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PIZZI CANNELLA OPENS APRIL 10 AT BARBARA MATHES GALLERY

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NEW YORK CITY — “Pizzi Cannella: Earth, Sky and Sea” will be on view April 10–May 30, at the Barbara Mathes Gallery in the first United States exhibition of works by Italian artist Pizzi Cannella in 15 years.

Piero Pizzi Cannella was among the young Italian artists of the 1970s who turned from the hard-edged rigors and austerity of Conceptual art and in the 1980s were deemed part of the Nuova Scuola Romana (New Roman School) and the Roman Gruppo di San Lorenzo. After initially working in mixed media, Cannella adopted painting.

Cannella conceived the works in “Earth, Sky and Sea” specifically for exhibition in New York. Paintings in the exhibition take as their theme the most elemental of subjects and the intangible phenomenon that surround them. In one painting, the earth is surrounded by a varnish-yellow sky that is either encroaching on the planet or receding from its atmosphere. Cathedrals continue to assume importance in his new works, dotting imagined territories and suggesting a fantastical pilgrimage route for an unknown religion.

As in much of his past work, Cannella continues to set the representational against the abstract, the recognizable against the unrevealed. The scraped surfaces of the paintings are richly tactile and suggest the wearing, corrosive effects of time. The sense of calm and serenity in these lyrical works embody a paradox: light, air and atmosphere — things that cannot be held or grasped — are more precisely rendered and feel more real than the water or earth that make up the physical world.

Cannella’s last solo exhibition in the United States was held at Anina Nosei Gallery in 1993. A full illustrated catalog will be published in conjunction with the exhibition.

The gallery is at 22 East 80th Street. For information, www.bmathesgallery.com or 212-570-4190.