Giulio Malinverni at Ca' Pesaro
The project Natura morta, Natura viva (Still Life, Living Nature) explores the dialogue between natural matter and artistic intervention through a series of works created on stone – marble, alabaster, and onyx. These pieces revive an ancient practice: painting on stone supports, a tradition that flourished during the 16th and 17th centuries.
In this return to the technique of stone painting, Malinverni does not seek a mere historical citation, but rather a continuity with a practice born from deep research into the relationship between painting and matter. The pictorial intervention, reduced to the essential, can transform mineral substance into a flower, a plant, feathers, or an animal’s coat – as if it were possible to lighten the material itself, altering its perception rather than its substance. The stone, with its veins and organic patterns, is no longer a simple support, but it becomes the generative principle of the image. Indeed, it is the marble’s own natural decoration that suggests forms, subjects, and compositions to the artist, guiding the brushstroke toward a kind of revelation.
Malinverni’s works thus bear witness to a constant tension between nature and artifice, between mineral stillness and biological vitality. The “still” nature comes to life thanks to a painting style that acts as a gesture, revealing and following the intrinsic qualities of the material. In this process, the distinction between still life and living nature thins until it becomes ambiguous, suggesting a profound continuity between the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. Indeed, a unified vision of the natural world emerges in the artist’s work, where the hierarchies between kingdoms dissolve. Through silent and meditative images, Malinverni invites the viewer to reconsider their relationship with matter, questioning the possibility that even what we perceive as static may harbor a latent form of life. Natura morta, Natura viva thus becomes a poetic investigation into metamorphosis, perception, and the ability of art to make visible what already exists but remains hidden from view.
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Image: Giulio Malinverni, Diga #1, olio su onice rossa, 30 x 40 cm.
