, who made art a shared terrain where light and gesture become a common language, a space of freedom and memory.
For Tancredi, matter is charged with feverish vitality, a dramatic tension that embodies his time
