Art Gallery: Pordenone Montanari, An Italian Discovery

Our culture is hungry for stories of buried treasure, for the lost archive. So when something of startling value is brought blinking into the light after many years, it answers a romantic urge. Of course it doesn’t happen much any more, not in a digitised e-culture in which, like Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, you really can put a girdle round the Earth in no time at all. Something interesting has just cropped up in Italy, mind.

An artist called Pordenone Montanari put his house in Piedmont on sale. The name won’t mean anything. Montanari, now in his seventies, had been exhibited only once in his long life, when the entire show was bought by three Italian banks. He was reportedly so dispirited by the commodification of his work that he decided to work entirely outside the commercial milieu. With his wife he retreated behind the facade of a three-storey villa, deep in the countryside of Biella, and worked. He became such a recluse that the council had no idea anyone was living there.

After 18 years the house and gardens became too big to manage and he sold it to an Indian businessman who was married to an Italian and lived in the area. The house was covered with murals, the gardens bulging with sculptures (pictured right). The buyer was overwhelmed enough by the work to buy Montanari’s entire archive with the help of outside investment. Some of the vast collection is now on display at the Italian Cultural Institute in London. Hermetically locked away from contact with contemporary developments, Montanari’s figurative style betrays elements of older influences: Picasso, Chagall, Matisse, perhaps a slice of Bacon. Is he, as some are alleging, a lost genius? See what you make of the selection in this gallery.

1. Figura in piedi con tavola apparecchiata (1993)
2. Colline a Kalda (1990)
3. Ritratto di Signora (1989)
4. Ritratto della Signora Valvolini (1989)
5. Valentino come giocatore di bilardo (1989)
6. Le Due Cuginette (2000)
7. Il Balcone (2007)
8. Figura in piedi con tavola apparecchiata (1993)
9. Affresco

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• Pordenone Montanari, An Italian Discovery at the Italian Cultural Institute, 39 Belgrave Square, London SW1 until 6 October