Alessandro Teoldi

A personal diary based on elements drawn from everyday reality. Alessandro Teoldi uses collage to lay bare his private sphere, memories, recollections and affections, drawing on the teachings of Conrad Marca-Relli and Alberto Burri's Sacchi on the one hand, and on the tradition of Italian painting of the 1930s, in particular Giorgio Morandi, Felice Casanovas and Mario Sironi, on the other. The preciousness of the technique has always been a characteristic of his work. After creating monochrome collages with fragments of airline travel blankets, sewn together to form figures and geometries, he recently felt the urge to enrich his works with colour and greater manual skill through dyes and refined pictorial interventions using oil, charcoal, graphite, ink, gouache and pastels. A Milanese who moved to New York fifteen years ago, the artist places the domestic sphere at the centre of his research, reflecting on the idea of home, family and bonds in a broad sense. Thus, in Mimosa, a “synaesthetic” work where a human figure intent on smelling the scent of yellow flowers gathered in a vase is not distracted by that of the plate of garlic heads. The space is skilfully constructed in a composition where objects such as the jug, glass, tea towel and mirror suggest the illusion of depth.

Licia Spagnesi