By Our Editorial Staff
The Galleria delle Arti in Città di Castello (PG), founded in 1976 by Luigi Amadei, presents, from 7 December 2024 to 7 February 2025, Omar Galliani’s solo exhibition, “Di Segno in Segno”, with a critical text by Lorenzo Fiorucci.
The exhibition, created with the patronage of the Municipality of Città di Castello, the Cassa di Risparmio Città di Castello Foundation, the Rotary Club Città di Castello and the technical partnership of Petruzzi Editore, will be inaugurated on Saturday 7 December at 6.00 pm, in the presence of the artist.
For the first time, a complete corpus of graphic works by Omar Galliani, created from the seventies to the 2000s, is exhibited. The master of Italian drawing approached engraving techniques – mainly lithography and aquatint – thanks to a teaching position at the Academy of Fine Arts in Urbino (1979-80), a city that has always been known for its art printing houses.
In the same way, Città di Castello, which was the birthplace of Celestino Celestini (1882-1961) and Alberto Burri (1915-1995), has in its history a long tradition dedicated to printing and artistic publishing, also carried out by Luigi Amadei’s Gallery of Arts, which made graphic promotion, first and foremost Burri, but also Picasso, Morandi and Bacon, one of the identity lines of its mission.
The exhibition includes about fifteen works, many of which are in large formats, decidedly unusual for engravings. Some unique specimens are also exhibited, which combine stone lithography with manual interventions in tempera or pastel or Carrara marble applications.
“If Galliani’s best-known works find in drawing the most authentic matrix of his production, as well as his favourite technique,” writes Lorenzo Fiorucci, “in lithography he does not lose the genuineness of his research, albeit with sometimes surprisingly different results. In the lithographs it is possible to appreciate the technical qualities of a graphic sign which, in its unravelling between the smooth surface of the stone, first becomes an inverted mirror of an image and then a metaphor for a study pursued, without interruption, from the seventies to today, in a perspective increasingly oriented towards a reinterpretation of the very idea of the figure, also through historical samples and quotations, as well as poetic archaic mythologizations. […] In aquatint, on the contrary, that tonal, chromatic datum of sophisticated dreamlike construction emerges preponderantly, almost in an evocative mixture of symbolist instances immersed in surreal cosmic suggestions. The charm of Galliani’s research lies precisely in this ability to sew visions together, creating a spell, which transports the observer into a varied world, made up of mixtures between East and West, atmospheric evanescence, metaphysical echoes, classical quotations and contemporary references».
“Every time you scratch a slab, you notice the background of light advancing or receding and the reflection sticks and plays with a few dull and linear notes. Line of shadow or light where acids devour and smooth your nocturnal marks. Night of soluble or ethereal nitrates in long or short poses. A night of pale signs inked in black or red. Night of light or heavy hands in removing or adding. Oily mix of the grooves kissed by damp and heavy papers. Salt deposit, light evaporation of water and ink. In the fixed or mobile the unique and the multiple emerge in the dynasty of signs interrupted by the Arabic numeral. Code of passions violated on a soft copper plate,” wrote Omar Galliani in 1991, during a trip to Prague.
The exhibition, accompanied by a brochure created by Petruzzi Editore, will be open every day from 10.30 a.m. to 1.00 p.m. and 5.00 p.m. to 7.30 p.m., closed on December 25 and January 1. Free admission.
Info: Tel. 075 8558918 / 337 639963 / info@galleriadellearti.net / www.galleriadellearti.net
For further information on Omar Galliani’s work: www.omargalliani.com
