24 september 2005 | VIA DI CITTà, 111 SIENA
24 september – 15 october 2005
Roberto Altmann’s personal exhibition “Il gesto oltre l’immagine”.
Roberto Altmann was born in Sestri Levante in 1961, his education is classical, after art school and graduation from the Academy of Fine Arts in Genoa, he began to frequent artists’ ateliers. Roberto Altmann’s painting recalls a certain expressionism with borders on the informal. The result currently achieved by the Ligurian artist can be considered as the summary of an entire research path, which officially began in 1982 with an “expressionist” period, and then evolved in an abstract sense towards 1985. This last period should be associated with resort to increasingly free and independent gestures, compared to a pre-established form. In the works presented in the exhibition, memory is the most recurring term: the memory of one’s own experience and the memory of a culture that has its roots in the Renaissance. Michelangelo memories that resurface in a construction that creates and fills physical and mental spaces. With Altmann we relive the spirit of a new “renaissance”, where human centrality is highlighted not by the sumptuous presence of a body, but by the trouble that concerns contemporary man, creator and victim of all the contradictions, disturbances and torments that belong to him. In the large works, this circular and enveloping rhythm is evident, like that of a large mural fresco, intended to trigger in the observer the dismay of vertigo and a subtle sense of perdition, perhaps due to that absence of perspective against which to place the scene, which entrust a reference thought. Among the most important exhibitions held by the artist, the following deserve mention: Galerie Rapperwill, Zurich; Shneider Cultural Center, Cuneo; Siau Galleries, Amsterdam; Kunst-Werk Gallery, Hertongenbosch, Holland; Ken’s Art Gallery, Florence; Pyramida Gallery, Prague; Ksi Gallery, New York; Franklin Bowls Gallery, New York.