Plinio Martelli - Untitle

Full-framed photo with dimensions 73x53

Plinio Martelli (1945-2016) breathed art from a young age: his father and grandfather were painters. The first close to Menzio, Quaglino and Fico, the second to Carrà, Bonzagni and Malerba. From his beginnings, after attending the Albertina Academy under the guidance of Paulucci and Calandri, he participated in numerous group exhibitions, including the historic Fluxus event of 1967 at the Il Punto gallery and, the following year, in Marcello Rumma's show curated by Germano Celant, “Arte Povera + Azioni Povere.” This was in Amalfi, after which he staged his first solo show in 1969 at the prestigious Christian Stein gallery, with which he began a long-lasting collaboration. His work immediately oriented toward a search for the transformation of artistic language through the use of unusual materials, fused into evocative and suggestive sculptures. His important exhibitions in the 1970s at the LP220 gallery, as well as his experimentation in the cinematic field, earned him an invitation to the Venice Biennale in 1978.

A polyhedral artist, Martelli ventured into photography as a metaphor for painting, building a highly recognizable personal style thanks to a use of light aimed at probing the existential dimension of his subjects.

A pioneer in rediscovering tattoo as a form of artistic and narrative expression, he later explored the world of eroticism in its most intimate and sometimes extreme folds. Always fascinated by the idea of the “Illustrated and Incised Body,” he reconstructs Set Photographs that evoke a classic, Gothic, noir, erotic atmosphere with a Trash taste, imbued with irony and provocation.

A “Mise en Scene” through evocative-scent images, where the construction approaches the idea of the “Portrait in the Studio” with evident references to Classical and Mannerist Painting and to an iconography ideally Fetishistic that recalls the sensuality of erotic images from the past.

The body of the “Model” is exalted by the Tattoo “As a Metaphor of Painting,” at the same time constrained and chained by the shadows and lights of the sets and by the objects that compose the “Portrait.” Everything transforms into a mysterious and sensual alchemical world, uniting a representation of the image of Diverse Aesthetics, paradoxical with irreverent and precious irony.

His work has been exhibited worldwide in private galleries and public museums: Turin, Milan, Bologna, Bolzano, Paris, Cologne, Sydney, London, New York, Barcelona, Mallorca, Brussels. His works are part of the collections of several museums, including the Museo Arte Moderna in Turin.