iPalazzo CitterioBrera
Carlo Maria Mariani. The Eternity of Painting
First major posthumous retrospective of Carlo Maria Mariani: about seventy paintings and large cartoons, from the 1940s to 2019, on the second floor.
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A newborn screams at the centre of L'era dei miracoli (1965), surrounded by LEGO bricks, a megaphone, a towering bishop and a Fascist-era propaganda poster. Carlo Maria Mariani painted it at 34. The latest work here is from 2019, when he was 88.
You start with Composizione, painted in 1949 after a teenage trip to Venice and its Tintorettos, and move roughly in date order through about 70 paintings and large cartoons: the hyperreal 1970s, the 1980s allegories, the giant classical heads he began setting against the New York skyline in 2001. Mariani called himself "a conceptual artist who paints", and his references run from Winckelmann to Duchamp. He even wrote letters to Angelica Kauffmann, dead since 1807: the longest anyone has been left on read.
It fills Palazzo Citterio's second floor and is included in the €12 museum ticket, or €20 with the Pinacoteca di Brera. Booking is required on brerabooking.org. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 8:30 to 19:15 (last entry 18:00), until 10 January.
Look for
L'era dei miracoli (1965)
A screaming newborn arrives among LEGO bricks, a megaphone, a towering bishop and a SISI propaganda poster recalling the Fascist Italy of Mariani's youth.
Constellation of Leo (1980-81)
His best-known painting, a group portrait of figures from the Italian art world on a canvas 3.4 by 4.5 metres, lent by Rome's Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna.
Self-Portrait with Skull (1972)
Mariani paints himself beside a skull, from the decade when his technique turned virtuoso and his human figures near-photographic.
The giant heads
Monumental classical heads, modelled on Sebastiano del Piombo's painted head in Rome's Villa Farnesina, which from 2001 he set in front of the New York skyline.
Good for
- Locals Who've Seen It All
- Nerding Out
Also at Palazzo Citterio
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Image credits
9
- Carlo Maria Mariani. The Eternity of PaintingCourtesy of Palazzo Citterio
- 100 Years for Brera. Gifts and Acquisitions from the FriendsCourtesy of Pinacoteca di Brera
- Pinacoteca viaggianteCourtesy of Pinacoteca di Brera
- Beauty and the IdealCourtesy of Pinacoteca di Brera
- Palazzo CitterioGiovanni Dall'Orto / Wikimedia Commons
- Pinacoteca di BreraKarlmontague / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Gallerie d'Italia MilanoJwslubbock / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Museo Poldi PezzoliPaolobon140 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Museo Teatrale alla ScalaDaniel Case / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0