MANLIO RHO Composizione 57 12

Composizione 57 10 / 12
The Composizione 74 carpet is the emblem of the research of Manlio Rho towards the shape’s harmony. A playful bas-relief of textures and weavings to produce a strong, yet soft and sophisticated striking monochrome carpet. A revival of artist Manlio Rho's art piece "Composizione".

MANLIO RHO
Abstract lightness and graphic structure enhanced by polygonal intersecting figures and vibrant cromatic harmony.
The decision to make carpets reinterpreting the pure forms and unique color palette of Manlio Rho is a further testament to the intelligent research conducted by Amini into the art world on a quest to discover and popularize immense artistic talents. Indeed, the paintings signed by the taciturn maestro from Como are seldom remembered or, at the most, relegated to a small local fan-base, while more often than not even historicized auteurs enjoy greater popularity, despite it owing more to market trends than artistic merit. Never mind: the undeniably international re- levance of Rho’s abstract art is never called into question. Indeed, although moving in the same direction as contemporaries from the German Bauhaus and Mondrian’s Dutch Neo-plasticism, he always shrewdly shunned the more extreme geometric coldness into which pure abstraction may stumble, thanks to his impressive sense of color and to the harmony of forms. But the greatest satisfaction for Amini is to have been able to replay the whole gamut of Rho’s palette: the warmth - indeed, an almost silken touch - of colors that are actually borrowed from the outlying Lombard countryside. One has to stress that this operation focusing on the revival of Rho’s work would not have been possible without the heartfelt, comprehensive assistance of the artist’s heirs.

DESIGN ICONS COLLECTION
Masters. While different with regard to generation, training, experience, and legacy, what unites them is a self-same project: a kind of unfettered, personal quest, indeed, a search for the discovery and development of a dynamic and multifaceted modernity. Masters without limiting their investigation, they have dabbled with all kinds of artistic and technical forms - painting, architecture, design, applied arts, publishing, film and photography. If Gio Ponti, still a 19th century man, was bent on outdoing himself with each passing decade in an all-consuming, playful and eye-catching display of genius, Joe Colombo, whom Ponti held in especially high esteem, was rather a personality who lacked any abiding connection with the past and that’s what makes his artistic visions so prophetic. True blue Milanesi like Ponti and Colombo are o set by small-town artists Ico Parisi and Manlio Rho, with ties to the rationalist movement in Como headed by Giuseppe Terragni. And yet their paths are well marked out, and highly original at that. Whereas Rho conceptualizes his own version of geometric abstraction embellishing it with nature’s colors, Parisi experiments with every aspect of the furnishing project seeking the key to integration with the world of the arts. Amini adopts today these Masters’ great legacy, presenting it with uttermost faithfulness to the originals in a ne collection of carpets.