Guido Molinari: Large Scale

OPENING: Saturday, February 8 , 2020  2:00 - 5:00 P.M. 

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Guido Molinari, "Seriel Vert-Violet," 1968

acrylic on canvas, 92" x 144"

Paul Kuhn Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of significant, historical and large-scale paintings by renowned Canadian artist, Guido Molinari (1933-2004). These epic works from the 1960's dominate a truly magnificent exhibition.

Guido Molinari is an emblematic figure of geometric abstraction in Canada. Both as an artist and theoretician, he developed an art of intellectual and analytic vigor. His practice grew around a set of theoretical questions and principles of composition – hard edged bands of colour, colour saturation, and the use of chromatic tensions both to highlight the instabilities of perception and actively involve the viewer in this shifting and mixing of colours.

Molinari’s stripe paintings are both the fulfilment of this goal and the signature style associated most often with the artist. These works are composed of a definite structure of vertical bands of colour of equal width and ordered in sequences of repeated patterns. Molinari was not concerned with the aesthetic quality of colour but its dynamic energy.  Molinari believed “There is no such thing as colour – there are only colour harmonies.  Colour exists only in its shape and dimension and in correlation with other colours. The repeated pattern of the stripe releases the full chromatic expression of colour."  Molinari said his stripe paintings established a “fictive space”

In the stripe paintings Molinari found a definite solution on how to strip painting of spatial illusion. By keeping the bands all the same width, the surfaces opaque, the edges razor sharp and the colours repeated in a predictable series, Molinari rid the painting of any subjectivity. The main event of the painting became the energy of colour and its rhythmic interactions in the eye of the viewer.

Guido Molinari  is one of the great pioneers of abstract art. His enormous body of work which includes paintings, drawings, existentialist writings and poetry earned him numerous awards notably: The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Jessie Dow Award (1962), The Royal Canadian Academy of Art Award (1965), The Guggenheim Fellowship Scholarship (1967), The David E. Bright Foundation Award ( 1968 at The Venice Biennale), and the Prix Paul Emile- Borduas (1980).  After his death in 2004, Molinari's contributions were recognized with a posthumous honorary doctorate.