From the «occasion of colour» to «absolute space»: the madness of painting. Michele Cossyro (1970-1985)

Abstract

A painter and sculptor, Michele Cossyro is an artist who can hardly be traced back to the more transitory directions of abstract art. The essay examines the first fifteen years of the artist’s activity, which, from the first paintings of the 1970s to the sculpture-paintings of the mid-1980s, was articulated through identifiable series of works that contributed to the definition of abstract language and, at the same time, to the search for an installation dimension. The abstract works - which the artist conceived as “metaphors” of reality - are read in relation to their inherent meanings and by investigating possible visual models that, at times, also proved to be the privileged references for a concrete action on the gallery space. In particular, the exhibitions held at the Cortina Palmieri Gallery in Milan (1976), at the Artivisive Gallery in Rome (1978) and the Ezio Pagano Gallery in Bagheria (1985) are analysed as exemplary stages of a path in which linguistic experimentation supports and relaunches the ambition of environmental extension.