The Directors of Marlborough Fine Art are delighted to announce their forthcoming exhibition of Daniela Gullotta’s new paintings inspired by the famous engravings of Rome by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778).

For this exhibition, the artist has worked with oil and mixed media on wood, damask, canvas and slate, resulting in some spectacular architectural paintings.  Vittoria Coen writes in her admirable introduction to the catalogue entitled Paintings that Breathe : “The artist works conceptually, according to her very personal sensibility, playing with a double viewpoint, the historical one that emphasizes the past glories evoked by “the eloquent Roman ruins” with all their physical and dramatic power, and the contemporary one that translates the spaces, both empty and full, the light and colour, as well as the whites, black and greys of the scenographic eighteenth century engravings, into new forms.

The subject of “ruins”, so frequently explored by artists in the past, has been softened in an atmosphere which tends to play down the drama and make it almost a natural way of being.

Instead, in these extraordinary works, the spaces and locations which have become imaginary as Piranesi’s “prisons” had been imaginary, induce a sense of expectation rather than of dereliction, as though it were possible to envisage a future which would see those structures created many centuries  ago for a specific purpose rise up again.”

A fully illustrated catalogue will be published.  Daniela, who lives and works in Bologna, will be in London for the opening.  She will be talking with Dr. David Watkin, Emeritus Professor of History of Architecture, Cambridge, at 12 noon on Friday 8th July.