“Il silenzio del gesto. Nel punto esatto in cui mi perdo comincio a sentire” is the title chosen for the major retrospective of Antonio Recca at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna (GAM) in Catania, on view until April 12, 2026. It is not merely a title, but a micro-narrative: a way of evoking the artist’s painterly and sensory act, born in 1957.

Antonio Recca, photo by Renato Zacchia, courtesy of the artist

The exhibition, curated by Giacomo Fanale and co-organized with the Municipality of Catania, features fifty landscapes spanning from 2009 to the present day. These are intimate and abstract visions, inner impulses, subtle perceptions of a kind of painting that does not seek to be loud, but rather to invite listening and connection with Nature. The works are characterized by vibrant color, modulated in its various tones in a soft manner—without sharp brushstrokes, yet decisive and, at times, nuanced. According to the curator, Recca’s painting “tends toward a perceptual threshold in which the image does not delimit, but opens up.” What emerges is a mental landscape—both real and imagined—composed of fragments, dissolves, and suspensions: not a representation of the world, but the possibility of inhabiting it from within. For Ornella Fazzina, art historian and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts of Catania, his paintings “recall physical and inner territories that recreate spaces for reflection and expression through a process of synthesis composed of few visual elements, carefully measured and calibrated in their sensitive impact”.

Antonio Recca, Untitled, 2021, enamel on Forex, 90 × 100 cm, courtesy of the artist

Indeed, it is the terrain of sensitivity that interests Recca. After his cultural and artistic training in Catania, he lived and worked in Milan and abroad, moving between art, fashion, and design while seeking his own “center of gravity” from which to listen to the dust of the world and recreate it through his idea of painting: an anima mundi to be contemplated. Although the legacy of abstract expressionism is evident, his research condenses into a sophisticated and recognizable chromatic dimension—a kind of secret formula that shapes his visions and articulates them into colored horizons. These are landscapes on canvas in various formats, but also codes of an ancient, atavistic sensibility—a desire to hear the beating of a bird’s wings and bear witness to it through his interplay of colors. This has been described by Germanist Grazia Pulvirenti (professor at the University of Catania) as “a mysterious dance that, from within, leads to a reinvention of matter through the recovery of its stratifications and its rhizomatic branching”.

Antonio Recca, “Figure in a Garden Blue”, 2008, mixed media on canvas, 120 × 150 cm, courtesy of the artist

Moreover, to emphasize the “auditory” and sensory character of these paintings, a performance by musician and singer-songwriter Kaballà has been scheduled March 29, 6:00–8:00 PM, creating a synergy of images, voice, and sound, with brief literary interludes accompanied by the liuto cantabile of Mauro Palmas, in line with a vision of art as plural and organic. Thus, Recca’s painting aims at a contemplative perception, inviting the public to rediscover the value of silence and to slow down, so that these visions may inhabit the present and generate questions and doubts about our being in the world.

Info:

Antonio Recca, Il silenzio del gesto. Nel punto esatto in cui mi perdo comincio a sentire
Curated by Giacomo Fanale
March 14 – April 12, 2026
Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Via Castello Ursino 26, Catania
Opening hours: Tue–Sun, 10:00 AM–1:00 PM / 5:00 PM–8:00 PM
www.comune.catania.it

Nilla Zaira D'Urso

Through art she feels the need to get closer to nature, deciding to create an artistic residence on Etna as a “refuge for contemporary art” for artists and scholars. Thus was born Nake artistic residence. She won the Responsible Etna Award 2015. In 2017, she was invited to the Sala Zuccari, Senate of the Republic, as an art critic. She writes for Italian and foreign artists. Curator of the first Museum of Contemporary Art of Etna and of the “Contemporary Etna” project.