May 21_September 30 2022 Neo Pop Cernobbio

The NEO POP

by Fabrizio Musa
Edited by Aldo Premoli

Pop Art is the term with which, between the late 1950s and early 1960s, a movement established itself among the United States and Europe that was inspired by everyday objects depicted by subtraction, removing them from their natural environment and isolating them as if they were icons endowed with a particular symbolic value. Fabrizio Musa (Como 1971) of that movement that has enjoyed an extraordinary and lasting fortune is undoubtedly an heir. With characteristics, however, entirely his own. One of which is undoubtedly his attraction to architecture. In this regard here is how Mario Botta with whom Musa has collaborated several times says of him, for example:
"Musa studies the language of architecture by translating it autonomously on the canvas, that is, making it become a pictorial language to all intents and purposes, with results that surprise (...) he brings back in his black and white the results of shadows born from the three-dimensional context (...) architecture has always been thought of as a space, as a three-dimensional structure, and to see it "flattened out" on the canvas is a reading I had never imagined. The surprise is that this kind of reading allows (...) poetic results."

This is important recognition not only because of the esteem shown to him by an archistar like Botta: whether it is the Duomo of Como or that of Milan, the Casa del Fascio designed by Terragni in 1932, a car, a Rolex Milgauss or a portrait of Sophia Loren, Botta's note born for the work of architectural representations is still valid: it lays bare the thought process behind his way of painting. Of which it is important to grasp a further specificity: Musa beyond having contaminated from the very beginning of his work the most traditional painting techniques with the use of technologies unknown to the founders of Pop art. It is not enough: his touch is always and in any case "elegant," another characteristic that is not strictly "pop." All of which necessarily identifies his art as "neo" pop. In Musa's extensive production, the small (certainly not because of the size of the pieces chosen) selection made for La Cernobbina Art Studio speaks of this.

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