Upbeat Art Backdrops Lively Opening Well Dressed Crowd Packs ICI to See Large Canvas Fantasies Turin Artist, 45, Took Own Path to Fine Work Short, rosy cheeked and independent minded Turin artist Max Pellegrini welcomed all excitedly (Jan 15 Wed) to a magnificent display of his large canvas fantasies at his two floor townhouse show at the Italian Cultural Institute last night. Pellegrini's fairy tale dreamscapes of slightly surreal flavor, executed with illustrative flair and visualized in a two rather than three dimensional style, proved to be overwhelmingly upbeat in mood, with their narrative images - even some darker emotional elements which he referred to as "monsters" - typically suffused with lighthearted, even sunlit coloring. The accompanying book, which sold many copies, showed an even wider range of attractive and intriguing images. Amid the intellectualized and often supremely abstract art which surrounds us in many galleries in New York, not to mention the Guggenheim's remarkable show of Christopher Wool's career long attempt to reduce painting to philosophical symbolism, it all made one wish that Pellegrini would try his hand at a new edition of Alice in Wonderland. - AL ======================================================================== The Italian Cultural Institute is pleased to invite you to the opening of the exhibition: A Tale. Max Pellegrini and Italo Cremona Wednesday, January 15 6:00 PM Italian Cultural Institute 686 Park Avenue New York R.S.V.P. 212 879 4242 ext. 362 Max Pellegrini, born in 1945 in Turin, where he currently lives and works, is the focus of two prestigious solo-shows and of a monographic catalogue at the turn of 2014. Three events which aim to enlighten his personal artistic path, as an outsider, far from well-known contemporary movements and still partly unexplored. Beside Surprise, dedicated to the his earlier production, hosted in GAM, Turin, from October 16th 2013 until January 26th 2014, the Italian Cultural Institute in New York will open an exhibition focused on his later paintings on January 15th 2014. A tale. Max Pellegrini and Italo Cremona will present the last ten years of Max Pellegrini work, mostly previously undisplayed, where we can find an evolution of his poetics, towards a delicate symbolism in which he links literary citations to an elegant linear and chromatic style. His personal path, the one of an outsider enamoured with painting, is summarized in these large canvases, where we can see the different inspirations and experiences that nurtered him: psychedelia and protest, the love for history of art and the experiments of avant-garde, classical knowledge and post-modern thinking. This method of collecting, assembling different symbolic images from different traditions and suggestions (last but not least his autobiography)leads to the comparison with another outsider from Turin, the painter Italo Cremona (1905-1979). Three artworks, coming from the GAM collections, unveil a Piedmontese tradition, that never left its figurative vocabulary, going through the Art Nouveau style, the abstraction of Felice Casorati, the experimentations of the Gruppo dei Sei. The big monographic catalogue, edited on the occasion of the two exhibitions, collects critical and biographical essays, and will mostly investigate the first and the last part of Max Pellegrini production. OPEN: MONDAY - FRIDAY 10 AM - 4 PM THROUGH FEBRUARY 14th For more information on the Italian Cultural Institute of New York, please visit: www.iicnewyork.esteri.it Communications Office Gisella Ingraffia Italian Cultural Institute New York 686 Park Avenue New York, NY 10065 Tel. 212 879-4242 ext.333 Fax 212 861-4018