Valerio Adami
Recent Works
Valerio Adami, a major figure in the Narrative Figuration movement, is returning to Brussels with a show at Galerie Templon, fifty years after his last solo exhibition at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in 1966. The Galerie Daniel Templon exhibition invites visitors on a journey around his recent works, marked by the familiar elegance of the artist-philosopher’s approach.
Valerio Adami puts together complex allegories in compositions that feature his favourite themes: travel, music, literature and theatre. Despite the sparkling colours that light up the canvases, the figures who populate them often seem to be prey to introspection and melancholy. Each scene describes “the imminence of a tragedy” (Daniel Arasse). His highly distinctive painting style, with its blocks of colours outlined in black, conjures up the fragility of life and the possibility of salvation through art.
Drawing – its lines inextricably linked to words – is a “way of thinking” while colour, which redefines it, gives it its character. Ever present at the heart of his work, which he defines as philosophical interrogations of the verb, lies the concept of enigma, accompanied here by an abundance of literary references.
Vittorio Alfieri
The artist
Born in 1935 in Bologna, Valerio Adami is a leading figure in the Narrative Figuration movement. His acrylic paintings are characterised by blocks of colour outlined in black evoking the themes of travel, music, literature and theatre. The notion of mystery is expressed in the many literary references that populate the paintings, a notion that always plays a central role in his work, which he defines as a philosophical questioning.
