Un racconto lungo un viaggio - Andrea Lelario

Drawing, engraving, graphite and photoengraving are Andrea Lelario’s favourite techniques. His works on display at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art take us on a poetic and symbolic journey through the realms of thought and the unconscious, between materiality and imagination, dreams and the universe. Through works on paper, copper plates and notebooks, Lelario composes a captivating and magnetic aesthetic language that intertwines Jungian studies on archetypes with imaginary landscapes inspired by the Grand Tour and the Castelli Romani, delving into the galactic universe and neural networks.

The subtle, branching marks of his engravings and photoengravings explore the radiant energy that connects the cosmos to the inner self. Two model trains, alter egos of the soul in motion, materialise thought and the unconscious as an ideal perpetual motion, a suspension between places and identities, an allegory of a nomadic philosophy and a time without coordinates, merging with the exploratory and enigmatic world of the artist’s notebooks. Three notebooks with pen drawings are the heart of the exhibition and of the journey on which Lelario takes us: a canvas of the unconscious, a map of the landscape of the soul, in a visual narrative suspended between consciousness and dream. Minute explorations compose an intimate universe in which microcosm and macrocosm intertwine in a poem of forms, revealing enigmas and visions held back by the surface of the paper.

Born in Rome in 1965, Lelario trained at the city’s Academy of Fine Arts, where his encounter with Pippo Gambino and the course in engraving techniques marked the beginning of a quest for technical rigour and symbolic depth. His works are part of important collections, such as those of the Print Rooms in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and the Monumental Complex of San Michele a Ripa Grande. In recognition of their artistic and cultural value, two of Lelario’s notebooks will become part of the Gallery’s permanent collection.