Mino Argento: Difference between revisions

Mino Argento is an Italian artist, born in Rome (January 5, 1927).

Argento has exhibited extensively in New York City, Vaduz, Los Angeles, San Benedetto del Tronto, Deauville, Rome and Rockford, Illinois. Among the galleries where he has shown are OK Harris Gallery, Betty Parsons Gallery, April Sgro-Riddle Gallery. The Exhibition feature Abstract works on Canvas and Paper.^[1]

(Mino Argento) participated in other group shows in galleries in Italy exhibiting privately owned works. He has been represented in London by Nigel Greenwood (art dealer)...(and) Betty Parsons."^[2]

Mi par giunto il momento de aitutare il pittore Mino Argento, il quale ha lavorato sodo in questi altimi tre anni, a fare il punto della situazione con una mostra personale scelta. Forse da qui ad altri tre anni, in questi tempi cosi tesi e ricchi per la pittura, lo stesso artista potra considerate le opere esposte alla Galleria Astrolabio como una premessa, una preistoria; ma a me piece dire intanto che vi sono diverse premese e diverse preistorie, alcune con una diachiarata vis di fututo, altre "sudete" nei facili solfeggi: mi par proprio che Mino Argento sia nato con la camicia del colore, con una certa "grinta" figurativa, tale che gli permetta ogni volta di andare al quadro, di costruire una figura in un ambiente, una visione, un paesagggio, mettendo a frutto un pensiero di pittura, condizione indispensabile per raccogliere poi, da tanti assaggi e abbandoni, qualche cosa di autonomo e di unitario. Non mi sorprende ne mi impensierisee il fatto che l'artista abbia intanto diviso i suoi interessi in dipinti di diversa cadenza culturale: quella di una nobile e quasi fovolistica decorazione di uomini e animali, come ben si avverte nella serie dei bufali; quella di un surrealismo sposato alla nutura; e quella, infine, di creature femminili in ambiente, dove le istanze impressionistiche, nel senso piu largo del termine, gusto e storia, si sposano a quelle espressionare e Lberty. Comun denominatore dei tre gruppi di opere e il fervore pittorico, la fiducia nell'immagine, la ricerca dello stile sempre sorretta da una emozione, il far pittura; e non e poco, proprio in questo 1968, cosi avaro di fiducia e di pazienza nella tavolozza e vel cavlletto, cosi dichiaratamente sperimentale. Lungi da me l'intenzione di porre Mino Argento come un bastian contrario, e peggio, un antidoto dei gusti correnti, la op, la pop, l'arte cinetica, l'arte come spettacolo e via dicendo; ma il fatto che l'arista con la cosapevolezza di una eta non piu verdissima, rimanga legato ai moduli di una sperimentata avaguardia storica, anzi a un suggerimenti che gli sono utili per "movimentare" la sua visione, me lo rende simpatico, per serieta e garazia di un domani. Frechezza e delizia di notazioni, (pagliacci, e donnine, animali, personaggi) si possono registrare, in messe non avara, nel gruppo dei disegni colorati, che e la sua carta da visita, quella attitudine a cordializzare con la immagine, a far bello, che non e pero la furberia di strappare il consenso con il prezioso effetto restando nel piacevole. In questi appunti di quadri, abbozzi di visioni, l'artista ha operato liberamente, lui e il soggetto; e il terzo elemento, il fruitore, e nato dopo, come risultato del suo abbandono: anzi, proprio perche Mino Argento disegna e dipinge "per se", cioe facendo i conti soltanto col sou modo di amare l'immagine, alla fine questi piccoli saggi divento persuasivi e toccanti anche per gli altri. In "Scena Di Caccia"^[3], "Toro Al Mattatoio"^[4], e "La monta"^[5], quadri eseguiti in data meno recente rispetto agli altri, il visitatore podra notare, sia nel modo degli impasti, che nel segno, ritmato, un di piu decorazione favolistica che resterebbe al livello della pura raffinatezza, se anche qui l'artista non vi incendiasse la sua franca tavolozza partenopea, nei gialli cadmi e nigli aranci, facendo passare l'afror belluini nella pantomina. Certo questi animali dai testoni truci e insieme candidi, dalle zampre raccorciate e quasi ridotte a cosa di ceramica, non sono soltanto fantasmi: l'origine e visiva, l'emozione e captata da un dato della realta, da un ricordo preciso, anche se alquato affatturato; perche-questa e una osservazione che credo valida per tutta l'arte di Argento- mai il pittore arriva alla visione direttamente, lasciando nudo il dato realistico; il suo realismo e sempre compromesso, alleato e innalzato nel gusto di una nobili decorazione, di cui si carica, e dentro cui scarica l'eccesso documentario. Il momento di maggior frizione fra realta oggettiva e modichiamoto surrealiste- che sono di poco successive a quelle della bestie- "La pupazza"^[6], quella donna manichino, sonoramente dipinta, confortata da larghe schegge di paesaggio, in una composizione perseguita con tenacia, in una pennellataquasi vetrina, ma non calligrafica, "Il foglio bianco"^[7], un "particolare" ambientale esterno, dove l'artista viaggia su elementi archiettonici Liberty, Senza che questi perdano il loro valore di prospettive surrealiste, e "La Grande Bestia"^[8] quel singolare gatto a strisce bianche e nere, lungo e invadente quanto il paesaggio, un animale paesaggiato, che proviene e si estende fino all'orizzon. Immagini arrischiate, queste, fuori della ortodossia della fugura allo studio più o meno rivestita di modi espressionisti e Liberty, ma tale che il frutto di fantasia, l'invenzione pittorica, non cada fuori dell'orto. Se questi gruppo di opere e diversi dalle altre, non mi pare che le contraddica, almeno nella tensione e nella necessita; forse alcuni potranno trovarvi un certo sforzo nella contruzione, una fatica a metter su un'immagine che diventi scena, che sia condotta come pensiero; ma nella misura in cui questa immagine canta- e mi pare che "La Grande Bestia"^[9] sia un dipinto ineccepibile per la sua coerenza- si puo concludere che Argento persegua in questa esperienza la massima ampieza di incontri con l'avanguardia storica. Il gruppo della donne giacenti "Donna Col Drappo Giallo"^[10], "Bagnanti"^[11], "Sul Tappeto Giallo"^[12], "Ragazza Sul Letto"^[13], "Figura Giacente"^[14], "Donna Accovacciata"^[15] e quello che raggiunge maggiori risultati pittorici nella misura impressionismo- Liberty, ora con un andante realistico, dove l'amore muliebre e sovrano, ora con uno sguardo più divertito, non mai verso gli amatissimi modelli, ma verso le implicazioni dell'ambiente, ricche di dettagli decorativi, di campiture, di collages, di scomparti, che ricordano quelli di Leonardo Cremonini. Ma mentre in Cremonini la figura e assorbita e come indiversificata dall'ambiente- una congiura che fanno le cose sulle persone- qui, nel più acerbo ma vitale Argento, la figura resta sovrana; si decora, si complica in vestagli, in panneggi, diventa una dea del riposo e del relax, in una situazione tanto composta e solitaria, quanto allusiva della presenza dell'uomo. Molte di queste figura paiono piuttosto in fiduciosa attesa del partner, che segretarie d'azienda arrivate a posar la schiena rotta sui drappi e sui drappi e sui divani delle nonne: voglio dire che la donna non e più un semplice oggetto di comtemplazione, di fruizione, una cosa di carne per la congiura dei sensi, riesce tuttavia a presentarla come femmina, teneramente e puntigliosmente decorata, per piacere. Circola nelle visioni private di Argento un sano ed equilibrato fervore sessuale, una simpatia quasi paterna per l'altro sesso, di cui coglie stanchezze e compostezze, languori e impennate, a simbolo di quella eterna grazia e disponibilita che fanno della donna- malgrado il progresso, la parita dei diritti, la psicoanalisi, le personalita- l'eterna compagna dell'amore, coi suoi riti, le sue necessitate e soavi differenze.(Galleria Astrolabio Arte, Rome)^[16]

Estratto dalla presentazione fatta da Marcello Venturoli per la personale del pittore Mino Argento, tuneta alla Galleria Astrolabio nel giugno 1968:

...quel singolare gatto a strisce bianche e nere, lungo e invadente quanto il paesaggio, un animale paesaggiato, "La Grande Bestia"^[17], che proviene e si estende fino all'orizzonte. Immagini arrischiate, questa, fuori dell'ortodossia della figura allo studio piu o meno rivestita di modi impressionisti o liberty, ma tale che il frutto di fantasia,l'invezione pittorica, non cada fuori dell'orto, e mi pare che "La Grande Bestia", sia un dipinto ineccepibile per la sua coerenza, e si puo concludere che Argento in queste esperienze persegua la massima ampiezza di incontri con l'avanguardia storica... ...il gruppo della donne giacenti e quello che raggiunge maggiori risultati pittorici nella misura Impressionismo-liberty, ora con un andante realistico, dove l'amore muliebre e sovrano, ora con uno sguardo piu divertito, non mai verso gli amatissimi modelli, ma verso le implicazioni dell'ambiente, ricche di dettagli decorativi, di campiture, di collages, di scomparti (quasi la congiura che fanno le cose sulle persone). Ma per Argento la figura rimane sovrana; si decora, si complica in vestiglie, in panneggi, diventa una dea del riposo e del relax, in una situazione tanto composta e solitaria, quanto allusiva della persenza dell'uomo. Voglio dire che se l'artista mostra di avvertire anche in questi quadri che la donna non e piu un semplice oggetto di contemplazione, di fruizione, una cosa di carne per la congiura dei sensi, riesce tuttavia a presentaria come femmina, teneramente e puntigliosamente decorata per piacere. Circola, nelle visione private di Argento, un sano ed equilibrato fervore sessuale, una simpatia quasi paterna per l'altro sesso, di cui coglie stanchezze e compostesse, Ianguori e impennate, a simbolo di quella eterna grazia e disponibilita che fanno della donna - malgrado il progresso, la parita dei diritti, la psicoanalisi, le personalita l'eterna compagna dell'amore, con i suoi riti, le sue necessitate e soavi defferenze.(Galleria Astrolabio, Roma, Crane & Korchin Gallery, New York).^[18]

Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Can a painter's strong and original oevre be diminished by the advent of his imitators? Quite possibly. The legion of painters who have produced works a-la-Renoir, who have mistaken his gentility for sweetness, who have seized his colors and transformed them into saccharine cosmetics, have all aided in degrading his genius. This phenomenon dramatically emphasizes the fact that certain seminal voices in art do more damage than would be thought possible. Historically, Renoir (1841–1919), was a rebel-a-gentle one, to be sure. He was among the first of the Impressionists to paint out of doors, although his Impressionism was never as diffuse as that of, say. Monet's. Renoir liked to give a tangible aspect to his subjecs. While drenching his subject matter in light and air, he never subjugated form and contour to a point of dissolution. Indeed, Renoir's figures, still-life and landscapes resound with a sense of the sculptural. In masterpieces such as "The Champs Elysees: Exposition Universelle of 1867," "Dance at Bougival," or "Young Woman in Blue," the edicts of Impressionism are nothing if not undermined. It is in his handling and choice of color that Renoir was a true and uncompromising Impressionist. The very substance of pigment was treated impressionistically not, however, subject matter. Thus, Renoir was first and foremost a colorist, the inventor of a palette that, for all its transparency and seductiveness, produced an effect of oceanic misunderstanding. Generations of subsequent painters attempted to imitate the inimitable. Needless to say, the results where disastrous, and , inexplicably injurious to Renoir himself. Other misunderstanding fallowed. The informal, lyrically off hand expressions found on the faces of Renoir' models, began to be translate into the most inane cliches. Insipid, poorly drawn portraits emerged with regularity as they continue to emerge this day, and pseudo-Renoir bathers, empty faced children, and family groups began to clutter the walls of a gullible public in search of "lovely color," and easy-to-digest art. Renoir's mastery was diluted to a point of no return. The present loan exhibition for the benefit of the Association of Mentally lll Children, is a lesson in the contrast between what has for years been rammed down the throats of an unsophisticated and easily-fooled "art appreciator" and the genuine article. The basic nobility and untrammelled sincerity of Renoir's work shines in unimpeded clarity.(Wildenstein. 19 E. 64th. William H. Bailey. The still-life a its most pristine and pure is celebrated by Bailey, an artist of extraordinary craft and icy vision. Jugs, pitchers, candlesticks, bowls and eggs are placed in frozen immobility upon solid surfaces, and against empty, densely painted walls. The effect is riveting. It is the precision that stuns- and the clarity, with its overtones of something veiled and inherently sinister. The objects seem possessed of some magic inner life yearning to be released. Equally disquieting are Bailey's compositions. it is as if the objects had arranged them-selves-that no human hand had, in fact, ever handled them. Among the still lifes, one painting is of a nude. but she is a still life as well. The nude is devoid of human life. She has been hypnotized and put under a spell. She too is waiting for something or someone to return her among the living. A bizarre and fascinating show.(Schoelkopif. 825 Madison AVe). Mino Argento. A new Gallery. A new Painter. The gallery is elegant in the extreme a reconverted townhouse, and so are the paintings. These are Geometric Abstractions that could be called "White-on White," with their delicate, yet boldly differentiated forms and textures. One can see Argento's mind and hand attempting something different with him the geometric genre. At times he succeeds, at others, he merely echoes the deja-vu syndromes of shape within shape and closed hued tonality. Still, one is in the presence of a genuine artist, one who has a most felicitous affinity for making the most out of self-imposed limitations of form and color. If at the moment, elegance overrides depth it may be a passing phase. There are enough sings here to indicate that the best is yet to come.(Livingstone-Patricia Learmonth Gallery. 178 E. 72th) John MacWhinnie. The Most spectacular painting in this show by a Long Island artist is a 36-food-long canvas which seems to tell the story of his life. It is a painting of the artist's studio, its interior, and the landscape outside of it. Populating this vast space are the artist's friends assorted studio paraphernalia, pets, and, MacWhinnie himself. It is a cosmos shown in sequential order, and painted in flat, joyous color, offering an engrossing panorama of sunny activity and mood. There is something very young and almost primitive in this work, as though MacWhinnie's view of his world were one long enthralled gaze into total happiness. Smaller works center on other artist's studios, notably those of Willem De Kooning whit the master himself duly present, and Roy Lichtenstein. A series of sketchy still lifes and landscapes are not worthy of inclusion in this otherwise limpid show.(Borgenicht. 1018 Madison Ave). Ann McCoy. What to make of these intensely complicated and wondrous underwater seascapes, all done with colored pencil on acrylic coated paper? They have the look of maps charting mysterious territories. The aqueous regions emerge out of a calligraphic tour-de-force, hours upon hours spent in the pursuit of an imagery that recalls Oriental master. And yet, given the breathtaking sense of concentration, the mist and magic of each work, the insistent element of the submerged and hazy produces an inexplicable ennui. Gazing upon these drawings, an unshakable sinking feeling rises to the surface. Once gets drowsy. One feels like the man on the sled resisting sleep and death in some polar snow storm. Clearly, McCoy's art has a singular, mesmeric quality.(Fourcade Droll Inc, 36 E. 75th St) Hyde Solomon. Solomon continues in his pursuit of recording the miracles of changing seas and skies, bringing air, light and color into symphonic focus, and giving poetic substance to an age-old theme. By now, Solomon's style is so familiar, so expert and so refined, that it may perhaps be time to move on to other things. A subject treated with love, and brought to such satisfying ends might, in a perverse sense, cease to enlighten or illuminate. Be that as it may, the works on view are never less than commanding, and, as always with this artist, awash in feeling.(Poindexter. 24 E. 84th)^[19] [[Image:|thumb|left|353px|New York, 1973 Oil, Acrylic and Gesso, Grids, Pencil Lines 50" x 50", Private Collection]]

A large group show of artist not seen at OK Harris Gallery previously provided a refreshing change of pace. Mino Argento’s four white-on-white paintings were variations on the gridded, rectangle-on-rectangle themes, but were enlivened with differences in rhythm and conception. One composition included grayed grids and vertical rectangles in several, more opaque whites, clustered centrally. The keen sense of proportion, the sense of angularity about the rectangles, and the cracked paint within one of them that looked like a natural grid contributed to make this painting a finely tuned, complex example of the genre. Ron Jackson showed mixed media compositions that were tracked directly to the wall. Narrow strips of various, thin materials in indistinct whites and grayed colors were arranged in spacious, linear works. The nature of the lines appeared to be close to that of painting gestures, but in large, far-flung, expansive movements. In addition, each piece seemed to define its own rectangular perimeter, relating it to a painting’s rectangular support. The painting references inherent in the gestures and shapes of Jackson’s works indicate that his break from more traditional painting modes has not been complete. His compositions, however, are filled with potential, especially in terms of color and texture, and could evolve in a number of interesting directions.^[20]

Mino Argento Abstractions worked out in shapes of white, upon which crisp geometric patterns are incised with a pencil.^[21] Agnes Martin Her pictures are quite formal; areas are drawn with pencil and then colored. The canvases have been prepared with a flat white ground (Gesso). Thin lines bisect modular rectangles in some canvases at a midpoint. But all description fails to explain the meditative emanations of Martin's paintings.^[22]

Development of the Brand Name

Since beginning in 1970, Ms. Bach has carefully chosen the locations of her studios and designed them with impeccable style and function. For instance, the Bridgehampton studio is a converted 150-year-old barn where she modernized it as a contemporary studio complete with soundproofed walls, all while preserving the integrity and character of the original post and beams. Harmonizing with nature, she lets in fresh air and light using sliding glass doors that extend out to wooden decks. A large canopy shading rustic chairs and picnic tables overlooking the surrounding meadow adorns the outside waiting are.

Ms. Bach's best friend, the multi-talented Mino Argento, with his rare insights, has been an enormous influence on the success of the Lotte Berk Method. In honor of his artistic talents, the office, formerly on of Argento's art studios, is ornamented by massive, phenomenal oil canvases and wood paintings by Argento himself. Other artifacts include a three-seater, wood-carved swing from Northern India, and crotched Brazilian hammocks as well as a half dozen sofas...but there is no desk.[1]

Mino Argento’s latest works appear, from a distance and at first glance, to be blowups of particularly exquisite textbook diagrams: one charting the progress through space of a heavenly body, another representing the corollary to a principle of thermodynamics, while yet another seems to predict seismological disturbance. Closer examination, however, reveals that nothing in these lyrical gray and white paintings will give out even elementary information about velocity; nothing whatever is being represented save an elegant fancy, nothing is predicted but the continuance of possibilities. With this last realization we are drawn, willy-nilly, into the realm of the metaphysical.

Argento has utilized the visual clichés of phenomenological communication to enunciate the painter’s traditional concerns-form, light, illusion. Further, he has employed the techniques of illusion to smother illusion, thereby defining himself in the role of Mephisto, the jester of universal myth, timely harbinger of the dozing zeitgeist a self-effacing satirist of conceptualist theory. ( In that context, Argento’s self- effacement is manifested by his straightforward denial to his canvases of either names or numerals; the responsibility for identification, he has explained, is better left to one’s audience,) Meanwhile, continued exposure to his work evokes a strong sensation that an ambitious minor deity is hard at play here, for even as one’s eye travels across the picture plane, light sources are being relocated, shadows are lengthening, and perspectives are receding. One recalls, momentarily, the tense urban landscapes of de Chirico, but back there, so to speak, the fevered corporeal color harmonies too often deliver one up to sentimentality. A recollection of The Battle of San Romano is much more helpful, for there it is time that has been stopped, the more accurately to experience Paolo Uccello conflicting emotions; whereas in de Chirico it is the emotions that have been stopped, the more comfortably to observe time. In Argento’s still life (for, almost all appearances to the contrary, that is indeed what they are), light itself has become deranged, causing us to meditate at very source of our illusions. It is, of course, no more that a trick of the light, but that is what it has ever been: Refraction. Pre-Abrahamic totems employed a stylized rainbow to signify Man’s receiving of enlightenment from the Deity; one remembers how His Will later came to be represented by a shaft of clear sunlight transforming Mary from maiden to Madonna. “Greater that man,” Paul Eluard has written, “is the beauty of man,’ and beauty without enlightenment is unimaginable- and without freedom is beyond any possibility.

As pivotal as Argento’s concern with the play of light is his evident infatuation with the geometrical figure of the square- with its form, and with emotions to be Inferred from it. Of all configurations, the squares is the most instantly recognizable for its having no source in the organic; it is a purely human inventions, at once rigid yet, in the necessarily precarious balance of its equal components, desperately vulnerable to fragmentation.

At the beginnings of civilization, the square needed to be invented- and toyed with, in the form of cube before discovering within it the prehistoric form of the wheel: the circle. There is a very recent Argento painting in which a row of cubes, apparently moving a long on an invisible conveyor belt, is coming to rest immediately above a perfectly identical row. Above and at either side of this central image are suggestions of walls and screens, all more or less obscured by mistiness, a powdery application of gesso, the constituent of the cubes themselves. It is at this point that Argento may forgive us for zeroing in on a clue to the specific: Is this his rendering of a far distant race memory, the way in which, for instance, the pyramids came to be built, where the raw material of the structure evolved into the mechanics by which similar enterprises came about in the future? Or are we, at this point in time, to interpret the physical effect of mistiness the deliberate fragmentation and obscuring of the image elsewhere a seemingly endless vista of virgin grid as representing no less that visible breath of a concerned creator? But such a show of emotion, if this is indeed what we may expect, penetrating light of annunciation.

Until his arrival (1969) in New York City, eight years ago, Mino Argento was content to be classified as a figurative painter. He left Italy because of his unwillingness to continue painting the specific, which he felt to be a concept inherent in Europe. America, though, seemed to him to manifest the notion of the infinitely self-perpetuating hypothesis. It is this very multiplicity of possibilities, the richness of ambiguity simultaneously asserted, which identifies the subject matter of Argento’s art and constitutes its aesthetic. (Betty Parsons Gallery)^[23]

A gradual progression of planes, moving from an indeterminate gray background to self-assertion in opaque white smack on the surface of the canvas this is the special sort of spatial pressure that Mino Argento creates. These canvases in which geometric forms, squares, arcs, and lines that look like architect’s notations are finely pressed together in a confined area, as tightly cohesive as the layers of flaky pastry, convey a sense of sparse purity. No lines or forms are extraneous; the application of the paint itself, the juxtapositions of elements all work towards a tense, Euclidean harmony. Argento applies an acrylic gesso to prepared canvas, sometimes so thinly brushed that it seems barely to cover the grayish surface of the canvas, or he builds up the white gesso at times adding oil paint, until it could almost be mistaken for collage. The varying thickness of drawn lines and an unusual sensitivity for the weight of various forms lift these paintings out of the realm of simple geometric constructions into the area of the theoretical. In a sense, these white paintings are philosophical musings on the nature of geometry as pure idea. That such paintings are also arresting to look at seems like an added bonus. Argento’s new works are by no means ascetic; rather they have an almost dreamy quality, partly because the various gesso effects create so many different kinds of light, such a variety of whiteness. Surely this is one of the most interesting shows of the fall season. (Betty Parsons Gallery)^[24]

Argento deals with the ambiguous subtleties of the interplay of positive-negative space. The is more than the mind at first can grasp in these monotone paintings of squares, triangles, arcs and rectangular planes that move with quiet dignity and grace across naturally gray canvases. Working for total chromatic unity, Argento meticulously builds up his delicate surfaces, so fragile that every gesture is critical, with layer upon transparent layer of gesso, carefully balancing the tone values of the medium against the intensity of his pencil line. Using oil, acrylic and occasionally graphite in conjunction with the gesso, these high-key paintings are not about “being white” but are essentially concerned with the absence of color.

Argento’s forms are suspended in fields of light; his surfaces are luminous, sensuous and romantic, as graphite shadows pursue softly floating acrylic squares and squares fan out into translucent planes and moving planes pull apart, their soft, torn edges reaching back to each other. Apparently involved with Pythagorean geometry, Argento- much in the same tradition as Filippo Brunelleschi, Bramante and other Renaissance men- is in reality fascinated by the intensely spiritual beauty of Pythagorean philosophy, with which he so marvelously infuses all of his paintings. (Betty Parsons Gallery)^[25]

The mood that determines this exhibition is ambitious, in that it attempts both to correct an omission and to celebrate the obvious. The omission stems from a past failure to relate the work of two groups of artist working on opposite sides of the Atlantic without contact or influence upon each other yet both equally free or formulated systems or of constituted "Schools". and the evidence postulated is to bring together fourteen painters each offering different yet complementary spatial concepts. though limited the range exhibited suffices to evoke a Comtemporary break both with the geometric language of Minimal art and with optical art. This results in a profound mutation of the pictoral "approach" which has long believed that its Modernism depended on an ascetic attachement to the consistency of the canvas, or on a talented exploration of surface optic possibilities. It is this rupture that is discerned here in what we call spatial concepts, profiles of space and spatial regeneration either by pure Geometrifications without explicit reference to either two, or three dimensionalism, or by chromatic modulations of intensities, intensities which are not presented as intervals of depth but as bursts of energy. "Space" is approached by the analysis of the multiplicity of its characteristics, no longer limited to consideration of the problems presented by pure dimensionalism. Space is no longer coherence but coexistence of heterogenities. A coexistence expressed as clearly in th entire range or canvasses presented, as in indivual works. To call this a revival or illusionism, is to forget that such a definition makes sense only when speaking in terms of representation, and not in situations of intensity and of force rather that of form. The simultaneous development of these studies on both sides of the Atlantic unknown even to the painters involved is the best evidence of their necessity as if the Modernism of pictoral space was ceasing to be found in reference to flatness, to become an exploration of its own intensities.

In the words of Adorno: "All thought has its moment of universality anything well thought out will inevitably be thought of elsewhere by someone else".(Gallerie Doree, Deauville, France).

Jean Allemand, Shusaku Arakawa, Mino Argento, Juhana Blomstedt, Ronald Davis,

Maxime Defert, Michel Gueranger, Patrick Ireland, Nicholas Krushenick, Barry LeVa, Finn Mickelborg, Philippe Morisson, Georges Noel, Frank Stella.^[26]

It’s notoriously difficult to organize a group show of contemporary Italian art, but this has been done here in a remarkably short time. Twenty-eight artists are represented in 50 pieces of sculpture and painting. Especially rewarding is the display of relatively unknown artists: Mino Argento��s restrained geometry in his paintings wars with the infinity of space in the gentle gradations of backgrounds color. Lawrence Calcagno 1962 painting, White Heat, presents fluid but difficult surfaces which suggest both Clyfford Still and Franz Kline. Sculpture for the most part looked far more slick that painting in this exhibition, but Gio Pomodoro enormous bronze slabs in contatti, 1970, gave an authentic sense of excitement and tension. This reviewer was disappointed to discover that almost all the avant-garde of the early 20th century ( such as Marcello Boccacci, Giorgio de Chirico, Marino Marini (sculptor), Giorgio Morandi and Gustavo Foppiani) had been on brief loan from private collections and were already on the way home. (Nardin Gallery New York)^[27]

Leaving behind him the vertiginous monotones of his early canvases, Argento continues his exploration of the ambiguous relationships of dream-like geometries as he pursues the fluctuating squares and cubes and circles that fan out across fields of volatile grids as they meet and interconnect in an eternal conjunction of opposites in a diaphanous world of vaporous realities.

The paintings, now no longer all white, are on the contrary resplendent with glorious color, odes to the endless permutations and delights of luscious mauves, lavenders, and pale blues contrasting with hot red, jonquil and lemon yellow and stark white. His brooding, Byronic surfaces are filled with an ethereal light as though executed with a breath, a warm violet exhalation.

Some of his passages are so delicately discreet they are almost invisible. As in Janus Two Headed^[28] where patterns set up on the one hand begin to break down as they navigate towards the center. The grids, now large, now infinitesimal, move in and out of focus through a soft lavender and shy-blue fog, at times almost invisible and at other times becoming visible through a gentle flux of light and color and sudden changes in texture as lustrous layers of translucent oils interact with dry, tensile, etched lines of pastel and pencil to create a yielding, atmospheric surface, at once delicate and romantic, mercurial and sensuous.

You expect constant delineations, limitations and there are none. The sky is the limit as his shapes float up through a filmy stratosphere of deep blue ether, or as in Fragments of a Paradox^[29], are barely contained within a series of open-ended squares. These heaven bound forms emerge and disappear and there is an anticipation of things as yet unseen to be revealed, but all is not revealed and the key lies forever buried behind his veiled, smokey surfaces.(Betty Parsosn Gallery)^[30]

The Remarkable Betty Parsons "She's been at the center of the modern art movement since the '20s, has known everyone and seen everything and remains a remarkable talent scout, with the ability to encourage her artists to outdo themselves.(Cover Art dealer Betty Parsons in her gallery (1979) with artist works whom she represents. Mino Argento, Ruth Vollmer, Stephen Porter, Michael Malpass. Photograph by Lisl Steiner ^[31]

To make metaphysics as accessible as a map of the United States would seem to be a touch assignment for a visual artist, and yet with his new exhibition of paintings, the product of the past two years' work, this is what Mino Argento has done. The accessibility is due to his having separated the symbolic representation of an idea or system (e. g., the grid) from the attitudes that are customarily deployed in its use, and the substitution of those attitudes whit references to the areas which the idea or system was initially developed to bypass. For example, he contrasts the rigidity of calculation and measurement, which must remain within the limits marked off by its solutions, whit that spontaneity of thought which will always escape from even the most carefully considered of its judgments. A fairly typical canvas, Spectrum at 90 degrees depicts a gridded white rectangle superimposed on a patch of that particular blue which evokes both a sunny Southern sky and the blueprint on the wall of an architect's office. In the center of the grid, the colors of the rainbow meet at right angles. Much of the righthand edge of the grid has been partially obscured by the intensity of the blue underpainting, thus creating the illusion of transparency. In Angles of Permanence, a grid dissolves into a hazy purple background of illusionistically painted cubes. The canvas is divided horizontally by a sharply ruled line that traverses the upperthird section of cubes and aligns itself precisely with a section of the two-dimensionally rendered grid. The illusionary effect of the horizontal slice has been to displace the units of measurement implicit both in the cubes and in the grid, and by this displacement to cause a double row of superimposed squares to diverge from the horizontal and appear to fly off the canvas at angles ranging from 40 degrees to 60 degrees. In both of these works, as in Construction of Three Alternatives,^[32] the mind and hand of the artist is made as implicit as the unseen photographer in a formal wedding picture. In his essay "Vicissitudes of the Square," Harold Rosenberg noted, "Painting squares is now no different from painting trees or clowns; the question of the feeling they convey becomes all-important." Argento conveys feeling by means of his play with perspectives, with units of measurement, with directional symbols, with modes of calculation, and with vectors of suggested light. He creates illusions of refraction, causing the spectator to look at his squares and rectangles, his color spectra and concentric circles, from a multiplicity of viewpoints. He juxtaposes areas of pure saturated color with areas where the colors have fused, areas of haziness with areas of clarity, areas of transparency with areas that are apparently solid. As the spectator adjusts his or her vision to each viewpoint in turn, his perception changes with it. Each viewpoint dramatized by the artist remains separate and each is seen in combination. It is almost inevitable that we find ourselves comparing Argento's use of geometric modules and configuratios with that of the Minimalists of the past decade; and if we do, we are bound to recognize this paradox: (Painting) Whereas the minimalist discipline was purported to manifest distance between thought and feeling by depriving the artwork of any sensory components, that discipline, in fact, drew out the feelings of the spectator and brought him or her closer. Argento, on the other hand, whose current work evolved out of a six-year period devoted to monochromatic reductionism, has the contrary effect. Argento dramatizes distance by the recognition of affirmations and denials with in the same picture plane. This particular effect was identified by Theodor Adorno, when he wrote that "distance is not a safety zone, but a field of tension. It is manifested not in relaxing the claim of ideas to truth, but in delicacy and fragility of thinking." this characteristic may be best appreciated if Argento's paintings are considered for what I believe they are: a valid Contemporary form of the traditional still life. Historically, the still life may be interpreted as having dramatized the distance between the organic in various stages between bloom and decay, represented by, for example, fruit and the flowers and a slaughtered hare; and in the manmade by a pitcher of water, a leather-bound book, or carefully unfolded table linen. It was the artist's arbitrary juxtaposition arragement of objects that created the field of tension. Argento now has chosen to represent the disparate elements of contemporary existence with the vocabulary of the calculating mind. Conventions of measurement and systems of calculation have taken the place of the fruit and flowers, the books and the bibelots of former times. Thus, by treating ideas as if they were palpable objects, by subjecting them to chiaroscuro and the techniques of the traditional still life painter, he has made metaphysics accessible not only to the mind but to the eye; not only to conjecture but to aesthetic enjoyment. He has also shown the spectator that by creating a rare separation between the two, it is possible to perceive each independently of tho other.(Betty Parsons)^[33]

"Mino Argento's checkerboard-strewn^[34] abstractions are an '80s version of the lightweight sensibility of those School of Paris painters who embroidered on the big guys' themes. He specializes in geometric shapes with cloudy edges, expanses of industrial gray touched up with bright-and-airy candy-colored backgrounds. There's a slight bow in the chic direction of architecture (mitered-frame shapes, graph-ruled passages and even the suggestion of a facade or two). It all works best when the shapes are crisp, smartly patterned and manageably small. (April Sgro-Riddle Gallery)^[35]

Solo Exhibition

• 1965, Condotti Gallery, Rome, Italy. ("Umanita e Construttivismo di Mino Argento" by Giuseppe Fabbri, Bussola, (February, 1965)^[36]
• 1966 Realschule Gallery, vaduz. Principality of Lichtenstein^[37]
• 1974, October 28, Meet The Artist, Livingston-Learmonth Gallery, New York City.^[38]

Group Exhibition

• 1965, Burckardt Gallery, Rome^[39]
• 1968, Porfirius Gallery, Rome^[40]
• 1975, Group Exhibition, O.K. Harris Gallery Mino Argento and Ron Jackson (among others).^[41]
• 1977, Dec 20-Dec 31, Group Exhibition, Betty Parsons Gallery. Mino Argento, Calvert Caggeshall, Minoru Kawabata, Richard Tuttle, Ruth Vollner and Robert Yasuda (among others).^[42]
• 1978, Dec 12-Dec 30, Group Exhibition 14, "7 Artistes Americains, 7 Artistes Europeans . Galerie Doree Michel Gueranger et Maire de Deauville Anne d'Ornano.. Casino de Deauville hall et Galerie Doree, Deauville France. Jean Allemand, Shusaku Arakawa, Mino Argento^[43], Juhana Blomstedt, Ronald Davis, Maxime Defert, Michel Gueranger, Patrick Ireland, Nicholas Krushenick, Barry LeVa, Finn Mickelborg, Philippe Morisson, Georges Noel, Frank Stella.^[44]
• 1979-80, Dec 18-Jan 12, Group Exhibition, Betty Parsons Gallery. Mino Argento, Fanny Brennan, Richard Francisco, Richard Tuttle, Ruth Vollmer and Toko Shinoda (among others).^[45]
• 1983, May 25-June 18, Group Exhibition, Betty Parsons Gallery. Mino Argento, Jack Youngerman, David Budd, Calvert Coggshall, Cleve Gray, Lee Hall, Minoru Kawabata, Richard Pousette-Dart, Leon Polk Smith, Hedda Sterne, Ed Zutrau and Sari Dienes (among others).^[46]

General Electric, New York City.^[47] Betty Parsons, New York City.^[48]

• La Tigre, Oil e Collage su Tela, 60x 70 cm, 1968, Private Collection)^[49]

• Donna col Drappo Giallo, 1968, Private Collection)^[50]

• Bagnanti, 1968, Private Collection)^[51]

• Sul Tappeto Giallo, 1968, Private Collection)^[52]

• Ragazza Sul Letto, 1968, Private Collection)^[53]

• Nudo, 1968, Private Collection)^[54]

• Figura Giacente, 1968, Private Collection)^[55]

• Donna Accovacciata, 1968, Private Collection )^[56]

• Beauty Salon, 1968, Private Collection)^[57]

• Donna e Macchina, 1968, Private Collection)^[58]

• Donna e Frutta, 1968, Private Collection)^[59]

• Natura Morta, 1968, Private Collection)^[60]

• Pupazza, 1968, Private Collection)^[61]

• Melanzane, 1968, Private Collection)^[62]

• Il Foglio Bianco, 1968, Private Collection)^[63]

• Scena di Caccia, 1968, Private Collection)^[64]

• Toro al Mattatoio, 1968, Private Collection)^[65]

• La Monta, 1968, Private Collection
• Piccolo Toro n.1, 1968, Private Collection)^[66]

• Piccolo Toro n.2, 1968, Private Collection)^[67]

• La grande Bestia, 1968, Private Collection)^[68]

• Paesaggio, 1968, Private Collection)^[69]
• New York, 1973, Oil Acrylic and Gesso, Grids, Pencil Lines. 50" x 50", Private Collection
• Untitled, 1976, Acrylic on Canvas, 48" X 60", Private Collection
• Untitled, 1977, Acrylic on Canvas, 35 1/2"X 50", Private Collection
• Untitled, 1977, Acrylic on Canvas, 25" x 70", Private Collection
• Untitled', 1978, 1,27 x 1,02 m, Private Collection
• Labyrinthus II, 1978, Oil and Acryic on Canvas, Private Collection
• Fragments of a Paradox, 1979, Oil and Acrylic on Canvas, 57" x 48", Private Collection
• Untitled, 1979, Oil and Acrylic on Canvas, 48"x 40", Private Collection
• Janus Two Headed, 1979, Private Collection
• Construction of Three Alternatives, 1979, Oil and Acrylic on Canvas, 57" x 48", Private Collection
• Untitled, 1986, Oil on canvas, 36" x 60", Private Collection
• Inquietudine Geometria, 1987, Oil on Canvas, 52" x 47",Private Collection

More References

Hall, Lee (1991). Betty Parsons: artist, dealer, collector. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Incorporated. ISBN 0-8109-3712-3 From cover: Betty Parsons at her gallery, 1979. Work by artists she represent. Painting by Mino Argento, Ruth Vollmer wooden sculpture. (Among others). Photograph by Lisl Steiner.[2]

The Lotte Berk Method formerly called Awake! Aware Alive! Exercises for a vital body by Lydia Bach (1980s) "To Mino" ISBN 0-394-70830-X

Ruth Vollmer, 1961-1978: Thinking the Line (Paperback) Nadja Rottner (Editor), Peter Weibel (Editor) ISBN 978-3775717861 page. 220 (Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, Group show 1977-1979-80, Mino Argento, Ruth Vollmer, Richard Tuttle. (Among others)

Getty Union List of Artist Names (Research at the Getty:

• [3]

Mino Argento, Art Appraisal, Artist Paintings:

• [4]

Museum of Modern Art Library, Artist file:

• [5]

Henry Allen Moe Papers:

• [6]

Mino Argento Videos:

• [7]

Mino Argento, Marcello Venturoli 1968:

• [8]

Betty Parsons:

• [9]

Development of the Brand Name: Mino Argento And Lydia Banch, 1970:

• [10]

Marcello Venturoli Biography:

• [11]

General Electric, New York:

• Rockefeller Center