Dates: Nov 2 – Dec 14, 2024
Location: Taka Ishii Gallery Kyoto
Opening reception: Saturday, Nov 2, 16:00 – 18:00

Taka Ishii Gallery Kyoto is pleased to present a solo exhibition dedicated to the work of one of the most relevant Italian artist, Ettore Spalletti (1940 – 2019).

The project, curated by the Ettore Spalletti Foundation and Cristiano Raimondi, will be hosted in the Taka Ishii Gallery space in Kyoto, a ‘Kyo-machiya’ house dating back some 150 years ago.

Spalletti’s works inhabit the house like ancient presences. Some, overlooking the inner garden, change as the natural light changes, adding color to color; others, in the untouchable space of the tokonoma, reveal the artist’s alphabet. In the last room, an “upturned sky” on the ground brings with it the colour of sunset. The scenery that opens up to the visitor can be recounted by the expression of the MA 間 , an ideogram with the sun inside a door, almost as if to recall that poetic moment when a glimmer of light passes through a  thin breach. A timeless “landscape” where space is created by the perception of the person living it at a given moment.

 “In my work there is always the desire to offer a space where one can feel good, where one can feel shrouded and somehow protected. The most important value for me is that of gift. Finding something in oneself to offer. What the work gives back, you must first find within yourself. Only afterwards do you try to give it back”.

Ettore Spalletti

In his body of works, in which painting and sculpture merge together, Ettore Spalletti establishes an encounter between classicism and contemporaneity. His language eliminates all forms of rhetoric, recovering geometries and archetypal forms according to concepts that clearly distinguish him from Minimal Art. For Spalletti, colour is the very place from which forms arise. “Colonna, Anfora, Bacile, Vasi.”… tell of a language that has traversed the entire history of art. These geometries lose their rigidity to be filled with a material that, like mist, shatters into fine dust. Painted marbles, onyxes as caskets of colour, alabasters that speak of light and shadow. The paintings, thicknesses of colour with sloping frames or bevelled edges, are arranged in space in resonance with each other. Sometimes gold leaf emphasises the aura, still modifying the relationship with light. His colours are not ‘surface’ but ‘atmospheric’, they move imperceptibly, they welcome the observer, they welcome us, but they also ask not to be touched. They have a profound emotional quality, carrying distant echoes: from Beato Angelico to Piero della Francesca and Raphael, to Morandi. The temporal aspect acquires meaning: a long time, marked by the personal technique of applying the colour dough, every day, at the same time, finally reaching the final abrasion that reveals the colour hidden until then, an epiphany.
Spalletti has spent his entire life in his native places, loving to call his studio home.

“Following a trip to Japan, Ettore told me that he was deeply impressed by the kindness, elegance of manner and beauty of the places. As titles for the exhibitions, I chose two poems by Ungaretti, a poet dear to Ettore whose synthesis of thought and image is often associated with haiku”.

Patrizia Leonelli Spalletti

Ettore Spalletti (1940-2019) was born in Cappelle sul Tavo (Pescara, Italy) where he spent his entire life.
Important exhibitions have been dedicated to Spalletti worldwide, most recently at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome (2021), the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco in the Principality of Monaco (2019), the Palazzo Cini in Venice (2015) and a retrospective presented simultaneously in three Italian museums: MADRE, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples; GAM, Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin and MAXXI – Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo, Rome (2014). For the first and last time (this has never happened before or repeated since), three important Italian institutions simultaneously dedicated their spaces to the work of a single artist; as if the three museums were the halls of a single exhibition unrolling from the north to the south of Italy. Other important solo exhibitions include: GNAM – National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome (2010); Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Clevès (2009); Villa Medici, Académie de France, Rome (2006); Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2005); Castello di Rivoli – Museum of Contemporary Art, Rivoli – Turin (2004); Fundación la Caixa, Madrid (2000); Museo di Capodimonte, Naples (1999); Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Strasbourg (1998); MUHKA – Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp (1995); Guggenheim Museum, New York (1993); Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Paris (1991); De Appel, Amsterdam (1989); Kunsteverein, Munich (1989); Portikus, Frankfurt (1989); Halles d’art contemporain, Rennes (1988); Museum Van Hedendaagse Kunst, Ghent (1983); Museum Folkwang, Essen (1982). Spalletti was invited several times to Documenta in Kassel (1982, 1992) and the Venice Biennale (1982, 1993, 1995, 1997). His permanent installations include the Salle des dèparts (1996) for the Hôpital Raymond-Poincaré in Garches – Paris, and the Chapel (2016) created together with architect Patrizia Leonelli for the Villa Serena nursing home in Città Sant’Angelo – Pescara.

The Ettore Spalletti Foundation was established in 2022 by Patrizia Leonelli Spalletti. The aim of the Foundation is to protect and preserve the artistic production of Ettore Spalletti. Based in the artist’s studio in Italy, the Foundation promotes initiatives aimed at disseminating and raising awareness of the artist’s work.

Cristiano Raimondi is an independent curator interested in the relationship between architecture social sciences and art. For years he has been doing research work between Italy and Brazil. In 2019, he curated Ettore Spalletti’s solo exhibition at the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco.

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