Museo: Fondazione Marcello Morandini

The biography of Marcello Morandini - Part 1 (1960s and 1970s)

Marcello Morandini was born in Mantua in nineteen forty and moved to Varese in nineteen forty-seven. He began his career at the age of nineteen as a mechanical draftsman at the Atlantic appliance company in Vergiate, where he was later promoted and transferred to Milan in the design office. Here, he also had the opportunity to attend evening classes at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts and work in the studio of A.G. Fronzoni, one of Milan's best professional graphic designers, around whom important artists of those years gravitated. His work, both at Atlantic and in Fronzoni's studio, enhanced his professionalism and knowledge of essential forms and methods for communication. During this professionally active period, he began his artistic activity with his first graphic drawings, which he wanted to express the emotion of a different, clear, and positive reading of the world of geometry. In nineteen sixty-four, he began translating his works into three-dimensional compositions, the first of which, titled "Elasticity," was exhibited at the San Fedele Gallery in Milan. In nineteen sixty-five, his friends Paolo Scheggi and Getulio Alviani, who frequented A.G. Fronzoni's studio, were amazed by his works and convinced him to inaugurate his first solo exhibition (at only twenty-five years old) at the Deposito Gallery in Boccadasse, Genoa, curated by Germano Celant. The first more important exhibitions in Milan, Frankfurt, Cologne, and Basel date back to nineteen sixty-seven. In the same year, he was invited to the ninth São Paulo Biennial in Brazil, and in nineteen sixty-eight, he was present in the Italian Pavilion at the thirty-fourth Venice International Art Biennale with his own personal room. It was a difficult and controversial Biennale due to political demonstrations by the student movement, where many artists were invited to close their rooms because of pressure and threats. Morandini and Gianni Colombo were the only artists who refused to close their rooms until they were forced to by the General Management for a limited time. From this event, he was disappointed that politics had entered art. Art is beyond everything.

The biography of Marcello Morandini - Part 2 (1970s and 1980s)

In nineteen seventy, Marcello Morandini held his third solo exhibition at the Galleria del Naviglio in Milan, where he displayed works that highlighted the study of the rotatory movement of the square and the line. Subsequently, however, he decided to distance himself from the Italian climate of protest to develop his work in Europe; he thus began a collaboration with the Basel gallerist Carl Laszlo, inaugurating the Galerie Verna in Zurich with a solo exhibition and then exhibiting in Lutry, Lausanne, Graz, and Vienna, thus making his work known in Switzerland and Germany. He also participated in several important collective exhibitions, including one at the Museum of Modern Art in Philadelphia. In nineteen seventy-two, he held an important solo exhibition at the Kestner Gesellschaft in Hanover at the invitation of critic Wieland Schmied, who wrote the texts for the related catalog along with Gillo Dorfles and Umbro Apollonio. In the same year, he inaugurated several exhibitions in German and Swiss museums and, during this period, met many important gallerists. In nineteen seventy-six, publisher Peter Pfeiffer published the book-catalog of the artist's complete works, containing projects, drawings, structures, and sculptures from nineteen sixty-four to nineteen seventy-five with critical texts translated into four languages. In nineteen seventy-seven, Morandini organized the sixth symposium of the international artistic movement Arbeitskreis in Varese, of which he had been a member since nineteen seventy-two. It was an international event of great importance that involved thirty-one artists from eighteen nations and an occasion for positive collaborations. In the same year, he was invited, with six large drawings, to "Documenta number six" in Kassel, one of the most important international contemporary art events that takes place every four years. In nineteen eighty, Eugen Gomringer, concrete poet and art critic, who had become artistic consultant for the Rosenthal Porcelain Company in Germany, invited Morandini to join the group of international artists chosen by Philip Rosenthal as designers. From that moment, his artistic career began to develop in parallel also in the field of Design.

The biography of Marcello Morandini - Part 3 (1980s and 1990s)

In nineteen eighty-one, Marcello Morandini organized the sixth edition of the Biennale d'arte in San Martino di Lupari, inviting thirteen artists from seven countries and eight Italian architects, including Eugen Gomringer, Hans Heinz Holz, and Bruno D'Amore. In nineteen eighty-two, he was invited to "Documenta Urbana" in Kassel with Attilio Marcolli, where he presented a project that utilized the natural slope of the terrain to create new integrations with centers of collective activity, significant points of social and cultural aggregation values. In the same year, he received a scholarship from DAAD for a three-month stay in Berlin, where he studied a symbolic intervention on the Berlin Wall, although he ultimately did not find the necessary support to realize it. Within a few months, he was invited to Japan; during this period, personal contacts with design and architecture studios began, along with visits to several universities and exhibitions in various museums, curated by Tokyo publisher and gallerist Masaomi Unagami. Also in nineteen eighty-four, he designed the two hundred and twenty-meter facade of the Thomas porcelain factory in Speichersdorf, Germany. In nineteen eighty-five, he organized three important exhibitions: the first at the Axis Gallery in Tokyo, then a retrospective at the Bochum Museum, and one in Verona at the Castelvecchio Museum. In nineteen eighty-six and nineteen eighty-seven, he continued his exhibition activities at the Rome Art Quadrennial, the forty-second Venice International Art Biennale, and in museums in Darmstadt, Mannheim, and Helsinki. Morandini presented for the first time in Europe the continuous line of thirty-five meters of works measuring twenty-one by twenty-one centimeters, previously exhibited in Tokyo, and two historic works for him: the circular sculpture he made for the Venice Biennale and the model of a fountain made for Singapore. Nineteen eighty-seven was also a period of great collaboration with the Rosenthal company in Selb, for which he also designed the sixty-four-meter facade of the new administrative building. In nineteen eighty-eight, Peter Volkwein, director of the Ingolstadt Museum, commissioned him to design a forty-meter sculpture as an external symbol of the museum. In nineteen eighty-four, he organized his first solo design exhibition; this first non-art exhibition officially made Morandini responsible and visible for his professional work as a designer.

The Biography of Marcello Morandini - Part 4 (1990s/2000s)

In 1991, Marcello spent an extended period in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, designing the architecture for a thirty-four-story commercial building. In 1993, he had his first major retrospective exhibition combining art and design at the Die Neue Sammlung Museum in Munich, which was later displayed in 1994 at the Palacio Galveias in Lisbon for "Lisbon European Capital of Culture." From 1994, he served for several years as a member of the jury for the Design Center in Essen. In the same year, he took on a three-year role as president of the International Museum of Ceramic Design in Cerro di Laveno. From 1995 to 1997, he taught art and design at the Salzburg Summer Academy. From 1997 to 2001, he was a visiting professor at ÉCAL (École cantonale d'art de Lausanne) in Lausanne.

Marcello Morandini's Biography - Part 5 (from the 2000s to present)

In nineteen ninety-eight, his daughter Maria Enza was born, and since then he has focused more of his work in Varese, a city that in two thousand dedicated an important retrospective to him in its museum and a catalog curated by Germano Celant and published by Charta, Milan. In two thousand and two, after many years of work concentrated abroad, particularly in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, he returned to Italy. In two thousand and three, he became a professor at the Brera Academy in Milan. In Switzerland, he gave lectures at the HEAA watchmaking school in La Chaux-De-Fonds. He directed the Sommerakademie in Plauen for the restoration of Martin Luther Park. Starting from the same year, he became the president of the Association of Free Artists of the Province of Varese. In two thousand and fourteen, he inaugurated an important exhibition at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome, consisting of six large halls for art and three halls for architecture and design. GNAM is the most important Italian museum in which to exhibit. In two thousand and nineteen, he published his important Catalogue Raisonné, edited by Skira, which collects all his artistic work from nineteen sixty-four to two thousand and nineteen. Currently, he is involved with the Marcello Morandini Foundation with the concrete objective of establishing a museum center for Concrete Art in Europe.