The young Italian sculptor, Andrea Sala, turned out to be the first artist in residence at the Guido Molinari Foundation. The experience gave rise to the creation of four new sculptures which served, among other purposes, to reconcile certain works of Molinari (1933-2004), with those of the Milanese multidisciplinary artist Bruno Munari (1907-1998).
The idea of juxtaposing these three separate worlds had been in the mind of independent curator Meredith Carruthers for more than two years, having been conceived when she was conducting research on the collection of the Joliette Art Museum with a view to holding an exhibition. Various circumstances, including significant work to be carried out at the museum, meetings with artist Tom Hopkins (the sorely missed former President of the Guido Molinari Foundation) and most particularly the enthusiasm of Sala regarding the space of the former Molinari workshop, had created favourable circumstances and it was with pleasure that the Foundation made room for the project relating to this trio of artists, unusual but remarkably stimulating.
At first glance, the work by Sala seemed to emphasize primarily the encyclopedic, impossible‑to‑classify, resolutely amusing and nonetheless unknown works of Munari, over the more “classical” work by Molinari. But Munari, the jack-of-all-trades that Picasso called the “New Leonardo”, often resorted to geometric images, but not without a sense of humour: the constructions of Andrea Sala are specifically made to relate to works by Molinari from the beginning of the 70s, where the presence of triangular forms sought to deconstruct the vertical bands in his paintings, while the use of colours showed an exotic, humorous style that some of Sala’s sculptures underlined, in their lightness and transparency.
This type of project is naturally a part of the general mandate of the Guido Molinari Foundation which is to promote the work of Molinari by all means considered appropriate.
