ABC-ARTE ONE OF, starting from Thursday November 9th, pays tribute to Tomas Rajlich (Jankov, Czech Republic, 1940), with whom the gallery has been collaborating for years and is internationally recognized as one of the most influential figures in European painting, inaugurating his first solo exhibition in the Milanese venue of the gallery. The last significant recognition in the city of Milan was carried out by the François Lambert gallery in 1974. 

The second act of the vast, specific survey dedicated to the artist's works from the 1980s is on display, just as in the Genoa location. In this period, his painting, constantly moving further and further away from purely executive modalities, enters the living mystery of colour/light, nourished by an unexpected expressiveness. 

With his monochromes, the artist established himself on the international scene, at least from the time of the memorable 1975 exhibition “Fundamental schilderkunst: Fundamental paintingin” the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. 

At the beginning of the following decade, Rajlich abandoned the primacy of black and white in systemic painting and opened up to the ineffable beauty of gold, the breezes of distant blue and a dull, chaste red. It is true, he was still working with monochromes, but the gold has very different implications in those Golden Times. In a fundamental essay from 1993, Flaminio Gualdoni wrote: “With even greater determination, Rajlich operates on the plane of the saturated image; but now this saturation does not only concern vision; it is rather a plenitude that involves the very idea of light associated, in our culture, with the sense of colour and supernatural vertigo. This is the moment of the outburst, if only in the operational clarity of one who can but regard painting as an autonomous, physical basis of language and meaning, of more than an echo of wisdom”. 

Numerous works will be exhibited in which gold is the dominant visual element, as well as the no less famous triadic works in which it is associated with colours that proudly reveal their very own nature. 

In parallel, a synthetic nucleus of paintings will be shown, published in his memorable book 100 SMALL PAINTINGS, which clearly show the lucid determination that has accompanied Rajlich throughout the various phases of his work. 

To mark the occasion, ABC-ARTE will publish a catalogue with all the works on show, accompanied by a critical essay by Davide Ferri and an introduction by Flaminio Gualdoni.