Gino Marotta

Acquired directly from the artist in 1968

Thence by decent

Private collection, Italy

Galleria de Nieubourg, Gino Marotta Nuovo Paradiso, Milan, 22 January - 19 February 1969

Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Ceroli, Kounellis, Marotta, Pascali: 4 artistes italiens plus que nature, Paris, 1969

Tommaso Trini, Primario è il Paradiso, Domus, n. 473, Milan, April 1969, p. 53

A key figure of Italian Pop Art, Gino Marotta, in his work, plays with modern materials and ancient themes and explores the duality between the art object and what it represents. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the present work. L'Albero (the tree) forms part of his Nuovo Paradiso series that was first exhibited at the Galleria de Nieubourg in Milan in February 1969. Marotta described the work as “an inventory of primary images … a primer and sample book for the recognition of a few of life’s symbols that have by now been forgotten or perhaps grown useless” (Tommaso Trini, in: Primario è il Paradiso, Domus, n. 473, Milan, April 1969). These symbols, with their powerful socio-religious connotations, are the apple, the serpent, the rain, the lightning bolt, the rose, the sky, the sea, the night, the tree and the fig tree. Marotta takes these totemic symbols and engraves them into transparent plastic, granting the viewer a journey of colour and luminosity and giving the represented subject a new lease of life. At the same time, Marotta traps his symbol within a rectangular Plexiglass prism, reinforcing the sense of a fetishised object and making it a prisoner of its form, in a plastic paradise. The work becomes a kind of three-dimensional painting, inviting the viewer to explore the tension between its form and its transparency, and reminding us of the shadow that falls between the ideal and the reality, between concept and conception.

Acquired by Marinellia Pirelli in 1968, this work, along with others from the series, was used by her in the most complex and perhaps most significant work of her career, Film Ambiente, a film in which the viewer, immersed in the light of projection could modify their own and others’ experience and perceptions. This film was shown for the first time in February 1969 at the Galleria de Nieuborg in Milan. Its second showing took place at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome, where it was introduced by Palma Bucarelli, immediately followed by a screening in San Benedetto del Tronto during the exhibition Al di là della pittura organised by Gillo Dorfles. It was also shown (and introduced by Lucio Amelio) during her solo exhibition in Montepulciano in 1970. Its most important screening was at Prospekt 1971 at the Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf, where it was introduced by Denise René and Hans Mayer. It is currently shown during the exhibition Il Video Rende Felici, at Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome.