The history of contemporary art identifies monochrome as a fundamental condition for defining painting starting from the second half of the twentieth century.
Once the emphasis of Abstract Expressionism had ended, and the push of Informalism had exhausted itself, since the late 1950s painting has meant considering the theoretical and mental part of the discipline, with the emergence of the so-called latest avant-gardes, Minimalism, Pop Art, Conceptual Art.

In 1960 historian Udo Kultermann curated the collective exhibition Monochrome Maleri at the Leverkusen museum in Germany which took stock of this new global trend: it was not in fact a real movement but a feeling that spread simultaneously in Europe and in the United States, with a significant Italian representation. A drive that has never run out of steam since then, if anything evolving into ever new formulations.

It is therefore more than sixty years that Monochrome continues to be talked about as a mental tendency of painting, which from time to time incorporates sign, gesture, surface, until it extends into space, dialoguing with sculpture, installations and three-dimensionality.

The Flora Bigai Gallery dedicates the summer 2024 exhibition to a new reflection on monochrome painting, from the 1960s to the present. After a careful selection, some historical figures were included in the exhibition such as Enrico Castellani and Agostino Bonalumi, working in the Milanese scene in the wake of Fontana's experience, Yves Klein the author of the famous IKB, the blue monochrome, Getulio Alviani, a witness of the research between Northern and Eastern Europe in a neo-avant-garde conception of new technological materials.

Irma Blank's Radical Writing, a true conceptual exercise, is linked to the 1970s and beyond, alongside the rigorous, even mathematical, work of Imi Knoebel. More recent are the expressions, of a warm and Mediterranean nature, by Ettore Spalletti and Pino Pinelli, who passed away in recent months.
The exhibition is completed by the international experiences linked to the Zero Group of Bernard Aubertin, the material artist Jason Martin and the sculptor Anish Kapoor, both protagonists of the best season of recent British art.