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ALBERTO MAGNELLI, BEVERLY PEPPER ON VIEW AT MARLBOROUGH GALLERY

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NEW YORK CITY — Marlborough Gallery presents a retrospective exhibition of the work of the Italian painter Alberto Magnelli and an exhibition of sculpture by Beverly Pepper. Both are on view through March 8.

The Magnelli exhibition is comprehensive and covers the years from 1912 to 1965. The artist is considered to be Italy’s first abstract painter.

Included in the exhibition are 34 paintings and 30 drawings by Magnelli. The paintings will begin with a self-portrait executed in 1912 and continue through the artist’s early period with 12 key works from 1914 to 1918, including several important still lifes from 1914 such as “The White Table” and “Still Life with White Line.” Art historian Margit Rowell writes in one of the exhibition catalog’s two essays that, “The still lifes of 1914 may be considered as the ultimate expression of Magnelli’s personal sensibility up to that time.”

Seminal abstract works from 1915 (the year Magnelli painted his first abstract works) include “Peinture no. 0526.” There are also boldly colored, voluptuous paintings of large female figures constructed from simplified curved planes such as “La Paress” and “Donna al bagno,” both from 1917.

The show continues with seven works from the prewar 30s and among those works there will be five “Stone” paintings, works which sought to amalgamate figurative and abstract painting and that marked a major development in the artist’s oeuvre. There will also be two works from the 40s and eight works from his late period, which is devoted to totally abstract sharp, clear-cut forms in matte colors. The drawings range in date from 1914 to 1968 and include works on various papers in the mediums of pencil, charcoal, sepia and colored crayon. The drawings will present rare, early figurative studies and several studies for abstract paintings, including ten studies from 1931 for the “Stone” paintings.

Sculptures by American sculptor Beverly Pepper are featured to the exhibition “Explorations in Stone,” which continues her examination of stone as a sculptural medium while exploring the recurrent themes that have characterized her work for the last 27 years.

Pepper exhibits 11 new stone works that significantly draw upon her rough-hewn stone “Magma Series.” These stone sculptures were first seen in her 1997 solo show at Forte Belvedere, Florence, Italy, followed by an exhibition at Marlborough Chelsea in 2001.

Following the same sculptural vein, the artist recently completed “Denver Monoliths,” a sculpture comprising two massive vertical elements, one 42-feet tall and the other 31-feet tall, that weigh 155,000 pounds and were made using stone casting technologies and modeling techniques new to sculpture developed by the artist. “Denver Monoliths” was commissioned specifically for placement in front of Daniel Libeskind’s new addition to the Denver Art Museum.

Works in this exhibit range from pink marble to variegated onyx and demonstrate a variety of Pepper’s techniques: they have scratched, cracked, polish smooth, broken and drawn upon surfaces. Sculptures include “Rossa di Portugallo Mirrored Triangle,” 2007, (75/8  by 11 by 33/8 inches; “Rossa di Portugallo Portal, 163/8 by 181/8 by 71/8 inches; and “Green Granite Repeated Rectangle,” 2007 12¾ by 9 by 4¾ inches.

These works demonstrate Pepper’s continued exploration and versatility with scale — they are convincing as tabletop monuments as the artist draws the viewer into a relationship with the object that is both factual and fictional. The sculptures seem very large, but in fact are less than 2 feet high. Relative to much of the work in Pepper’s oeuvre these are physically “small” works, yet they are monumental in feeling. In addition to scale, Pepper uses time as a means of historical dislocation, creating works of art that seem to be from another era.

The gallery is at 40 West 57th Street. For information, www.marlboroughgallery.com or 212-541-4900.