The avant-garde artist Marinella Pirelli (née Marinelli) was born in Italy in 1925 and became an important part of the country’s post-war art scene. She used a large variety of media like light, moving image, painting and drawing. Pirelli was one of the few Italian woman artists working in experimental film at the time. Her themes were often connected to the body and the gaze. Plants and other living beings were also recurrent topics in her artworks.
She began her artistic career with painting, and attended the studio of Romano Conversano, an Istrian painter, where she would meet many of the notable Italian avant garde people. Later, she worked as a fashion designer, set designer and actress for a few years in Milan. In 1951 she moved to Rome, where she found cinema as a medium.
BIO
1925 born in Verona, Italy
2009 died in Varese, Italy
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2023 Meteore, Richard Saltoun Gallery, Rome, Italy
2023 Immersion. The Origins: 1949-1969, Plateforme 10, Lausanne, Switzerland
2019 Luce. Movimento. Il cinema sperimentale di Marinella Pirelli, Museo del Novecento, Milan, Italy
2016 Marinella Pirelli, Armando Alvares Penteado Foundation, Sao Paolo, Brazil
2013 Pulsar, Teatro Filodrammatici, Milan, Italy
2013 Meteore, Biffi Arte Contemporanea, Piacenza, Italy
2008 Marinella Pirelli. 1950-2008, Fondazione Mudima, Milan, Italy
2007 Marinella Pirelli. Vuoi vedere che l’infinito è una cosa cosí, senza capo né coda?, Galleria d’arte pensiero, Milan, Italy
2007 Il roseto di Marinella, Atelier Capricorno, Cocquio Trevisago, Italy
2004 Autoritratto. Marinella Pirelli, Museo della Permanente, Milan, Italy
2003 Ombra e Luce, Villa Panza, Varese
2003 Marinella Pirelli: Ombra Luce, MAM-Museo de Arte Moderna de Saõ Paulo, Sao Paolo, Brazil
1999 Marinella Pirelli. Mezzo secolo di vita per l’arte, Chiostro di Voltorre, Galvirate, Italy
1971 Marinella Pirelli, galleria Futura 3, Modena, Italy
1971 The environmental screen of Marinella Pirelli, Galerie Denise Renée Hans Mayer – Prospekt 1971, Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf, Germany
1970 Marinella Pirelli, Zweite Frühjahrsmesse, European galleries fair, Berlin, Germany
1970 Marinella Pirelli, Modern Art Agency di Lucio Amelio, Naples, Italy
1969 Film Ambiente, Galleria de Neubourg di Franco Toselli, Milan, Italy
1969 Film Ambiente, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna di Roma, Rome, Italy
1960 Marinella Pirelli, Galleria delle Ore, Milan, Italy
1947 Marinella Marinelli, Tourist Office, Belluno, Italy
SOURCES AND LINKS
https://www.richardsaltoun.com/artists/286-marinella-pirelli/biography/
https://www.archivioaperto.it/en/programs/omaggio-a-marinella-pirelli/