Giorgio Reggio, the Lombard-Milanese painter, is holding his one-man show in the beautiful setting of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, home to Da Vinci’s masterpiece The Last Supper, in the Bramante Sacristy; this is a genuine anthology of a sacred character entitled A light on the world, and it closes the trilogy that began with In Search of Light in San Carlo al Corso and The Triumph of Light in San Nazaro Maggiore, in 1996 and 1999, respectively.

Now back in Milan, the show, which brings to a close a cycle of works of recent years, was put on first in Rome, at the Basilica di San Felice da Cantalice during the 2000 Jubilee; here it finds its true calling as sacred painting that expresses its true identity in light, focusing once again on one of the key elements of chiarista poetics. Even before this show, all of the work of Giorgio Reggio, who was born in Milan in the 1960’s, finds its voice in that neo-chiarista aspect, even though not yet clearly sacred, in an informal material that sometimes verges on areas of clear abstraction. Reggio’s poetics start from those signs and those masses, taking on a symbolist or neo-symbolist imprint, right when people in Milan are debating “existential realism,” in that it evokes, hints at, argues for, and indicates with cupolas, candles and sinners a climate of gestating catharsis. Then come the sacred cycles, parallel to profane art, those associated with the Way of the Cross (some of which have already been placed in public places), the Moments of Maria that came after he read the beautiful book by Mons. Tonino Bello, Maria Madre dei nostri giorni, and after flipping through the Beatitudes, a series of eight large canvases that were also reproduced in a text for Ellenici. This indicates not merely the specificity of Reggio’s paintings but his slow and fruitful journey that has now reached moments of significant acclaim, including the prestigious awards he has received in Europe.
Reggio’s works unambiguously present the step-by-step process of the paintings; i.e., before we get to the final painting, there are the studies and the mixed techniques that let us read both the brush mark and the color, an interminable deluge of marks moving among clouds of color. There is an entire series of red Milan churches, strong and powerful, done in mixed techniques and on display at Santa Maria delle Grazie, the oldest and most historic churches in Milan, from Sant’Ambrogio to San Nazaro, from San Babila to the Cathedral. Pictorially, they describe as in a grand tour a landscapism somewhere between romantic and naturalist, already presaging that intriguing light that underpins all of his painting. His is a light that pierces the material placed upon the canvas and lightens even the significance underlying the representation: it is a light born from afar that attests itself, as we said, in that chiaro-style painting that originates in Lombardy, the land of fog and mist.
A whole life spent in art, believing in what the artist wanted to bring to life, developing even a form of catechism, of “visual education.” Reggio’s painting leads us to read as well a substantial part of the second half of the 20th century painting, with all the historic coincidences that range from informal painting to the new figuration. His identity as painter is secure, having found his window of work between the sacred and the profane, in search of a light that becomes an incisive metaphor for every man. Reggio is not just an Italian and European artist; he is an artist who tells the story of Man and the Gospels; he is a historic painter, a painter who places the viewer in front of profound questions. With this show at Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, a major anthology, Reggio gives a true, spectacular, humane, sacred and exciting image of himself.