Appunti Milanesi

On Thursday, December 1, Letizia For- nasieri's new solo exhibition opens at Rubin Gallery. This is an unprecedented exhibition that reveals a world kept "reserved for herself" by the Milanese artist. The exhibition, in fact, brings together a selection of works on paper ranging from the 1980s to 2022 and never exhibited to the public.

If the decisive stroke of Fornasieri's oil painting is immediately recognizable, me- not so are the solutions she adopts for her drawings, sketches, studies and sketches executed in gra- fite, crayon, colored pastels, collage, reworked photocopies... "Since I started this year the archive of all my works," Fornasieri says, "I am revising several works that I barely remembered, and with Paolo it seemed a nice opportunity to build a somewhat special exhibition, showing works on paper that have never been exhibited." With Appunti milanesi Fornasieri reproposes the city of Milan as the center of his life and imagination: glimpses of facades, caught in daylight and in the evening hours, se- mafori, poles with street signs and "his" streetcars. Protagonists are also the people, impe- gned in daily activities and stopped by the artist in moments of extraordinary normality. "Milan returns no longer with a glance at the details of urban elements, [...], but with greater at- tention to people," the artist explains, "I thus noticed that now the figures are painted in bright, clear colors; my figures of the 1980s were gray, solita- rie, dramatic. Rounding out the exhibition are two unpublished paintings done close to the exhibition (an oriental gio- vane in the subway and a streetcar, this time of the "old" kind, which the mila- nese are fond of) and two works on panel made in the 1980s, also laced with the theme of metropolitan life. Taken together, the drawings and paintings capture the changes that Milan has experienced over the past four decades with a dynamic spirit and always questioning, through the artist's eyes and sensibility, in search of a more enriched identity. "Certainly I have also changed and my way of painting, my gaze catches in the urban space a greater vivacity. I also notice the many people prove- ing from other countries, who were not present 30 years ago. Maybe it's a "trail to follow..."

BIOGRAPHY

Letizia Fornasieri was born in Milan in 1955, the city where she lives and works. In 1981 she completed her painting studies at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Milan. During the study period she established a strong dialogue and friendship with the American painter William Congdon. In 1981 he won the San Fedele Quadro Giovani Prize at the San Fedele Gallery, Milan. In 1995 he won the Carlo Dalla Zorza Painting Prize. Her painting "Milano - Tram" exhibited at the XIV Quadriennale in Rome in 2005 became part of the collection of the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Parliament. Letizia Fornasieri has also created numerous works of a religious nature placed in a number of churches in Lombardy including: "Via Crucis," for the Church of Jesus in Nazareth in the Adriano district of Milan. In more recent years Letizia Fornasieri's pictorial research has developed on the theme of landscape and rural environment. These new themes have been accompanied by a 'new' painting with more rapid and essential signs. A painting made of more synthetic and less didactic images, reworked from recollection and memory. The color palette has also been renewed: transparent and luminous with a technique that allows the color to glide more on the surface of the canvas. The result of this recent development can be seen in the 2015 exhibitions at the Diocesan Museum in Milan and the 2016 exhibition at the Ezio Mariani Civic Gallery in Seregno, and the 2020 solo show at the Civic Aquarium in Milan, realized in collaboration with Rubin Gallery.