Aldo Contini retrospective at Pinacoteca Carlo Contini in Oristano

The Pinacoteca Carlo Contini in Oristano presents a retrospective of Aldo Contini (Sassari, 1924–2009), a leading Sardinian artist of the second half of the 20th century. The exhibition includes about seventy works, some previously unseen, spanning his career from the 1950s to 2009. Contini collaborated with Eugenio Tavolara at the I.S.O.L.A. (Istituto Sardo Organizzazione Lavoro Artigiano), contributing as a designer to modernize Sardinian craftsmanship, and taught at the Istituto d'Arte "F. Figari" in Sassari under director Mauro Manca. In 1976 he founded the pop-conceptual "Gruppo della Rosa." The show features works from series such as Tautologie (where oil paint tubes are the protagonists), Diagonali, small Retabli domestici, stucco-on-cardboard "piccole tavole," Vetrate, and Magnificat. In the 1990s, Contini's Magnificat series abstractly reworked 14th-century gold-ground painting, mixing references to Simone Martini, Duccio, Giotto, Dürer, and ancient Sardinian medieval retables in an ironic yet attentive reinterpretation of Italian pictorial tradition. Some of his works are installed alongside pieces from the permanent collection of 20th-century Sardinian artists donated by collector "Titino" Sanna to the Municipality of Oristano.