Quercia artificiale

Gino Marotta was the first Italian artist to propose a synergy between art and design. Active in Rome as from the early 1960s, he joined the CRACK group, born in the home of Fabio Mauri, in their opposition to the figurative school led by Guttuso. From the circle of the Caffè Rosati to his first solo show, presented by Emilio Villa in Milan in 1967, it was through his contacts with Giò Ponti, Carlo Scarpa and Luigi Moretti that he came up with the idea of using methacrylate as the material for his sculptures by virtue of its high-tech properties. Impervious to decay, transparent and almost incorporeal, it allows natural or artificial light to shine through it. One hallmark of his work is the contrast between natural and artificial, which manifests itself in the use of methacrylate or Perspex to create elements belonging to the world of nature. This contemporary material enables Marotta to give shape to an image of the natural world, in this case an oak tree, which takes on the value of an archetype while ideally forming part of a series. (Transl. by Paul Metcalfe per Scriptum, Roma)