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FRANCO RADICE

September 17, 2011 –  30 October, 2011
Opening hours: Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, holidays: 10-12 am / 3.00 - 6.00 pm
Free entrance

Inauguration: Saturday 17 September 2011 at 5.00 pm

Pressrelease

For the first time, this exhibition will guide the visitors through an anthological discovery of Franco Radice’s works (Rome 1938 – Varese 1992). Radice’s paintings mainly depicted landscapes, nature and scenes from peasants’ lives of his province, but at the same time he focused on the social problems and dramatic events of the late post-war era, just like other important artists in that period.
After running for ten years the ceramics factory “Vecchia Milano,” which he himself had founded in 1965 in Trezzano sul Naviglio (Milan), in the early 70’s Radice moved to Campagnano di Maccagno. There he found the ideal land to cultivate his passion for art, away from the white noise of artistic fads and critics.

His intense paintings quoted the European expressionism with German-style bright and livid colors, along with candy-like, golden and pinkish shades a la Matisse and the Parisian “Fauves”. This artistic lesson is employed to depict socially relevant themes such as work in factories or fields, or factory workers protesting in front of their workplace, or the mondine (female rice pickers) with their backs broken by fatigue and their faces burned by the sun in spite of their large straw hats.
Modern times and tradition travel hand in hand in his 60’s and 70’s production. The formal research is counterpoint to thought provoking contents on society. However, only in the following decade will his more intimate and personal expression surface. As it had been for the existential realists in Milan before, daily scenes are on Radice’s stage now, stimuli for a new aesthetic research. The unreal colors of his beginnings and the French pink shades support now his need to unveil secret feelings. The colors now flow into the portraits of his beloved ones, into the elongated shapes of women and sunsets on the lake, as well as corners of woods with tree tops turning into instinctive strokes made of pure color that make the canvas seem huge.

TRadice’s need to tell little stories – made of children and humanity at the outskirts of life and society - combines with his interest in formal composition and perfect visual rhythm. This is most evident in one of his masterpieces, Le Zucche (The Pumpkins - 1990), where the subject becomes a mere excuse for constructing a very solid image dominated by informal brush strokes and at the same time framed by a research in the absolute and ultimate effective use of space.

Sponsored by Centro Culturale Frontiera in cooperation with Comune di Maccagno and Comune di Luino, the exhibit dedicated to the works of Franco Radice is designed by Chiara Gatti and Federico Crimi and hosted by Civico Museo Parisi-Valle in Maccagno. The catalog by Angelo Franco Aschei is published by Nastro&Nastro.

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