Curated by Giancarlo Carpi

The exhibition hosts more than 25 works by Giacomo Balla and Piero Dorazio, among which there are four "iridescent penetrations", two reticules and a rare multi-material abstract composition from the late 1940s (Sviluppo orizzontale di una cornamusa dolcissima, 1948). The comparison between the two masters of the Italian abstract period occurs through formal consonances between individual works. Dorazio's research into pure colours recalls the more chromatically marked, iridescent penetrations of Balla (the research of chromatic vibrations or pure colour) (La corsa, 1968) while the phytomorphic aspect of other samples of that series can recall the internal and overlapping configurations of certain reticules (Textur 1962). Another constant is the dynamic character, between the dynamograms and the interlacing of lines and volumes in Balla’s work, and Dorazio's objectual breakdowns, in the excursion, for both, between a more diagrammatic polarity between a more diagrammatic polarity (Il ponte di Carlo, 1947) and another more sensuous and synaesthetic. A comparison for partial contrast thus occurs between the most shapeless quivering vibrations of certain Dorazian works on paper and the dynamism of some miniature Ballian figures or, unexpectedly, between the non-structural reticules and Balla’s onomatopoeic signs in the abstract transfiguration of a moment or an atmosphere. In this regard, the exhibition features, for the first time after many decades, the two versions of Rumoristica plastica Baltrr by Giacomo Balla (1914 e 1916).