Ettore Spalletti
Ettore Spalletti (1940-2019) was born in Cappelle sul Tavo (Pescara) where he spent his whole life. He began his career when Arte Povera was revolutionizing visual culture in Italy and beyond. Spalletti developed a singular, solitary voice and a resultant body of work that exceeds any movement that circumscribes an artist to regional or ideological boundaries. Spalletti’s formal vocabulary has always melded and balanced painting and sculpture, form and color, interior and exterior space. Each work is the result of a meditative but rigorous process of applying a layer of color at the same time of each day, to capture a specific tone that recalls an hour, a season, and the weather.
Ettore Spalletti was a seminal figure in Italian Minimalism and the Arte Povera movement, exploring geometry, precision, and the spiritual power of simple materials in his practice. In his extremely simple, painted columnar forms and monochromatic paintings, Spalletti simultaneously suggests classical structures and explores the formal qualities of paint. Favoring the impasto technique of traditional Italian painting for its depth of color and potential to yield extremely reflective surface textures, Spalletti applies paint to marble and other raw materials to create luminous and sublime three-dimensional paintings.
Spalletti has participated in the Venice Biennale (1982, 1993, 1995 and 1997) and documenta VII (1982), documenta IX (1992). In 2010, Spalletti was the recipient of the Terna Prize for Contemporary Art.
Ettore Spalletti (1940-2019) was born in Cappelle sul Tavo (Pescara) where he spent his whole life. He began his career when Arte Povera was revolutionizing visual culture in Italy and beyond. Spalletti developed a singular, solitary voice and a resultant body of work that exceeds any movement that circumscribes an artist to regional or ideological boundaries. Spalletti’s formal vocabulary has always melded and balanced painting and sculpture, form and color, interior and exterior space. Each work is the result of a meditative but rigorous process of applying a layer of color at the same time of each day, to capture a specific tone that recalls an hour, a season, and the weather.
Ettore Spalletti was a seminal figure in Italian Minimalism and the Arte Povera movement, exploring geometry, precision, and the spiritual power of simple materials in his practice. In his extremely simple, painted columnar forms and monochromatic paintings, Spalletti simultaneously suggests classical structures and explores the formal qualities of paint. Favoring the impasto technique of traditional Italian painting for its depth of color and potential to yield extremely reflective surface textures, Spalletti applies paint to marble and other raw materials to create luminous and sublime three-dimensional paintings.
Spalletti has participated in the Venice Biennale (1982, 1993, 1995 and 1997) and documenta VII (1982), documenta IX (1992). In 2010, Spalletti was the recipient of the Terna Prize for Contemporary Art.