Work by Gualtiero Nativi, private collection

“Distraction” by Beatrice Brandini

Until 21 August, Certaldo Alto, at Palazzo Pretorio, hosts a beautiful exhibition: “Gualtiero Nativi – works from 1946 to 1988”. Certaldo alto is a splendid medieval town, the Native exhibition is another opportunity to visit it.

Facade of Palazzo Pretorio in Certaldo Alta

Interior of the exhibition by Gualtiero Nativi

The exhibition, organized by the Nozzoli Gallery of Empoli and by the Nativi Archive, is a great opportunity to get to know this extraordinary artist, one of the most valid and precise non-figurative painters of the twentieth century.

   

Works by Gualtiero Nativi exhibited at Palazzo Pretorio

   

Works by Gualtiero Nativi exhibited at Palazzo Pretorio

Nativi’s work is placed in an important historical moment, that of the immediate post-war period, in which the artistic avant-gardes were abstractionism and concretism, however Nativi’s painting stood out, from the beginning, for an essential search for rhythmic balances, in which color, over time, will play a fundamental role.

Work by Gualtiero Nativi exhibited in Palazzo Pretorio

   

Works by Gualtiero Nativi exhibited at Palazzo Pretorio

Works by Nativi can be found at the Museo del Novecento in Florence, at the Museum of Palazzo Fabbroni in Pistoia, at the Historical Museum of the Resistance in Sant’Anna di Stazzema, at the Modern Art Gallery of Palazzo Pitti, at the Pinacoteca di Palazzo Pianetti, at the Museum Art of Gallarate …., confirmation of a really great talent.

Work by Gualtiero Nativi exhibited in Palazzo Pretorio

Nativi participated in some of the most important avant-garde movements of the postwar period such as Arte d’Oggi; he founded a revolutionary cultural newspaper like Il Torrente (together with Fernardo Farulli); in 1950, with Vinicio Berti, Bruno Brunetti and Alvaro Monnini, he signed the manifesto of classical abstraction, giving life to the movement of the same name.

What has always struck me in Nativi’s works has been its elegance, the precision of lines and shapes which is not academic, but style, purity and hard work. In fact, he notes his dedication to his work as an artist, his confidentiality, and no less important, in a world like the artistic one where vanity is everyday life, his modesty.

   

Glimpses of Palazzo Pretorio in Certaldo, home of the exhibition

Nativi has also always been consistent in his political and revolutionary dream (changing the world was not a utopia but will), especially in his poetics. He was the only painter of his generation to carry on the discourse of geometric abstraction to the end (keeping faith, here is still the coherence, to the signature on that famous “Manifesto of” Classical Abstractionism “).

Self-portrait, work by Gualtiero Nativi, private collection

Work by Gualtiero Nativi, private collection

A great draftsman, each of his paintings was born from a design drawing, but his methodically in painting seems to absorb or cancel the project, what, in Nativi’s work, we can define as architecture of planes and colors.

Work by Gualtiero Nativi, private collection

Work by Gualtiero Nativi, private collection

Nativi is also the painter of cleaning. Formal and chromatic cleanliness. He is the painter who thinks, reasons and never “screams”. In a landscape nestled in its past, like that of Tuscany, the figure of Nativi is definitely a breath of fresh air, today as yesterday.

   

Certaldo

I am fortunate to have some works by this talented artist, recommended by a great gallery owner like Giuliano Nozzoli who proposed them to me a few years ago (today it is his son Nicola who carries on the Gallery and also the dissemination – penetration of new talents). Nativi’s paintings are always incredibly modern, they manage to be perfect in any context, embellishing glimpses and corners with immense harmony.

Abstract mood, homage to the master Nativi, by Beatrice Brandini

Good life to everyone!

Beatrice