Glenda Cinquegrana Art Consulting is proud to present
From 15th to 29th April 2023.
“Drawings save me, they appear in my sleep, and when I wake up, the pencil takes my hand and I follow it confidently to a beneficial destination, a constellation.” (Lisa Ponti)
Glenda Cinquegrana Art Consulting is proud to present an OVR dedicated to Lisa Ponti by the title of “Lisa Ponti: Poetic Dreamness, Rapid Touch”. The OVR, running from April 15th to 29th, 2023 focuses on the childlike, poetic dreaminess of her work, characterized by a rapid touch that strikes the page exclusively in the A4 format.
Lisa Ponti, daughter of the renowned architect and designer Gio Ponti, was born in Milan in 1922. She spent her childhood in Gio Ponti’s home at Via Brin in Milan, where Giorgio de Chirico was a frequent guest. After obtaining a degree in Philosophy, she worked as an artist, editor, critic, and writer, with a central role on the editorial team of the Italian design magazine, Stile (1941-1946). Ponti additionally worked as editor-in-chief at the architectural journal Domus (1940-1979), where she oversaw art coverage during the postwar period until 1986. Gio Ponti published a book of her poetry titled Gio Ponti agli Amici (1941), filled with illustrations by Giorgio Morandi, de Chirico, Arturi Tosi, and others. She also published a book of fables recounting the stories she had created to entertain her younger sister during the war called L’armadio magico (1946).
Lisa Ponti had begun drawing while still working at Domus, however, her first solo exhibition did not take place until 1992, when Ponti was 70 years old. Her work possesses a child-like, poetic dreaminess, with her touch characterized by a rapidity that strikes the page exclusively in the A4 format. In her work, both words and text intertwine graphically and ironically with the rapid gestures surrounding the profiles of cherub-like creatures. Her characters serve as companions through hope and distress. The underlying competition between drawing and watercolors on the white surface is enhanced by her use of a wide range of materials and tools including newspaper pages, personal photographs, markers and paint brushes, cotton and wadding, and stickers or sketches on paper. For Ponti, drawing serves as a means of containing an inner dream or apparition into a single moment, claiming a private space or intimate location on the page.
