In the paintings of the mid-eighties the allusion to the landscape was declared in the titles and in the soft atmosphere of the colour, the current tension is instead experienced within the structuring of the image whose naturalistic referent is lost in the concrete phantom of the pictorial matter.[i]

In the 1990s, Mustica defined and refined the characteristics of his poetics, in constant ambivalence and sometimes in contrast between his Mediterranean roots and a significant metropolitan and international appeal, including the work by series, conceived as variations on a theme[ii] or homogeneous cycles of canvases or papers; the absence of titles and the progressive coincidence of the date of execution with the work itself; the structuring of space through the use of coloured planes[iii]; a different impact and relationship with the material. Whereas in the past the preparatory phase of the painting was favoured, now he sometimes uses the dripping technique, with poured and controlled colour, automatic gestures and instinctive composition, with the possibility of leaving space even for emptiness. In the works on canvas there are gorges of matter, accumulations, smears, dragging (Solo pochi mesi fa, 1992; Una diversa complessità, 1992; Segni intrinseci, 1993): he works by superimposing marks and imprints, which are then scratched to show what lies beneath and reveal all the phases of painting (Starting from 1986, 1992; Behind the blackboard, 1992; Then, suddenly, 1992).

Nino Mustica questions the persistence of pictorial reason in the current situation, which has turned the rules of the game upside down by once again pulling the strings of environmental concepts, operations and processes. After the excessive revival of the eighties, the figure of the painter returns to being solitary and estranged, unable to dialogue with the multiple orientations present in today’s extra-pictorial instruments. Alignment with these new tastes cannot touch long-standing painters like Mustica, who has subjected the underlying nature of his research to the question of colour.

The most significant effort that Mustica is making is to become aware of the need to do without style, which doesn’t mean losing personality, but rather adopting language as a struggle and a commitment, as the need to find ever-changing points of equilibrium between the structural order of the surface and the chaos of the pictorial material. By accepting the meaning of this comparison, the painter’s research passes from one state to another, from geometric to formless, from the compositional fact to the material datum, from the surface to the environment without undergoing traumas that are not required by the needs of colour, by the material complexity of the work.[v]

[i] Claudio Cerritelli, Nino Mustica. Colours in the form of paper, Edizioni Lauro Jaccarino, Noventa Padovana, 1991, s.p.
[ii] Pietro Bonfiglioli, Il nome e l’aggettivo, in Claudio Cerritelli (ed.), op. cit., p.14
[iii] Massimo Bignardi, Arie colorate in Claudio Cerritelli (ed.), op. cit., p. 5
[iv] Claudio Cerritelli, Nino Mustica. Colori in forma di carta, Edizioni Lauro Jaccarino, Noventa Padovana, 1991, s.p.
[v] Claudio Cerritelli, Il sentimento cromatico 1980-1989, in Claudio Cerritelli, Tonko Maroević (ed.), op. cit., p. 24

In 1990, Nino Mustica designed the cover of Jackie Stewart’s album for Vox Pop Record. The album was entitled Jackie Stewart said: Hallo! and the cover portrayed a classic Mustica subject. The Art Club gallery in Catania dedicated a solo exhibition to him. He presents Papier plus papier, with text by Lucio Cabutti, at the Hete A.M. Hunermann Galerie in Düsseldorf, in which he continues his work and reflection on paper, as in the series of works created for Colori in forma di carta and presented in 1991 by Lauro Jaccarino Arte Moderna, in Noventa Padovana, where he had already exhibited his work the previous year. All the works have a homogenous title, which refers to the idea of deprivation (Senza limiti, Senza dubbio, Senza nero). Also in 1991, he created the poster and stamp for the Immaginario Mediterraneo exhibition in Syracuse and presented a solo exhibition of paintings first in Schio and then in Vicenza, at the Ponte galleries.

The papers are an evocative chapter of Mustica’s colour, which should be considered as a parallel temptation to the spectacle of the large canvases. These are in fact stronger and more dynamic, crossed by flashes and spurts of the sign, played on underlying thicknesses and on the tactile quality of the material, that is to say recognisable as vibrations so clearly visible as to seem touched by the gaze.


[i] Claudio Cerritelli, Nino Mustica. Colori in forma di carta, cit.

In 1992 he presented a series of gouaches on cotton paper at the Sturiale Gallery in Catania. The titles refer to travels (Da Ankara a Smirne, 1992; Zona di confine, 1992) and are explicit homages to artists of reference (Omaggio a Pollock, 1992). He also did nine gouaches for nine poems by Evelina Schatz published by El Bagatt, Bergamo.

The chromatic richness of the gouaches, as well as of the canvases, is not to be understood as a stroll along sparkling boulevards, but rather as a confident relationship with the richness of tones that belonged to classicism, and with the relationship of classicism with nature, lucidly perceived by Mustica in its most positive aspects at the end of the second millennium: not therefore in a phase of collapse but rather, seizing the possibilities to develop further linguisticdynamics.[i]

In the same year, he began teaching at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, where he would hold the chair until 1995. He exhibits Drawings, a solo exhibition, in Moscow at the Krimsky Vau Museum and at the Museum of Fine Arts in Valletta, Malta, where he had already been in 1990 for an exhibition at the National Museum of Archaeology. In the drawings, works on paper made with pencil, ink and turpentine, white, blue and black tones prevail. The titles retain a narrative dimension, but are much more essential (La contemplazione, 1992; Il progresso, 1992; Il vento, 1991) and evocative of ideal categories or concepts. In the text in the catalogue, Marisa Vescovo cites Cy Twombly, Gastone Novelli, Wols, Hans Hartung as references for this phase of the work.

He meets Marco Contini in Milan, who commissions a project of carpets and tapestries from him.

In the series of canvases created in 1992 and presented at the Osti 4 cultural centre in Milan, Elena Pontiggia, who writes the text in the catalogue, identifies a festive and carefree colour, not violent as in informal art. There is a positive meaning, linked to the fact that it is no longer the post-war period and the rubble is not painful, but disenchanted, not inhabited by despair, but by disillusionment.

It is as if these works express a condition of nomadism, derived from the unravelling of ideologies, the dissolution of ideals, the fragmentation of systems. In this post-world (post-certainties, post-dogmatism, but also post-hope), Mustica moves with unusual, extraordinary vitality. He gathers the scattered fragments, the archaeological finds of the era just ended, and attempts to create a temporary suture, a partial recomposition.[ii]

In 1993 his mother died. Nino Mustica returned to paper for the series Carta in carta (Paper on paper), presented at the Galleria La Seggiola in Salerno, in which the works no longer have a title, but are a numbered sequence. In the large handmade papers, colour becomes part of the material and emerges to the surface. In Bologna, at the Galleria San Luca, and in the province of Pavia, at the Castello di Sartirana, he presents the series Arie colorate, curated by Claudio Cerritelli.

[i] Giandomenico Semeraro, Il sapore della pittura in Mustica. Gouaches, Galleria Sturiale, Catania, 1992, s.p.
[ii] Elena Pontiggia, Nino Mustica: gli insegnamenti del colore, in Nino Mustica, Osti Cultural Centre, Milan, 1992, s.p.
[i] Giandomenico Semeraro, Il sapore della pittura in Mustica. Gouaches, Sturiale Gallery, Catania, 1992, s.p.
[ii] Elena Pontiggia, Nino Mustica: gli insegnamenti del colore, in Nino Mustica, Osti Cultural Centre, Milan, 1992, s.p.