Another abstraction form developed more or less simultaneously with the informal during the 1950s. It was the geometric abstraction characterized by the total abandonment of the realistic representation, as the informal, but more rigid and controlled rather instinctive and very rational. Elena Mezzadra supported this tendency.
The Museum keeps the biggest number of this contemporary artist’s works thanks to her own generous donation. Mezzadra has been loyal to this geometric abstraction, regardless of the decline of this artistic trend, because it is not very inclined to touch the observers’ feelings.
It is a rational art – underlined by cold colours – which requires the ability of decoding a language that is not of immediate comprehension and which displays the results of a research of vision phenomena throughout many years of history of art.
First of all, it is not a rigid geometric abstraction: she starts with an informal painting and only later arrives at geometry without strictness in the construction of forms. There is no ruler or set square in her works and every line is plotted freehand, as the artist would act with natural curving on the canvas.
Forms and levels do not live on two dimensions and Mezzadra’s main characteristic is the space.
Her works are deep studies about perspective. She exceeds the image construction on a unique point of view and an escape point: escape points are numerous, so that the artist can insert in them a narrative dimension. The careful observer will understand the temporal development, which could not be present through a unitary and “frozen” perspective representation.
Levels overlap in a way that the observer can glimpse the under level or in a way that makes them self-reflective. This reminds of the laws of light reflection and refraction, which began to be tested during the Renaissance.
The picture with a vessel that flatters on the waves is a considerable image that can help understand Mezzadra’s compositional abilities: surfaces and sails could be imagined along trees and tense lines in a continuous game of overlaps and slight movements. The artist began her career as a maps designer and cartoonist.
Later, she flanks an abundant graphic production (Diotti Museum has its complete corpus), as well as the creation of sculptures, jewels, artist’s books, collage works and cartonnage.
Donated by the Artist, 2006
