Aldo Mondino. Linoleum

Born from the chance encounter of a carpenter’s showroom around the corner from his studio, then in Via dell’Orso, Milan, Aldo Mondino’s rapturous discovery of linoleum’s formal and symbolic qualities marked the final, mature phase of his idiosyncratic and prolific career in the European post-war scene. On the one hand, linoleum provided a rich, highly textured background reminiscent of exotic decorative patterns, in line with Mondino’s restless traveling, while on the other it offered the irresistible chance for yet another play on words, linen and oil being the materials most associated with traditional, Western fine painting. The multifaceted formal structure of these works epitomises Mondino’s relentless experimentation, which, throughout his oeuvre, interrogated the stability of symbolic and formal elements in his own practice and that of his contemporaries, Italian and foreign. In Mondino’s work, as Enrico Crispolti presciently stated in the catalogue of a 1963 solo show at Galleria Il Punto, Torino, “symbols and emblems have shed their abstract nature as ideological themes and become concrete organic elements.” And, as appeared more and more evident with Mondino’s artistic development, the role of the symbolic in his practice was guided, above all, by humour and irony, nearly grazing the tipping point of nonsense only to be recovered by an extremely intelligent arrangement of formal elements.

ALDO MONDINO. LINOLEUM
3 April - 17 May 2019

Matteo Lampertico - Arte Antica e Moderna
Via Montebello, 30, 20121 Milan

Galleria Gracis
Piazza Castello, 16, 20121 Milan

13 February – 22 March 2019
M&L Fine Art
15 Old Bond Street, London

Matteo Lampertico - Website

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