The Flight into Egypt

and other post-Caravaggio themes

PHILIPPE DAVERIO

Max Pellegrini is an esoteric, Turinese artist. His mysteries are far-off and aphonic, his painting provocative and clever.

The cycle of works illustrated by this catalogue is the arrival point of a pathway begun almost 30 yearsago when Pop Art, partly discovered and partly imposed on him as on many young artists, had givena healthy shock, freeing them from the formalism and informalism of the academies. I think that he then recognised the sterility of a practice that in cisalpine culture had few reasons for existing and no roots; the disjointing of the composition was not essential to the figure and the narrative. To go forward it was necessary to make an enormous leap backwards, perhaps as far as Caravaggio and if anything with the entirely Piedmontese mediation of Casorati. The return to the classical formula was immediate, the technique went back to the use of glazes, and the Mozart like enchantments of the

“Regina della Notte” (Queen of the Night) appeared.

(Presentation to Max Pellegrini. The Flight into Egypt and other post-Caravaggio themes, exhibition catalogue,

Galleria Philippe Daverio, Milan, June-September 1991)