Io non sono un pittore, io non sono l’artista, io sono l’opus

Homage to Carlo Maria Mariani and the figure, from the collection of Antonio Martino

Opening Tuesday, 4 October, 6-9 PM

Reception for Rome Art Week, Monday, 24 October, 4-8 PM

On display until 28 October, 2022

The Gallery of Art, Temple University Rome, is honored to present the exhibition Io non sono un pittore, io non sono l’artista, io sono l’opus: homage to Carlo Maria Mariani and the figure, from the collection of Antonio Martino.

The exhibition is curated by the art critic, art historian and academic Lorenzo Canova, the collector Antonio Martino, Collector, and by the artist Nicola Verlato, and will include works by artists Carlo Maria Mariani, Giulio Paolini, Luigi Ontani, Salvo, Gino De Dominicis, and the younger generation of artists Nicola Verlato, Patrizio Massimo and Valerio Carrubba.

A special place will be given to a painting by Marion Peck, an important pop-surrealist artist in the collection of Antonio Martino, in memory of her period of study at Temple University Rome in the 1980s.

The exhibition honors Carlo Maria Mariani (Rome, July 25, 1931 – New York, November 20, 2021), a conceptual artist, whose cold almost clinical painting style did not originate by copying old masters in major museums, but in libraries thanks to his interest in the texts of Winckelmann, Karl Philipp Moritz and Mengs. His art was a cultural and intellectual return to sublime beauty, to the importance of painting and the figure, to a contemporary conceptual recovery of the past, and not a formal and sterile anachronistic exercise.

Thanks to the generosity of Antonio Martino, a passionate Roman collector, an esteemed medical doctor who defines himself as a “clinician of art,” and a dear friend of mine, the Gallery will present seven works by Mariani to include paintings and drawings, together with ten works by important masters and younger artists, all culturally and conceptually close to the work of Mariani.

I am particularly excited and honored to present this show as it brings me back to my arrival in Rome in the mid-1980s during the high point of Mariani’s career in Rome, and the start of my own career. This is when I met and became friends with the established and emerging artists in Rome, and when I began my life-long occupation of teaching Contemporary Art, and my pleasure of visiting galleries and studios.

I did not meet Carlo Maria Mariani at that time, and shortly after he moved to the United States. Thanks to Antonio Martino, his devoted friend, this is my chance to pay my respects to the artist and invite him to the Gallery of Art of Temple University Rome.

For additional information about the Gallery of Art: Shara Wasserman, Director of Exhibitions shara@temple.edu