Ugo La Pietra’s retrospective “Dal minimo sperimentale simbolico alla nuova territorialità” (“From minimal experimental symbolism to the new sense of territory”) at the Fondazione Mudima in Milan (Jan 10 - Feb 8, 2008) is a chance to see the whole span of his work. Time filters out the random and the ephemeral and invites a more pondered judgment, a sense of perspective. The values that here emerge, it is no exaggeration to say, prove to have been prophetic.
Prophecy is the mot juste. It is written throughout the changing art forms of this architect, artist, designer and honest craftsman. Unless mere hagiography, exhibitions open the mind and lengthen the all too short memory. Under a light veil of irony, in fields as different as radical avant-garde, design and applied arts, Ugo La Pietra is seen to have been an anticipator of many of today’s design trends. His is a friendly design, with none of the bitter edge or strident note of the militants. Pondering the central issues of his craft with subtlety and wit, he captures the poetic potential of daily living. Gino Di Maggio, Foundation’s Director, whose idea the exhibition was, writes inside the catalogue curated and got up for the occasion by Vittorio Fagone (Mudima 2008): “From the first I detected a positive charge about his work, despite the constant mordant grace of his irony. I glimpsed the brio of the man; how under the play of many different planes of expression there was the unifying thread of his neo-humanist, anthropocentric vision. It rests on a belief that one can change human beings’ entire living environment by sticking close to the individual’s natural development.” Since the 1960s La Pietra has always been alert to the “human” quality (today’s vogue word) that turns objects into treasured living companions. He explores their relation to the habitat and the perceptions of the inhabitant, transfigures the object by decoration till it becomes a symbol, a slyly cheeky metaphor.
His coloured...
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