To mark the artist’s ninetieth birthday this year, Magazzino Italian Art presents Lucio Pozzi: Qui dentro / In here, a selection of some 30 paintings, sculptures, and constructions in a wide range of mediums and dimensions from throughout the artist’s long career.
Curated by David Ebony, the show focuses on Pozzi’s most rigorous abstract works, which are often aligned with the precepts of Italian Arte Povera as well as to American Minimalism. Highlights include the curvilinear metal relief sculptures Elbow (1963), and reductive compositions form The Level Group, of the early 1970s—refined monochrome paintings with dense surfaces and precisionist brushwork. Other series: Turnovers, Gravity pieces, and Relocation works, are well represented in the show. In each Relocation work, a section of the painted-wood panel is removed and reattached in another area of the composition, creating unexpected spatial relationships and visual puzzles, as well as offering viewers a highly personal meditative experience.
A large, prime example of the artist’s acclaimed Rag Rug series, The Darkness of the Soul (1996), is one of the show’s highlights. Two works containing photographic elements hang from the ceiling; Portrait of a Self (1999) features a photo of the artist’s face suspended on a metal chain tied with nylon ropes in his signature four colors: blue, yellow, green and red. Ebony’s Lamp (2024-2025) is an installation in which four colored lights on long black wires illuminate four photos of crowds placed on the floor. Suggestive of community, social harmony, and common purpose, this contemplative work emits a hopeful tone in troubled times.
A rarely exhibited sculpture on view, Quartet (1984), with four distinct components (Messenger, Cosmic Cinema, Catskill Sunset 1 and Catskill Sunset 2) reflects Pozzi’s ongoing correspondence with Modernist sculpture as well as his communion with the natural environment of the Mid-Hudson Valley, where he lives and works for part of the year.
Improvisation has always been a hallmark of Pozzi’s art, and he uses a method he invented called The Inventory Game—a lexicon in the form of a grid, listing many materials and techniques from which to choose in making the artwork. Improvisation guided his installation of multicomponent works such as Diaspora (2018) with its myriad colorful painted-wood elements scattered along the wall, and Sumsix (2021), with a series of six monochromatic white Relocation pieces soaring skyward, help activate the expansive wall. And Lean On Me (2024), composed of two towering wood beams with upper areas painted in the four colors—blue, yellow, green and red—will further activate the impressive cathedral-like space of Gallery 8.
Hung high on the rear wall, a rectangular arrangement of four bright Triangles-Red (1969), have outlined a void in past exhibitions. Here, they frame a colorful untitled, multipaneled Cutting (2002), which conveys a radiant icon in a lofty, hallowed space.
Providing a dramatic crescendo to the exhibition are two monumental canvases comprised of colorful irregular geometric forms: The Open Gates of Spring (Persephone), and Visitation (both 2023) may be encountered as viewers exit the space.
On a wall between them, as a counterpoint to the two monumental canvases, a trio of three small, delicate watercolors painted in Greece, Italy and the U.S., respectively, are the shows denouement as well as an indication of the vast and thrilling body of figurative works that Pozzi has produced over the years.
Lucio Pozzi
Lucio Pozzi, born in 1935 in Milan, Italy, is an influential artist who has worked across various media and artistic approaches. After studying architecture and managing a graphic design workshop in Rome, he moved to the United States in 1962, initially attending the Harvard International Summer Seminar before settling in New York City. A dual citizen, Pozzi now divides his time between studios in Hudson, NY, and Valeggio sul Mincio, Verona, Italy.
Pozzi is a pioneer of multidisciplinary art-making, often presenting works in multiple mediums within the same exhibition. His early videotapes were showcased in 1978 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, one of the first solo exhibitions in the Projects: Video series. That same year, Pozzi exhibited watercolor landscapes at the John Weber Gallery, a space known for Conceptualism, where he had previously installed large painted walls and photographs with fragmented elements.
Pozzi's work has been shown in major museums and galleries worldwide, including Documenta 6 (1977) and the Venice Biennale (1980). His multi-show exhibitions took place at venues such as the University of Massachusetts, Kunsthalle Bielefeld, and a three-gallery show in New York in 1984. Additionally, he has occasionally written and taught at institutions such as Cooper Union, Yale, and Princeton. Pozzi’s work is held in major collections worldwide, and his contributions to art have cemented his reputation as a pioneering figure in contemporary art.
