The Sense of Color: Solo Show of Works by the Italian Artist Gianni Maimeri (1884-1951) at the Academy Museum in St. Petersburg

The Research Museum of the Russian Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg hosts a solo show of works by the Italian artist Gianni Maimeri (1884-1951) organized within Russia-Italy Cross Culture Year 2011 under the auspices of the President of the Italian Republic. The Sense of Color exhibition includes Gianni Maimeri’s paintings, a collection of his drawings and sketches entitled “Musicians”, installations presenting the personality of the artist who strived to master both the art of painting and the art in painting.

Giovanni Maimeri was born in Varano in Lombardy in 1884. After his short stay in Venice in 1906 he returned to Milan where he first studied under Leonardo Bazzaro then at the studio of Emilio Gola. His first solo exhibition took place in 1918 at the Galleria Geri in Milan and was appreciated by art critics and collectors. Gianni Maimeri rather easily entered the early 20th century Italian art circles, but after the fascists’ coming to power the artist gradually started to keep away from it.

In 1923 in collaboration with his brother Carlo, a chemist by profession, they purchased the Blondel mill (Mulino Blondel) in the outskirts of Milan, where they set up a small company for the production of art paints; later the company became a leader and the Maimeri brand won the world fame. In 1929, when the Milan authorities decided to do away with the old canals in Milan in order to expand the city’s borders, he expressed his position in public and started his struggle against them. He created a series of his paintings entitled “Thirty Milan Canals” that was a proof of his important artistic initiative.

In the 1930-s Gianni Maimeri not only strengthened his leadership in the above business, but also made a vast series of dynamic portrait sketches of the celebrated musicians of the first half of the last century, including such names as Sergey Rakhmaninov, Igor Stravinsky, Sergey Prokofiev performing at that time in the famous La Scala opera theater in Milan. Till the end of his life (in 1951) Maimeri was obsessed with painting which subjects were ordinary things: a vase, glass, corner of the house - acting personalities of the poetic reality that never died away.

The Sense of Color is a short definition of Gianni Maimeri’s main pictorial feature. Such a sensitive perception of color and light is genetically typical for masters of the North of Italy. The colorful richness is combined in his works with a realistic view characteristic for many Lombardy painters. The wonderful landscapes in the exposition can be seen together with his still lifes, genre scenes and portraits.

The exhibition has been organized under the support of the Russian Academy of Arts, Research Museum of the Russian Academy of Arts, I. Repin St. Petersburg State Academy Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, the State Museum-Preserve Tsaritsyno”, Italian Embassy in Moscow, Italian Institute of Culture in Moscow, Administration of the City of Milan, Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan.




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