Un pezzo di carne come un pezzo di cielo, 1960

Mattia Moreni was one of the outstanding significant artists in post-war Italy. Born in the northern Italian city of Pavia, he began his studies at the Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti in Turin in 1940 and soon joined the antifascist resistance. His works were created as a result of his inner turmoil; he used shapes and colours as a means of depiction to visualise abstract experiences, which reveal previously hidden associations. Moreni worked in an informal way with spontaneous applications of paint, although objects or landscapes remain recognisable as starting points of the picture. His picture titles often give an indication of these pictorial occasions and the associations triggered by them. At times, his titles seem somewhat quirky and cryptic, as in the work included in the Reinhard Ernst Collection: Un pezzo di carne come un pezzo di cielo. This translates as A piece of meat like a piece of heaven.

Mattia Moreni took part in the first and second Biennales of São Paolo in the 1950s, became a founding member of the Italian Gruppo degli Otto in 1952, was acquainted with the French art critic Michel Tapié and had contact with CoBrA members, whose concept of art also characterised the European post-war period (works of CoBrA members Pierre Alechinsky, Else Alfelt and Karel Appel are included in the Reinhard Ernst Collection). In addition, Moreni took part in various international exhibitions such as documenta I and II in Kassel, but also repeatedly at the Venice Biennale with his own hall. Of great importance in Moreni’s exhibition history is also his participation in the forward-looking »International Painting 1960-61« show in the Deutschordensschloss in Wolframs-Eschenbach in the summer of 1961.