Biographical note

 

Sergio Acerbi attended the Artistic High School of Castello Sforzesco in Milan and studied pictorial techniques in depth by frequenting the studios of well-known artists.

Since 1983 he has exhibited his paintings in numerous group shows including Masters of Brera, Shangai 2008, and in several solo exhibitions in Milan Brera.

The first works, influenced by a post-impressionist realism, are followed, starting from the 80s, by research that leads, with “The Blue Tree” (1985), to a painting characterised by expressionist tones, with a marked simplification of the shapes and the sensitive protagonism of the colour. (“Chromatic Reflections of an Imaginative Traveller”).

In the following production, a reality of the imaginary, hallucinating and conscious, takes on visual shape, and assumes the features of a neo-metaphysical elaboration.The space represented is impervious to time, to its transforming influences, showing expressive accents which reach an almost geometrical visual balance (“Mysteries of Nature”).

In the collection of “Inconsistent Hardness” stony concretions, rocks, barren lands of metaphysical solitude and air stretches recall the dichotomy of sky and earth.

The later production dedicated to the affinity between sky and sea (“Skysea”) develops, as noted by the art critic Rossana Bossaglia, the premises of a reading of the natural world intended as varied and homogenous at the same time, and is aligned with the preceding work. The trees indeed have the same colour streaks as the waves of the seawater, the rocks turn into clouds, the tree branches stretch to embrace the sky and every plasticity dissolves into nebulous rhythms and convulsive movements. Dramatic accents are evident both in the intensity of the colours and in the rhythm of the movements, with a preference for bright colour tones.

In the recent production the reading of the natural world expands to an unknown dimension and a mystic vision that takes on shape in the Beings of Light, bright presences moving in the materic meanders of a primal world and that refer to the identification of the Divine with Light (“Unknown Dimension”). The effect of fragmentation and transformation is obtained thanks to photochromic pigments, stone dust and materic elements that create surfaces of various compositions and stratifications.

This artist’s works are in private collections both in Italy and abroad, including the ones belonging to the art critic Rossana Bossaglia, the former Russian President Mikhail Gorbaciov, Cesare Geronzi, the former President of Capitalia.Rossana Bossaglia, Paolo Levi, Vittorio Sgarbi, Giorgio Grasso wrote about him; Philippe Daverio spoke about him.

Sergio Acerbi is included in various catalogues and publications among which PROTAGONISTI DELL’ARTE. DAL XIX SECOLO AD OGGI, edited by Paolo Levi, EA Editore; ANNUARIO D’ARTE CONTEMPORANEA 2014, edited by Vittorio Sgarbi, EA Editore; CATALOGO DELL’ARTE MODERNA no. 49 (2013-14), no. 50 (2014-2015), Cairo Mondadori.