Mario Giacomelli (1925–2000) - Presa di coscienza sulla natura

Mario Giacomelli (Senigallia, 1925 - 2000), Awareness of Nature. Original photograph. circa 1990. Stamp of Mario Giacomelli on the back. Stamp and signature Eredi Giacomelli for authentication. Photograph in perfect condition mounted to a passepartout with photo corners so as not to damage the photo with adhesive. Out of the EU the photo will be shipped unframed.

Mario Giacomelli's aerial photographs represent one of the most abstract and poetic peaks of twentieth-century photography. Through the view from above, the artist from Senigallia transformed the agricultural landscape of his beloved Marche into geometric and graphic compositions, reducing the Earth's surface to pure visual and inner emotion.
"Presa di coscienza sulla natura": This is the most famous series dedicated to the Marchean agricultural landscape. Initiated in the 1970s, it shows the land furrowed by the plow transforming into energetic black brushstrokes on white sheets. Giacomelli was not seeking geographical documentation, but the marks and wrinkles of the earth, which he assimilated to those of human hands. To obtain certain geometric effects, he even asked local farmers, his friends, to plow the fields following trajectories and geometries precisely drawn by him. The intuition of aerial photography was born almost by chance in 1975, during a flight to Bilbao where Giacomelli had been invited as a juror for a photography prize. The artist had a deep fear of flying and, to distract himself from anxiety during the trip, began to obsessively shoot images of the earth looking through the porthole of the passenger plane. From that forced perspective he discovered a new way to geometrize space, which gave rise to subsequent systematic explorations. Despite the enormous production of aerial views, Giacomelli's fear of flying remained a significant obstacle. Archive research and recent exhibitions have revealed a collaboration that had long remained unpublished: many of the rolls shot at high altitude over the Marche (aboard small Piper aircraft) were physically executed by his friend and colleague Edmo Leopoldi. Leopoldi, a flight enthusiast and former military of the air force, flew on behalf of the master performing the frames according to the rigid instructions and the artistic sensibility agreed with Giacomelli, who then completed the artwork with a development and printing exaggerated in the darkroom. Giacomelli's aerial images are distinguished by a radical black-and-white, sharp and ultra-high contrast. Through the flattening of perspective and the elimination of mid-gray tones (the whites appear almost burned and the blacks deeply profound), the hills lose their realistic three-dimensionality and come closer to informal painting and conceptual abstraction.

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