Galleria Lia Rumma is celebrating the launch of Expo Milano 2015 with three large installations by Giovanni Anselmo, Wolfgang Laib and Ettore Spalletti. Lia Rumma has invited the three artists to create site-specifc works, which take up all the floors in the Milan gallery. Since the mid-sixties, the German artist Wolfgang Laib has been creating installations of solemn simplicity, with an aesthetic take on the recomposition of organic materials that contain the seed of life and the power of nourishment: milk, pollen, beeswax and rice. The Rice Meals for Another Body, on the ground foor of the space in Via Stilicone, conveys the essence of one of the key themes in his intensely spiritual artistic research: the idea that art plays a redeeming role that considers the body as an indissoluble whole, capable of flling the gap that traditional medicine now ignores.

"Words of colour. I painted the panels one after the other. The colour shifts from sky-blue to grey, touching on dark blue, fring up with purple red and softening in pink, which reverberates with moods on our skin. I imagined colour moving on a single wall racing in the distance." A sort of religious harmony runs through the work of Ettore Spalletti, whose group of large-format panels, Parole di colore, is on display on the frst foor of the gallery. The colour in them is not confned within the frame and is applied in a slow compositional exercise, acquiring decisive importance and a soft, all-encompassing spatial quality of its own.

On the second foor of the gallery, Giovanni Anselmo will be showing a project that combines two historical works: Oltremare mentre appare verso nord est "I have used this colour as though it were a material, more like a strip of land or like a compass than a colour in the strictest sense. In Antiquity, ultramarine was brought to Europe from afar – from ultra marinus or "beyond the sea" – from which it takes its name. It points to an elsewhere that is all around us, in every direction. This is because, here on Earth, whichever direction you choose to go in, sooner or later you'll fnd yourself beyond the sea. For me, placing this colour on a wall means choosing and pointing in that direction, towards the ultra-marine on the wall and the ultra-marine in the space outside..." and La luce mentre focalizza "…it's a luminous energy, a constant pulsation of light on a body that I want to pick out, but in a sort of impalpable way.".

Giovanni Anselmo (Borgofranco d'Ivrea, Italy, 1934). He lives and works in Turin and Stromboli. Solo shows devoted to Giovanni Anselmo’s works have been held at prestigious institutions such as Kunstmuseum Winterthur (2013), Modern and Contemporary art Gallery, Bologna (2006), S.M.A.K, Ghent (2005), Museum Kurhaus Kleve (2004), Atelier del Bosco, Villa Medici, Academie de France à Rome, Rome (2001), Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, Chicago (1997), Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Nice (1996), Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostela (1995), Musée National d'Art Moderne - Centre Pompidou, Parigi (1985), Musèe de Grenoble, Grenoble (1980), Kunsthalle, Basel (1979), Kunstmuseum, Luzern (1973). He partecipated at XXII Bienal Internacional in Saint Paul in 1994, Biennale D’arte in Venice in 1972, 1978 and 1980, Documenta V in 1972 and Documenta VII in 1982. In 1990 he received the Leone d’Oro for painting at Venice Biennale.

Wolfgang Laib (Metzingen, Germany, 1950) began to study medicine in 1968 at the University of Tübingen and became doctor in 1974. In 1975 he made his frst Milkstone, a slab of white marble covered in milk. Since 1975, Laib has worked exclusively as an artist and has built an international reputation. His largest retrospective, organized by the American Federation of the Arts, traveled to the Hirshhorn Museum; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; Dallas Museum of Art; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; and Haus der Kunst, Munich, (2000-2003). Recent museum solo exhibitions have been held at the Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou (2004); MACRO, Rome; Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2005-2006); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofa in Madrid (2007); Musée de Grenoble (2008); Fondazione Merz, Turin; MUAC (Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo), Mexico City (2009); The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City (2009-2010); MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2010) and Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013).

Ettore Spalletti (Cappelle sul Tavo, Italy, 1940) Solo shows have been dedicated to Spalletti by prestigious institutions such as the Museum Folkwang, Essen (1982), Museum Van Hedendaagse, Gent (1983), Kunstverein, Munich (1989), Portikus, Frankfurt (1989), ARC, Paris (1991), IVAM, Valencia (1992), Guggenheim Museum, New York (1993), MUHKA, Antwerp (1995), Museo di Capodimonte, Naples (1999), Musée de Strasbourg (1999), Fundaciòn La Caixa, Madrid (2000), Henry Moore Foundation, Leeds (2005), Villa Medici, Rome (2006), Museum Kurhaus Kleve (2009). He has participated in several international exhibitions, including Documenta VII (1982) and IX (1992), Kassel and the 40th (1982), 44th (1990), 46th (1995) and 47th (1997) Venice Biennale. In 2014 three Italian Museums (GAM in Turin, MAXXI in Rome and MADRE in Naples) have dedicated three main solo shows to the artist.