Pier Paolo Calzolari: Painting as a Butterfly Betrouwbaar

This catalogue offers a thorough and complete investigation of the pictorial work of Pier Paolo Calzolari (Bologna, 1943), one of the most important contemporary Italian artists, an exponent since the sixties of the research related to the Arte Povera movement. Paintings and drawings represent a lesser known and exhibited part of his artistic production, but an equally important one: the practice of painting – as the artist himself declares – is a ‘listening tool’, a state of ‘suspension’ capable of bringing to synthesis the multiple articulations of his research, both minimalist and sensual, conceptual and baroque. Through critical essays and an unprecedented conversation with the artist, the volume offers the opportunity to deepen the many ideas that arise from the analysis of Calzolari’s art: from his studies on colour, on the effects of light and on the transformations of matter, the relationship between painting and sculpture, up to the investigation on the relationship between artwork, space and observer.