Massimo Scolari

Courtesy Yale Architecture Gallery
The Misleading Muses, 1972
Watercolor on paper, 126 x 162 cm

This exhibition, the first retrospective of Massimo Scolari in  the United States since 1986, 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.


Courtesy Yale Architecture Gallery
Downtown, 2006
Watercolor on paper, 23.4 x 29.1 cm


Courtesy Yale Architecture GalleryNew York New York, 2008Watercolor on cardboard, 35.2 x 22.5 cm


Courtesy Yale Architecture GalleryThe sculpture Wings on the Fondamenta della Tana, Venice Biennale,5th International Architecture Exhibition, 199123.3 x 29.2 cmPhoto L. Ghirri, vintage artist print

Together, these illuminate the complex, ongoing interaction in Scolari's work between architecture and its methods and mediums of representation. 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.

Courtesy Yale Architecture GalleryCompetition for the Scandicci Town Hall, 1968.Project Team: Aldo Rossi withMassimo Scolari and Massimo Fortis.Blue ink and Magic Marker on paper, 28 x 22 cm

Courtesy Yale Architecture GalleryThe Pilot of the Labyrinth, 1978Watercolor on cardboard, 18 x 13 cm

Courtesy Yale Architecture GalleryThe Architecture of the Earth, 1978Watercolor on paper, 18 x 13 cm

Courtesy Yale Architecture GalleryThe Last Known City II, 2002Oil on canvas, 60 x 50 cm

Courtesy Yale Architecture GalleryGate for a Maritime City, 1979-80Oil on paper linen, 47 x 39.5 cm

Removed, if only by a hair's breadth, from the ideological assumptions of the present, Scolari's images speak to current concerns by adopting a strategy of allegory and indirection, inventing an idiom that is foreign not only to us, but alien as such. Inviting the viewer to see architecture from a perspective that is both radical and unforeseen,  Scolari asks us to imagine the discipline in ways that challenge established categories, expectations, and experiences, transforming familiar conventions of drawing, painting, sculpture so that they assume new and mysterious valences. It is no exaggeration to say, therefore, that his an architecture of otherness, affirming nothing besides its artistic motivation at the moment of its production and the invisible ties that link image and idea to each other and to posterity./Daniel Sherer, Excerpted from the catalogue essay

Courtesy Yale Architecture GalleryBeyond the Sky, 1982Watercolor on cardboard, 27.6 x 45.9 cm

Courtesy Yale Architecture GalleryDream of a Shadow, the Man, 2011Watercolor on masonite, 30 x 30 cm

Curated by Massimo Scolari the exhibition includes 57 display panels, each devoted to a specific project or recurring theme within Scolari's lifetime of work.

Since 2006, Scolari has been Davenport Visiting Professor of Architecture at Yale.