Large Gino Marotta “Pioggia” Kinetic light object in Methacrylate, Italy 1960s

Rare Kinetic light object Gino Marotta "Pioggia" by Gino Marotta (Campobasso, 1935 – Rome, 2012), Italy 1960s. Composed of a thick, hand-engraved methacrylate panel depicting falling raindrops, set into a black-lacquered metal base. Hidden within the base is a warm white light source (2700K), a rotating coloured methacrylate cylinder and two independent switches, allowing the light to remain static or shift gradually through transparent, pink, blue, red and orange tones. As the cylinder turns, the methacrylate transports the light while the engraved raindrops and the edges are highlighted. In 1969 Marotta exhibited at the Louvre, at a moment when his work evolved toward immersive environments. This idea of opening art fully to the dimension of life led to installations in which Marotta’s interest in the dialectic and the confrontation between the natural and the artificial became central. Methacrylate became his privileged medium. In these works from the 1960s and early 1970s, trees, forests, palms, animals, the sea and the rain are made of methacrylate, often with neon elements, announcing the metamorphoses of modernity in an art that transforms and shapes the landscape, but also industrially celebrates the elegiac feeling of loss — the nostalgia for a rural world on the verge of disappearing, reminiscent of his homeland.
“Pioggia” embodies this poetic tension between natural phenomena and industrial materiality — a luminous echo of rain, suspended between presence and disappearance. Excellent, fully original condition.