The Mazzoleni Art Gallery presents an exhibition devoted to Venetian artist Emilio Vedova (1919-2006), the original and undisputed Italian leader of European Art Informel trends, in its Palazzo Panizza exhibition hall in Turin.

An exponent of Italian artistic life in the second half of the 20th century, Vedova was a member of the generation that wished to fill the cultural void created by 20 years of Fascist rule, with socially committed artistic activity that resulted in a deep renewal which involved active participation in political and civic life. In 1946 he joined the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti, a hothouse of symbolic, informal language combined with realism and abstraction. During this brief period, which lasted until 1948, Vedova expressed his own subjective view of reality through mechanically-inspired compositions (Il mondo sulle punte, 1946-1951; Il Toro aveva il cuore in alto, 1947-51; Caffè alle Zattere, 1948) which attempted to reconcile neo-Futurism with his Corrente Expressionist experience in the 1930s. The space afforded by the canvas is a dimension that must be conquered, a place for existential, psychological and dramatic reflection, but also a place for making cultural and political statements.

In the brief period that was marked by his membership of the Gruppo degli Otto, during the Venice Biennale of 1952, Vedova abandoned neo-Futuristic formalism and gave free rein to his pictorial gestural expression, colourful brushstrokes that create dynamic spatial structures that never abandon their nature as political acts of condemnation and cultural redemption and are an invitation to participate actively in the viewer’s society (take for example his Ciclo della Protesta ’53 or his Ciclo della Natura ’53). This attitude remained constant over time, from his first phase up to later phases characterised by explosive gestural expressiveness: ‘[Now] in late 1950 I have been through a crisis and rebelled against geometry entirely, the dominating rigour of my paintings, and I am seeking to make my work vibrate with a greater degree of spontaneity. Now I no longer worry about cutting clear outlines or precise angles of light and shade, but rather light and shade emerge directly from my inner being, and I only worry about communicating the image without any pre-judged revisionism.’ (E. Vedova, Pagine di Diario, Milan, 1960, p. 51).

The exhibition displays several oil on canvas paintings of average size (Untitled, 1959, 65x45 cm; Untitled, 1959, 65x50 cm; Untitled, 1959, 81x65 cm) which demonstrate clearly the artist’s process of development from the late 1950s to the 1960s (Untitled, 1963, 40x50 cm), a period of research and experimentation: from his first studies for his Plurimi up until the Absurdes Berliner Tagebuch ’64 cycle.

Finally, two works of art from 1986 – Oltre and Tondo non dove ‘86–2 – are included which demonstrate the artist’s personal growth, where the perimeter of the circle and surface, made of stark contrasts between white and black and violent red brushstrokes, evoke the spatial/temporal instability of human life.

In conjunction with the exhibition, a catalogue with colour reproductions of all the paintings on display and a review by Professor Francesco Poli will be published.

Emilio Vedova was born in Venice into a working class family, Vedova began working at an intense pace as a self-taught artist right from the 1930s on, demonstrating a clear inclination for draughtsmanship, completing a series of architectural views of his city. When very young – in 1942 – he joined the ‘Antinovecentista’ anti-Fascist movement Corrente. A committed anti-Fascist, despite his interest in Futurism, he took part in the Resistance from 1944 to 1945 and he was among the signatories of the Oltre Guernica manifesto in 1946 in Milan. That same year in Venice, he was one of the founders of the Nuova Secessione Italiana and later the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti, movements that attributed art with considerable social value. In 1948 he participated in his first Venice Biennale, an event that he was to dominate several times: in 1952 he was given his own exhibition hall, in 1960 he was awarded the Grand Prize for painting and he was finally awarded the prestigious Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 1997.

In the early 1950s he embraced Art Informel, a symbolic-gestural-material form of painting, and Abstract Expressionism, completing his famous painting cycles: Scontro di situazioni, Ciclo della Protesta and Cicli della Natura. In 1954, at the second Sao Paulo Biennal, he won a prize that allowed him to spend three months in Brazil, whose extreme and complicated circumstances struck him profoundly. In 1961 he produced costumes and scenery at La Fenice opera house for Intolleranza ‘60 by Luigi Nono with whom he collaborated once more in 1984 for Prometeo. From 1961 he began working on his Plurimi, works of art involving several different types of material that, placed on movable bases, invade the space around them and the floor area. First he created the Venetian series and then the Berlin-based series, made in Berlin from 1963 to 1964 including the seven works of art that are part of the Absurdes Berliner Tagebuch ’64, shown at the Documenta festival in Kassel in 1964 where he had exhibited in 1955 and 1959 and again in 1982. From 1965 to 1967 he worked on Spazio/Plurimo/Luce for the Montreal EXPO.

He spent a great deal of time teaching in American universities and later at the Sommerakademie of Salzburg and the Venice Accademia. His artistic career was characterised by an ongoing desire to carry out research and an innovating impetus. In the 1970s he produced Plurimi Binari in the Lacerazione and Carnevali cycles and in the 1980s he produced the large-scale cycles of Teleri up until his Dischi, Tondi, Oltre and …in continuum…. He was awarded many prizes and prestigious awards. One of the most important solo exhibitions of later years was the large-scale anthology which took place at Rivoli Castle in 1998 and, after his death on 25 October 2006, at Rome’s GNAM National Gallery of Modern Art and Berlin’s Berlinische Galerie. Today the Fondazione Emilio e Annabianca Vedova works in Venice to preserve the memory of the master’s intense body of work.

Mazzoleni Galleria d’Arte
Piazza Solferino, 2
Turin 10121 Italy
Ph. +39 011 534473
Fax +39 011 5113301
info@mazzoleniarte.it
www.mazzoleniarte.it

Opening hours
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Sunday by appointment only
Monday closed