Pavia, 1920 – Brisighella, 1999

Mattia Moreni was born in Pavia in 1920. He travelled frequently with his family, following his father, a cavalry officer. He settled in Turin and studied at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin, where he developed a language that proposed introspective images with expressionist accents. In Turin he had his first solo exhibition at Galleria La Bussola in 1946. In 1948 he made his debut at the Venice Biennale, where he was a regular participant until 1956 and then 1960 and in 1972.

After his fauve-expressionist beginnings that were purely figurative, he approached post-cubist solutions reworking Picasso and Léger. In 1952 he joined the Gruppo degli Otto, founded by Lionello Venturi, with Afro, Renato Birolli, Antonio Corpora, Giuseppe Santomaso, Ennio Morlotti, Giulio Turcato and Emilio Vedova. Proposing abstract-concrete forms, the artists were open to the novelties circulating in Europe, leaving behind the figurative to embrace an abstract poetics. Moreni thus orientated his painting towards informal art even after the break-up of the group in 1954, his canvases are characterised by a disruptive and gestural visual language that enhances the pictorial material.

In the following decades his painting moved in other directions, such as the ‘Angurie’ and ‘Pellicce’ series, followed by the ‘Atrofiche’ and ‘grandi Marilù’ painting cycles, which explore the decadence of the human species through powerful images with a vivid impact.

He died in 1999 in Brisighella, the town where he had settled since the mid-1960s.