The Credito Valtellinese Gallery housed inside Palazzo Sertoli
is now hosting an exhibition by the 58-year-old painter and sculptor from South Tyrol Pierluigi Mattiuzzi

Most of Mattiuzzi's latest production is exhibited at the Credito Valtellinese Gallery inside the historic palace in Piazza Quadrivio, as well as in the gardens of Palazzo Sassi de' Lavizzari, just in front of the Museum. About 40 exhibits in all, including both sculptures and paintings by Pierluigi Mattiuzzi, many of which are quite big. The sculptures seem to have been specially thought to decorate the surrounding landscape. Innumerable outlined vertical forms pop out from the garden trees and people strolling around. Mysterious, anthropomorphic, fantastic creatures speak to the visitors. They are made to be touched and to catch the public's attention. There are gloomy demons in the shady corners of the garden, whereas bright creatures are put in the flowerbeds and along the squares. Mattiuzzi has been sculpturing his totems since 1980. Back from India, after a long stay, his early production has the distinctive warm and bright colours of that country: burnish browns, red and saffron, orange, cobalt blue and bright greens recalling the wild vegetation of the uncontaminated mountains. Later, during the 1990s, he sculptured other totems, very different from each other as for colours and forms. He used wood panels, which he shaped and carved and treated with oil, acrylic, aniline and special enamels to protect the surface. Totems, as well as paintings by Pierluigi Mattiuzzi, communicate to us through an unmistakeable language, explosive, full of images. Mattiuzzi's style is meaningful and conforms to no prearranged pattern.

Mattiuzzi's works abound with fantastic animals, demons, giant eyes, impossible architectures, suns and odd aliens arranged like in a game, according to dynamic rules which change any time you look at them. Signs fit with each other as glass tesserae in a rose window.

An iron totem by Mattiuzzi, which the author has given to the Credito Valtellinese Gallery, will be exhibited along with works by Finotti, Scampini, Negri, Silvestri, Consagra, Recalcati, Cardenas and Martini, which can already be admired at Palazzo Sertoli.