ALBERTO DI FABIO – OROGENESI

Paintings and drawings from the 1990s

Curated by Andrea Lerda

The Museo Nazionale della Montagna presents the exhibition Alberto Di Fabio. OROGENESIS. Paintings and papers from the 1990s.
The project, including works that have never been exhibited before, is the first exhibition that an Italian institution has dedicated to the artist production of the 1990s.

Set up in the temporary exhibition space on the ground floor of the Museum, the exhibition recounts the variety of mountain subjects portrayed in this decade, explores the extraordinary wealth of symbolism that characterize the artist thinking and generates a connection that highlights how this early artistic experience fed into his later practice.

The mountains that the artist portrays in this period are hybrid presences, now defined by soft, organic sinuosity, now characterize by geometric and abstract strokes. Suspended within undefined places, they evoke primordial landscapes in constant becoming. Rocks, cliffs, islands, mineral forms, mountains, are presences that seem to emerge from the bowels of the earth – as they appeared as a result of a process of orogenesis – and depicted within a timeless dimension.

Alberto Di Fabioresearch is in this phase reworking the influences of Dadaism, of Surrealism and Metaphysics. In the works on paper and canvas of those years, the fascination with the painting of Carrà, Sironi, Max Ernst and De Chirico is evident. The oneiric dimension, manifests itself particularly in the early designs characterized by warm, earthy colours, and in the later painting by the bright and unnatural lathes, represents the conceptual means to understand laws and dynamics of the world that would otherwise remain hidden.

The exhibition is accompanied by a volume published by Museomontagna, with contributions from authors who over the years have given a significant interpretation of this artistic phase and of the mountain subject.