Massimo Scolari: The Representation of Architecture, 1967–2012, on view February 6–May 4, 2012, is the first U.S. retrospective since 1986 of the eminent Italian architect, artist, and designer.
Massimo Scolari, The Pilot of the Labyrinth, 1978, watercolor on cardboard, 18 x 13 cm (ca. 7 x 5 in.)
The exhibition explores the arc of Scolari’s career from 1967 to 2012, with some 160 paintings, watercolors, and drawings, most with architectural and urban subjects; a scaled-down iteration of a monumental sculpture created for the 1991 Venice Biennale; and ten architectural models. Together, these illuminate the complex, ongoing interaction in Scolari’s work between architecture and its methods and mediums of representation.
Curated by Mr. Scolari, Massimo Scolari: The Representation of Architecture, 1967–2012 includes 57 display panels, each devoted to a specific project or recurring theme within Scolari’s lifetime of work. The exhibition makes clear Scolari’s radical questioning of some of the most deeply rooted assumptions of architecture, especially those that link architectural representation to the physicality of its constructions.
To show how Scolari developed his theoretical position, and to trace some of the key moments in his artistic trajectory, the retrospective highlights the diverse contexts in which his work has unfolded, ranging from his time as a student at the Politecnico di Milano, in the late 1960s, to his collaboration with Aldo Rossi, from 1968 to 1972; his participation in the landmark 1980 Venice Biennale, Strada Novissima; and his teaching at the Universitario di Architettura Venezia, from 1973 to 2006. Since 2006, Scolari has been Davenport Visiting Professor of Architecture at Yale.
This exhibition is supported in part by Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown and a grant from the Turner Foundation.The Yale School of Architecture’s exhibition program is supported in part by the James Wilder Green Dean’s Resource Fund, the Kibel Foundation Fund, The Nitkin Family Dean’s Discretionary Fund in Architecture, the Pickard Chilton Dean’s Resource Fund, The Paul Rudolph Publication Fund, the Robert A.M. Stern Fund, and the Rutherford Trowbridge Memorial Publication Fund.
Yale School of Architecture Gallery
Paul Rudolph Hall, 180 York Street (York and Chapel Streets), New Haven, Connecticut