Museo Dario Mellone

Dario Mellone (Bologna, 1929 - Milan, 2000) was an Italian painter and designer, representing the neo-avantgardes and the forerunner of the third avantgardes, for over thirty years an illustrator at Corriere della Sera.

Biography Dario Mellone was born in Bologna in 1929 but arrived in Milan still a child with his parents. After his scientific maturity and a personal intellectual initiation path in his mother's library at Missori Square, he enrolled at the Brera Academy where he attended evening classes, working in the meantime for several publishing houses as a graphic artist and designer. The Arch. Giò Ponti discovers the early talent of Dario Mellone and publishes his designs on Domus magazine .

In 1950 the decisive encounter with Dino Buzzati took place, offering him to collaborate on the page of the Domenica del Corriere, performing illustrations of architecture and drawings of squares of Italy. So begins that relationship with the world of newspapers, chronicle and current affairs that Dario Mellone will cultivate all his life and that will determine much of his friendships and his public image. For over thirty years Mellone is the well-known and clever illustrator and designer of Corriere della Sera (since 1967) but at the same time has cultivated with dedication and absolute freedom the passion for art and painting that accompanies him as a child , Protected by the complicity of some friends and wife Antonietta, also a graduate of the Brera Academy.

In his house in Milan, Via San Marco there are thus emerging surprising and timely cycles of works of the second avant-gardes, which tell of the difficult affair of humanity in the era of technical and mechanical dominance: Figures in Space (1965-66), Men-Prison (Seventies) , Controversial polymateric and fascinating City-robots (1973-75). One of these cycles, that of Cellular Structures, has surprising affinities with Jasper Johns Cross-hatching, a few years back (those of Mellone are performed between 1967 and 1969, Johns's in 1972). An affinity, promptly noted by Francesca Bonazzoli, which underlies a significant analogy between reflection and aesthetic demand between the two artists, as well as the tight timing of Mellone's work at that crucial time of renewal of the languages ​​and materials of art. The biomorphic figures (1971-72) also show sculptures made of pink plastic wires recalling the "soft" antiform compositions of Eva Hesse and have little parallel in Italy.

In 1963 Mellone participated in a collective at the Palazzo della Permanente and subsequently held some personalities at the Galleria Sanpetronio in Bologna in 1966, at the Galleria Braidense in Milan in '78 and in the 87th, at the Milan Museum in the 80's and at the Compagnia del Disegno , Still in Milan, in 1995. Dario Mellone dies at his home studio in Milan on December 23, 2000. Subsequent to his disappearance, the Dario Mellone Foundation is set up for the determination and generosity of some of his friends and collectors. An important monograph was made today by Paolo Biscottini (Skira) and some important retrospective, among others at the Museum of Modern Art in Spoleto, Palazzo delle Stelline in Milan, and the Carmen Museum of Valencia (ES), all curated by Martina Corgnati.

On 21 September 2013 was inaugurated by prof. Rolando Bellini the "Museo Dario Mellone", opened at Villa Rescalli Villoresi Foundation in Busto Garolfo (MI), containing the 60 most significant works the Master wanted They would not be dispersed because they were representative of their artistic and research paths from 1965 to 2000. In 2013, the book "One Day in time, Villa Rescalli Villoresi and Fondazione Mellone" was published by Valerio Villoresi (Editore Congedo). The book recounts the history of the seventeenth-century Villa Rescalli Villoresi, now the home of the Dario Mellone Museum, and the "Experiences of a Painter of Humanism and Technology", a previously unpublished monograph written by the Master in 1995, five years before his disappearance. This document can be read as an act of complaint against a System heavily influenced by unscrupulous Art Marketers and / or incompetent Critics who too often prefer economic reasons to artistic merit. The interesting monograph explains the "nine phases" that marked the prolific activity of the Master and testifies to how Mellone was an "all-round" artist, among the latest neo-avant-garde and the forerunner of the third avant-garde. As Ferruccio De Bortoli writes, a longtime Director of the Corriere della Sera - "I think Dario Mellone has done the worst of the sins for an artist: to anticipate too much time."
With Decree G.R. June 5, 2015, n. X / 3659 the Dario Mellone Museum of Busto Garolfo has been awarded the Lombardy Region as a museum of special importance.

Bibliography

• Rolando Bellini, Triadic Sinesthesia. Florence Biennale Books: Ethics DNA of Art. Fausto Lupetti Editore, Bologna 2013
• Valerio Villoresi, One day in time. Villa Rescalli Villoresi and Foundation Mellone Congedo Publisher, Galatina 2013
• Martina Corgnati, Dario Mellone, Antologica EffeErre, Milan 2006
• Paolo Biscottini, Dario Mellone Skira, Milan 2003
• Luigi Cavadini, Dario Mellone paintings 1995-1998 Milano 1998
• Maurizio Cecchetti, Dario Mellone heads and figures 1990-1995 Medusa, Cesena 1995
• Maurizio Cecchetti, Dario Mellone heads and figures 1990-1995 Company of Design, Milan 1995
• Luigi Cavadini, Dario Mellone dynamic situations 1990-1992 Cinisello Balsamo 1993
• Luigi Cavadini, Dario Mellone polymateric trilogy 1967-1976 Cinisello Balsamo 1993
• Dario Mellone, The Municipal Warning Machines of Milan - Culture Breakdown 1980