This exhibition is inspired by the project of cultural exchange between two art galleries: AV17 in Vilnius and Nuova Galleria La Piccola in Bologna.
The idea that art crosses, or better, ignores boundaries, is doubtless the guideline for this project. An exhibit of Piero in Vilnius and another one of Sigita and Inga in Bologna bridge our two cities, so far away geographically and yet so close in their intents.
Piero Lerda is a complex artist, who made of experimentation the basis of his lifelong research.
He moved through many phases of creativity and thus he left a wide spectrum of messages convincing us to focus, in this solo show, on the period from the mid-70s to 2007, when he died.
This period of time is definitively the most chromatically enjoyable, because Piero Lerda seems to find a solution to the dilemmas and ponderings on the meaning of human life.
We exhibit, therefore, beautiful collages and mixed media techniques on any kind of support, paper and cardboard, where he creates endless different perspectives from which to look at the symbol of freedom: the kite.
As a consequence, kites become often the protagonists of the “carousel-.city” concept, inviting us to glance up from the tip of our shoes to the sky.
Lerda’s attempt to organize the chaos that everyone finds inside himself/herself is not only a constant theme in his paintings, but it is an issue strongly felt by young people in our contemporary society.
In this way Piero makes the most of the teaching the artist Vincenzo Alicandri offered to him when he was still a teenager; a mentor whose almost “maternal role” in suggesting to harmonize tradition and innovation Piero always acknowledged with gratitude,
Special thanks to Valeria Gennaro and Silvia Tritto, for their efforts to keep Piero’s memory with us, and to Kristina Mizgiryte for their wonderful collaboration at a distance.
Dalila Tossani.
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“Our psyche is made in harmony with the structure of the universe, and what happens in the macrocosm happens in the same way in the personal infinitesimal inmost recesses of the soul.”
Carl Gustav Jung
PIERO LERDA: it is hard to write more about Piero Lerda, after so many distinguished art critics(Ivana Mulatero, Lothar Hoennighausen, Giovanni Cordero and many others), have written on and dissected about Lerda’s art, media, and style.
Lerda’s art works are now in Museums ( like the Centro D’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di La Spezia and the Georgia Museum of Art (USA), because his lifelong creativity has made him renown for his “informal and metaphysical vision.”
I would define Lerda “ a solitary philosopher” who creates the play of fragments made with coloured little pieces of paper.
Through his cosmogony Lerda portrays galaxies and the whole universe” (especially in the series of paintings entitled The Creation).
Lerda’s “systematic Chaos” is organized in harmonious beautiful shapes around a space left empty in the middle of the canvas, like in a blues melody, a musical “genre” Lerda loved so much.
The colours become musical notes transformed into colourful art work, with some Picasso’ echoes.
More than anything else Lerda offers his original world when he creates, using mixed media techniques, the Kites, as a metaphor for life, because they link the Being to their environment,
The Kites need a hand guiding and holding them in order to fly high in the sky, in search for freedom, the most important value in Piero Lerda’s mind, who perceived the kites as a means to obtain the unity of inner feelings and imagination. The explosion of what Lerda called “an ocean of coloured pieces of paper- “coriandoli” in Italian-.becomes a clear message of fascination and of harmony among human beings.
In my opinion, this kind of research is possible only if you have with you a woman who understands your language and message, your love , and your need to compose musical poetry made of colours.
Lerda indeed had that kind of woman at his side, and thanks to the profound feeling that joined them before, after and forever, Lerda has been able to give us the gift of his art.
Valeria Gennaro is now willing to honour Piero’s art exhibiting his legacy of beauty. She is a professional historian, wise and firm in her purposes.
As an historian whose task is to preserve memories, Valeria accomplishes that task and “labour of love” by holding metaphorically the threads of Piero’s kites, so that they can oscillate again in open skies in their Pindaric flights of fancy.
My Thanks to Valeria, Silvia, Dalila, Kristina and to all the persons who have made this wonderful encounter possible.
UGO CACACE
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