The light and development of a pure spatial concept are the foundation of the research of Francesco Lo Savio, great Roman artist who between 1960 and 1962 anticipated certain American intuitions and opened the way for the avant-garde from the other side of the Atlantic. The strength of reason, able to give life to a "positive" establishment and to "moral" works. His consideration of man as a unique example of structural perfection and maximum static freedom with variable equilibrium is at the centre of his aesthetic research that reaches objectives of maximum visual intensity. Lo Savio's importance as an artist is confirmed by the upcoming retrospective exhibition dedicated to him by the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte di Reina Sofia in Madrid.

Studio Gariboldi offers in the gallery a selection of works, unique in both quality and size, like metals, filters and a few projects, where light and space penetrate in order to revolutionise the "view" of ambient-volume. Metals actually interact with their context and the spectator's perception expands with the varying light and prospective; filters determine a relative, chromatic dynamic; projects highlight the methodical proceeding of the innovative evolution of this Maestro of avant-garde

See Gallery Images

about Francesco Lo Savio
In 1954 I began my studies of Contemporary European and American Architecture, sensing definite interests in the experience of Gropius relative to Bauhaus, in his relationships with the "de stjil" movement and particularly the Mondrain's work.

The interest in this experience was ideological and social more than anything else. My research on the problems of formal expression, was turned instead to the work of Klee, Malewitsch, Gaudì, Le Corbusier, and Maillart; and when I began to work (except for a few academic information experiences) I was free from every formal preconception, exclusively coherent with an ideological and social concept, deriving from my participation in evolution problems, both conceptual and formal, of architecture and industrial design.

The idea of engaging a three-dimensional space in order to realise a bijective experience, internally as a formal expression problem, externally as a problem with social relationships, conditions the development of my work under a visual discontinuity, both in the choice of means, as well as in the form outcome.

In the canvas paintings, aimed mainly toward the development of a pure spatial concept, where light is the only element to define the surface structuring, attempting contact with the ambient space - realised through a situation of different chromatic intensities - the three-dimensional element takes shape through a stereoscopic image which clarifies the conceptual-theoretic situation of the three-dimensional relationship. The filters, an additional action of various semi-transparent surfaces, begin a real contact with ambient space.

But only in the metals does the action carry out a possibly specific verification of the three-dimensional fact, while realising a clear social participation with objects that remain in a limbo of utility, but of which their civil dignity is matchless.
Then, the idea of having more freedom in the formal structuring of these objects, led me to the need of defining an action space integrated to the object itself, which benefits from an environmental situation more limpid in the formal interpretation, limiting at the same time the interference of the external environment that diminishes the total yield of the object.
In these experiences, metals and total articulations, I believe my requests for direct participation in the evolution problems of industrial design and architecture, deciphering a possible social expression of the work, which remains a product of art, but materialises that necessary contact, above all currently, between artist and society.

from <spazio-luce> by Francesco Lo Savio, Editor De Luca. Rome 1962