Osvaldo Mariscotti

Upsilon Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of seminal works by Osvaldo Mariscotti titled Leitmotif. The show features new paintings and a sculpture by the artist.

Osvaldo Mariscotti’s art is an art of fundamentals: color, line, and the possibilities inherent in their variation and repetition. Using this economy of means, Mariscotti creates an expressive world that draws on sources as diverse as nature, classical music, and the early pioneers of abstraction.

Reductive in means but expansive in effect, Mariscotti’s painting is best situated in the tradition of the early abstractionists. In the first decades of the twentieth century, artists Kasimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian each sought to reduce painting to its essential elements. The developed abstract styles, “Suprematism” and “Neo-Plasticism” respectively, that facilitated the clearest expression of universal aesthetic principles. The original language of abstraction—Malevich’s forms floating through space, and Mondrian’s exclusive use of flat planes bounded by horizontal and vertical lines—finds an entirely new and contemporary reimagining in Mariscotti’s work.

Through all the works featured, it becomes clear that while Mariscotti’s painterly method is deliberate, the results are never systematic. The flexibility of his art allows him to translate motifs across media, as his work in printmaking and sculpture demonstrates.

The works in Leitmotif evince the themes consistent through Mariscotti’s art: color, line, emotion, and time. Like a composer, Mariscotti develops these themes through an array of variations of a wide dramatic range: sometimes solemn, occasionally serene, oftentimes playful, always generously expressive.

Mariscotti has exhibited with prominent galleries internationally, and his work is included in major collections around the world including the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome; the Department of State, Washington, DC; the UBS Art Collection; the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, MD; the Asheville Art Museum; the Tampa Museum of Art; and the John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL, among many others.