Mystere vert 1952

Curator: Standing before us is Alberto Magnelli's "Mystere vert," painted in 1952. It is oil on canvas. Editor: It's unexpectedly…serene. Despite the abstract shapes, the palette evokes a very cool, almost aquatic stillness. I can't help but feel a sense of calm looking at the interplay between shades of green and muted grey. Curator: Magnelli's journey towards abstraction was deeply connected to the socio-political climate after the Second World War. Artists sought new visual languages to represent a world irrevocably changed, to build from tabula rasa, like he's drawing from an alphabet not quite formed. Editor: Precisely. The colours alone have potent psychological resonance. Green traditionally signifies growth, harmony, but also sometimes unease. The “mystery” alluded to in the title maybe stems from the subtle tensions within those hues and their juxtapositions with organic shapes. Curator: And it's important to remember that Magnelli was closely associated with the Italian abstract art movement. After living and working for a decade in Paris, and frequenting Picasso and Leger, he relocated to Florence in 1947 and engaged a dialogue within new Italian abstract forms. This style, of bold forms suspended in flat fields, can be seen to resonate with the visual legacies of Futurism. Editor: I wonder too, looking at the way those darker outlines define the shapes, if it evokes something of the public art sensibility—a bold sign painted on an outside wall or public square perhaps. It shares this starkness with political art of the time. Is Magnelli here engaging in this visual debate or distancing himself from these associations? Curator: That's a compelling suggestion, the shapes themselves resisting complete interpretation, instead floating as recognizable, but un-nameable forms, their meaning mediated by how the public, us, receive them. Editor: So in encountering “Mystere Vert,” do we as viewers collectively piece together an understanding? Do we interpret the symbolic implications that each viewer imbues in the form, and how does this re-writing change the experience itself over time? Curator: Magnelli gives no answers, and as such ensures continued interpretation from one cultural moment to the next. Editor: This act of continual cultural re-definition renders the image timeless and evocative in equal measure, posing its mystery through our understanding and experiences of it.