William Xerra - Untitled

The human figure has always been at the center of artistic research. Since the classical age, the naturalistic rendering of human anatomy has been a primary goal of painters and sculptors throughout history. The representation of the nude is the ultimate expression of this aspiration, pervasive across all eras and stylistic trends. Indeed, in addition to the naturalistic interpretations of the Renaissance and various classicisms, which aimed for a truthful and detailed representation of the human body, the nude has also been a central theme in the new aesthetic concepts brought about by the historical avant-garde movements, such as Cubism, Expressionism, and Surrealism.

In this lithograph, William Xerra, an artist focused on multimedia research, demonstrates his openness to a synthetic language in which phenomenal reality is reconstructed through elegant stylization. Reality is thus transformed into a balanced system of lines. The monochromatic composition, formally, is executed with a subtle graphic style that accentuates the work's symbolic nature and the immediacy of its fresh execution. Experimentation with the dialogue between various media is hinted at, in this work, by the presence of written text.

Illiam Xerra was born in Florence in 1937 (he lives in Ziano Piacentino). In the early 1960s, Xerra's painting was infused with the poetics of sign and material typical of the Informal movement. The artist later encountered Pop Art with works imbued with irreverent irony, featuring the written word, which would always play a key role throughout his production. His entire oeuvre revolves between poetic and pictorial sign, even when in the 1970s, through happenings, performances, and videos, he conceived a series of strictly "conceptual" works. The artist's style highlights the temporary limits within which the work is created. In 1987, Filiberto Menna confirmed him as one of the Italian masters of painting-writing-painting. The 1972 VIVE exhibition would accompany the artist's work throughout his career. In 2002, he presented the manifesto IO MENTO at the Mudima Foundation in Milan, read by Pierre Restany. Visibile traccia is the site-specific work inaugurated in the summer of 2017 created by Xerra for the Municipality of Farini (Pc), of which this catalogue is a faithful testimony.

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