Marrocco Twist

16 Jun-22 Jul 2022

Overview

Armando Marrocco (b. 1939) is a living artist who was discovered by Lucio Fontana.
Marrocco moved to Milan in the 1960s at the behest of Lucio Fontana and has been creating ever since. An exhibition of his earliest works, the Intrecci series, is now open at Robilant+Voena’s Paris office.

Since he first began to create, Armando Marrocco’s works have bridged mathematical abstraction and an allegorical gesturality born from a childhood spent in Southern Italy. Marrocco’s works combine this considered study of the mathematics of Fibonacci and Luca Pacioli with the craftsmanship of a Renaissance workshop. He began the, Intrecci (or Intertwining) series, in the 1960s. These early works are particularly compelling in the way in which they lay bare both his methodology and the allegorical dimension of his art.
Like other Italian artists working in the Postwar period, Marrocco adopted an interdisciplinary approach that responded to the technological and industrial advancements of the time. And although his art explores kinetic technology, it still retains an intate human intimacy.
But how did Marrocco's 'Intrecci' come to be? In the words of the writer Italo Calvino in response to the stories that make up his The Castle of Crossed Destinies: […] they are born from a finite number of elements whose combinations multiply to billions.

The choice of a bold monochrome palate rendered with a strong physicality in the “poor” materials of corrugated cardboard and hardboard was in direct response to the “beyond informel” works of Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, Enrico Castellani, and Yves Klein, all of whom who Marrocco knew.
The very specific compositional grid of the series is created through complex layering. Shadows interact with the static proportions of the grid creating a unique dynamism. Beyond the minimilalism of the visual effect,, Marrocco asserts that his 'Intreccio' is an 'interweaving of human situations, positive and negative'. Each work in this series therefore speaks to our very existence, with life in its ordinariness and in its infinite unfolding, including that of our dreams which consists inextricable knots and unpredictability.

Text by Sara Fontana

Curated by Paolo Bonacina.

Artists