Objective abstraction. Color theory

“We want to put an order in our knowledge of the use of language: an order for a specific purpose; one of many possible orders; not the order”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Exhibition curated by Giovanna Nicoletti

In autumn 1976 the following artists, Mauro Cappelletti (Trento, 1948), Diego Mazzonelli (Terlago - TN, 1943 - Trento, 2014), Gianni Pellegrini (Riva del Garda - TN, 1953), Aldo Schmid (Trento, 1935 – Monzuno - BO, 1978), Luigi Senesi (Pergine - TN, 1938 - Bologna, 1978) and Giuseppe Wenter Marini (Merano - BZ, 1944), signed the Manifesto of Objective abstraction, giving life to the greatest artistic movement of Trentino after World War II.

It was an innovative voice fully in line with the international debate of the time focused on painting; this Manifesto got in touch with avant-garde movements, with abstract art and with Bauhaus, with the optical-perceptual research of the Seventies and minimalism of the Eighties.

About forty years later, the Civic art gallery of Trento opens for the first time in a museum an exhibition on that collective research project that placed the colour at the heart of an aesthetic investigation.

The major works of the artists who joined the Manifesto are gathered in this exhibition curated by Giovanna Nicoletti, in collaboration and with support by Mauro Cappelletti, Gianni Pellegrini and Giuseppe Wenter Marini (artists, as well as lenders).

The works of art on display belong to the collections of the Mart museum and to private collections, such as Diego Mazzonelli’s collection – who died recently -, and Aldo Schmid’s and Luigi Senesi’s collections – the latters died in a tragic train crash in 1978. Their sudden death marked the end of the research related to Objective abstraction, which in fact started with their initial experiences with colour.