Notargiacomo in velocità

Curated by Marco Tonelli and promoted by the Department of Culture of Rome Capital, Azienda Speciale Palaexpo and Fondazione Mattatoio di Roma - Città delle Arti, the exhibition hosted in Pavilion 9a of the Rome’s Mattatoio showcases Gianfranco Notargiacomo’s artistic career, from his beginnings in the early 1970s to his most recent works. An over fifty years long career during which he has ranged with great freedom in the use of the most diverse artistic languages, from painting to sculpture and performance.

With the exception of the 1971 installation “Le nostre divergenze”, exhibited in 2009 at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome, this is the artist’s first solo retrospective exhibition in a public space in Rome. A tribute to Rome, the city where Noragiacomo was born in 1945 and where he lived and worked, opens the exhibition: the 2003 work “Roma assoluta”, an aerial and highly evocative view of the capital crossed by lightning and thunderbolts, one of the artist's distinctive features.

Since speed is an expressive, technical and poetic mode that runs through all of Notargiacomo’s work, the exhibition continues with a deliberately dynamic progression. Works on display include “Tempesta e Assalto” from 1980, “Il Caos e Giganti” from 1995, “Pittura Estrema” from 1999; the iconic coloured plasticine men from the installation “Le nostre divergenze” from 1971, three examples of large Takéte from 1995 (futuristic hybrids between painting and sculpture) and works such as “1945” from 1983, where sheet metal becomes the protagonist, up to the latest fluorescent paintings such as “Quarantaminuti” created in 2023.

One section of the exhibition is dedicated to a series of photographic documents that bear witness to some of the highlights of the artist’s career, his participation in the Venice Art Biennale (1982, 1986, 2011), and his exhibitions at the La Tartaruga, Arco d’Alibert and La Salita (in the 1970s and 1980s), and his encounters with important artists who represented fundamental stages in his artistic and personal development.