ABM – Massimiliano Tommaso Rezza

or discipline as soteriology

This book is a tribute to the Italian virtuoso pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. Called simply ABM by his fans, Michelangeli is the epitome of the anti-modern artist. For this pianist, in fact, art has a civilizing force, and its dissemination should be free. He himself put into practice this idea by personally financing the education of students in need. For ABM ethics and aesthetics coincide. Beauty is both the “well achieved” and the “beneficial”. Art, according to Michelangeli, is vocational; it is not social climbing. ABM never responded to the rules and the social habits of show-business, but, on the contrary, he relied solely on his internal compass, his sense of perfection and a discipline, which leads to ideal beauty.

The book does not rely on the official portraiture of the artist or his photo-biography, but the position and shape that the photographic rectangle occupies on the book page, resulting in an attempt to find a logic of forms and their evolution.

Pneumatica is an editorial project by Massimiliano Tommaso Rezza.