Operazione spaziocromatica 03 was realized in 1963, a pivotal year in the artistic career of Lia Drei (1922-2005). Indeed, after having approached abstract painting in 1961 and then Gestaltic and Kinetic researches from 1962, the artist founded in 1963 Sperimentale p., a collaborative project run with the artist and her partner for life Francesco Guerrieri, in which she was involved until the end of the Sixties. Among the Italian artistic experiences that investigated phenomena related to visual perception and movement (some trends of Kinetic Art are also known as Programmed Art in Italy), Sperimentale p. (“p” stands for “puro”, Italian for pure) stands out for the faithfulness to painting in the application of the principles of Gestalt psychology, for the refusal to employ mechanical and technological tools and for the adopted anti-dogmatic and intuitive method (“purely” experimental): a series of fundamental choices that remain unchanged in Drei’s work for the rest of her life.

The paintings made by the artist in this period are characterised by the use of pure colours and basic geometric shapes (mainly circles at first, and then also squares and right triangles). In Operazione spaziocromatica 03 a series of circular shapes are juxtaposed, intersecting and overlapping in more than one point. The relation among the elements is strengthened by the use of complementary colours (red and green; purple and yellow; blue and orange), which generate a network of subtle tensions that activate the pictorial surface and seem to set the circles in motion. As in all Drei’s works, also in Operazione spaziocromatica 03 each shape-colour acquires its full meaning only in relation to the entire compositional structure (Gabriele Simongini 2016) and within the dynamic field of forces described above.

Many years after the making of this painting, on 14 January 2004, Drei wrote in her diaries: “Today I thought about the paintings I did with the circles in 1963. Why did I use the circle? To make the visual attraction stronger. The circle captures the eye more readily, one sees the red, green, yellow or light blue immediately with strength of the mind, and gets lost inside them, and even if doesn’t understand why, its colour gives him/her an unexpected emotion like the sound of a sudden music. And so I created paintings while feeling this special emotion for me, because I hadn’t done it before: to invent something new, to create a reality that wasn’t there before and that had charm, balance and the force of life”.

These words contain a meaningful summary of Drei’s artistic and intellectual interests. In her painting practice, the rigour and scientific nature of the experimentations always coexist with a poetic inspiration, so that her artworks never appear too cerebral. The will of creating paintings vibrant with “life” is directly linked to the desire of penetrating the perceptible reality, which has always provided her with the “great reservoir of shapes and colours to draw from” (Teodolinda Coltellaro 2005, translated from Italian): but for Drei it is no longer enough to reproduce the surface of things, it is necessary to go deeper, in order to better understand the world in which the human being is immersed in and in an attempt to reveal the visual structures and the aesthetic values embedded in everything around us.