L’anse des amis

The Fondazione Galleria Milano presents the exhibition dedicated to the work of Sandro Somarè (Milan, 1929 – Lucca, 2012) curated by Nicola Pellegrini, Ornella Mignone, Bianca Trevisan. The exhibition, both a retrospective and an anthology, is organized on the occasion of the presentation of the general catalogue and the opening of the Sandro Somarè Archive.

The general catalogue, edited by Ornella Mignone and Bianca Trevisan with Rosella Ghezzi and Toni Merola, is the result of a long work, begun in 2017, strongly desired by Patrizia Ascari Somarè and Carla Pellegrini Rocca and made possible thanks to the artist’s heirs Patrizia Ascari Somarè, Elena Somarè and Maria Somarè.

The exhibition presents the work of Sandro Somarè from his beginnings in the 1950s until his death in 2012. The artist was one of the key figures of the Galleria Milano: his father Enrico Somarè founded the first Galleria Milano in 1928, which was then closed due to the war in 1938. Sandro and his brother Guido Somarè reopened it in 1964 together with the painters Aldo Bergolli, Gianni Dova and Mario Rossello, and the following year they called Carla Pellegrini Rocca to direct it. At the Galleria Milano, Somarè would have five solo exhibitions, in addition to participating in some group shows. The dialogue with Carla Pellegrini, a lifelong friend, would remain close and fruitful, until the artist’s death in 2012.

Thus, the location of the Sandro Somarè Archive in the spaces of the newly-born Fondazione Galleria Milano at via Romilli 7 in Milan, seemed a natural choice and represents the first step in the Foundation’s project to enhance contemporary art archives, Archivi Riuniti.

The archive’s steering committee is composed of Patrizia Ascari Somarè, Elena Somarè, Maria Somarè and the scientific committee is composed of Nicola Pellegrini, Ornella Mignone, Bianca Trevisan.

The exhibition aims to account for all the phases of Sandro Somarè’s artistic poetics: from his initial interest in landscape painting, to formal decomposition, through the study of light and also buildings, which are investigated both in their interiors and exteriors. Finally, in the final phase of his career, Somarè would dedicate himself to the representation of the city and the suburbs, as well as to the abstract pictorial series Hölderlin, in memory of the famous German poet.

Somarè’s interest in landscape can be traced back to the beginning of his career; since 1965, in fact, he has reinterpreted this theme in an abstract and geometric key, but also soft and fluid at the same time, as in the work on display Qualcosa in più (Something more) (1959). From the mid-1980s, with Un luogo e un mito (A place and a myth) (1988) and Ingresso (Entrance) (1992), the artist uses architecture as a symbol of existential and dreamlike solitude, a part of his poetics since the mid-1960s. The rooms of the Galleria Milano have been the scene of various exhibitions, since 1965, a year after its opening in via della Spiga. The attraction to light and its use in compositional grammar, leads Somarè to synthesize his language even more, as can be seen in the works Morte nel cubo / Autoritratto in un tempo e in uno spazio particolari (Death in the cube / Self-portrait in a particular time and space) (1965), or Fuori si muore (Outside one dies) (1966) and Attesa (Waiting) (1966), but also Muri, deserto, immagine, ombra di un ritorno (Walls, desert, image, shadow of a return) (triptych), 1967, where the fields of colour are homogeneous, with a palette reduced to the colours of grey, sand, blue, while black appears in the background. The organisms become human figures, in the solitude of a desolate landscape. The suggestions are metaphysical, while the geometric rigour recalls Analytical Cubism, but also the surrealist experiments of Yves Tanguy.

With the works Porta Nuova (1969) and Piazza Conciliazione (1970), Somarè pays homage to the city of Milan, a fundamental part of his life and training. From the second half of the 1970s, in fact, the artist dedicated himself to representing the entrances and interiors of the Art Nouveau houses in the city center, thus inserting them into a sophisticated and melancholic narrative. Almost metaphysical are also two other works from the same period: Impossible de changer d’endroit (Impossible to change place), 1972 and Senza titolo (Untitled) (1973). Five works from the Hölderlin series, executed between 2000 and 2005, testify to the final phase of Somarè’s abstract and essential production. The chromatic scale of the series is once again based on soft colours, as is typical of the artist, but in several canvases an intense blue prevails, a clear reference to his interest in Eastern culture and transcendence.