Giannoni Four Triptychs

curated by Marco Tonelli

Catalog of the exhibition Massimo Giannoni. Four Trpthychs curated by Marco Tonelli, in which the artist offers new works, all executed during 2011 and in particular four new and impressive triptychs, each about 6 meters long (which give the title to the exhibition), made in oil on canvas, which fully develop and decline the fundamental traits of his artistic research. Topical themes typical of our time and imagination that in themselves bring contrasts and contradictions and for that reason induce reflection. Frenetic and bustling business exchanges dialogue with the motionless time of bookstores and libraries, symbols of the knowledge contained stably in books and shelves. To lights and shadows of great city views – emblems of civic life – are juxtaposed with the composed rigor of places of spirituality, inviting respect and introspection. Inner silence opposes contemporary chaos: a topical comparison between the speed of today’s communication and the timeless beauty of those places that have always been the always the realm of past, present and future culture. And if a recognizable iconography distinguishes Giannoni’s work, it is the distance in the enjoyment of the work that makes the difference: the close view of his paintings transforms the depicted subject into a textural magma and often of oil paint, bordering on the abstract. The author of works of great impact and format, Giannoni stands stands as an artist of tradition but also as an observer of contemporaneity. “Massimo Giannoni lives and lets live the contemporaneity of the work, through perceptual shifts that, pictorial and plastic irregularities were not enough to remind us, are there to tell us of the difference between living and forming, experience and representation” (M. Tonelli). His work brings together those who love figure painting and informal painting, history and chronicle, the passage of time and its permanence. We could define Giannoni’s work as a hinge that connects the painting of history to current events.
The exhibition, set up in the evocative Spazio Fontana of the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, was inaugurated in the presence of the President of the Province of Rome Nicola Zingaretti and realized under the patronage of the Department of Cultural Policies and Historical Center and under the patronage of the Province of Rome.