In a brilliant feat of exhibition creativity, Robilant+Voena presents, side by side, but at odds—but the exhibition proposes that they are not at odds aesthetically, spiritually, conceptually—several so-called “slash” and “puncture” paintings, along with some of his “plate paintings,” by the great, seriously original avant-garde Italian painter Lucio Fontana (1899-1968), and three great Italian Gothic painters, Taddeo di Bartolo (1362-1422), Jacopo di Cione (1325-1390), and Bicci di Lorenzo (1373-1452). As art historians note, Gothic painting was eclipsed, regarded as retardataire, with the development of Giotto’s naturalism, with its somewhat more expressive, limber, animated figures, ostensibly more life-like than the somewhat more stiff, stylized, emotionally remote figures in Italian Gothic painting.
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