Post-Cubism and Neo-Informal, Andrè Villers, Marcello Mariani, 1970-1980. Photography by Johnny Ricci

Andre Villers, French photographer and painter, was born in Betancourt in 1930. In 1953 he met Pablo Picasso with whom he establishes a strong friendship and professional collaboration. He works with numerous artists, including Fernand Léger, Jean Arp, Joan Miro, Max Ernst, Hans Hartung and many other representatives of the twentieth century avant-garde. Parallel to photographic experimentation developed a highly graphic and pictorial research which goes on even today.

In Villers poetic search of light and shapes it is expressed through a geometric-abstract figuration, close to the original Cubism of Braque, without becoming trapped. His compositional style is imbued with a lyrical-chromatic research almost evanescent, reminiscent in its original way "conceptual friendship" with Hans Hartung, dating back to the period immediately preceding the date of the works on show. A pictorial journey to Villers that through the analysis of cubism and lyrical abstractionism, arrives to his personal conception of abstract figuration. The recent exhibition of 2015 at the Gagosian Gallery in Geneva with Picasso, reveals his deep creative experience in European painting of the '900.
Marcello Mariani prefers, often, engage in large scenographic canvases, where the sign, matter, the spot are painting words or more precisely visual lexemes ... Chaotic and tumultuous substructures of his paintings, confirming the accuracy of the definition of abstract expressionism, coined in the 50s to an important trend of the informal art ... Marcello Mariani through the streets of matterism with strong and precise references to the poetics of the wall, which has transferred on paintings the signs of aging and the tactile significance of the plaster, confirming its authenticity as a primary role painter in the neo-informal trend, since the 80’s. (From "Marcello Mariani or existentiality of painting" by Giorgio Di Genova)