Great contemporary painting is back at the Fondazione Stelline in Milan with the exhibition “Federico Guida. Arbor” , which takes its name from the Latin root of Albero and presents great unpublished works in which transcendence and humanity, science, religion and history coexist. The exhibition, curated by Mimmo di Marzio , occupies the spaces of the Sala del Collezionista and the Quadriportico of the Cloister from 10 November to 11 December 2022 and can be visited in the Quadriportico until 8 January 2023.

The exhibition itinerary presents the most recent production of the artist who goes beyond the pictorial tradition and appropriates the styles and languages of the installation. Through his works, Guida investigates the symbolism of the cross as a "family tree" and foundation of the human condition, he seeks the continuous balance between verticality ascending towards the mystery of the divine and the earthly horizontality of everyday life and vanitas.

The formal element of the cross, which recurs in the works, is a citation of the medieval shaped crucifixes by Giotto and Cimabue conserved in Florence, and becomes the pictorial surface for a composite narration in which symbology and narration, abstract and figuration intertwine. Each installation, oil paintings on linen applied on wood, takes on a strongly conceptual value that intertwines the values of the sacred and the profane.

In each work strong contrasts coexist that stir deep feelings: the suffering portrait of a mother, the rawness of outraged flesh, the trompe l'oeil illusion of wood, the abstract torments of the canvas, sublimate into cosmic images, galaxies, eclipses, nebulae creating a tension towards the Absolute and changing the installations into totemic representations of existence.