Ten years after his death, this show is celebrating one of the most interesting painters on the Italian art scene in the second half of the twentieth century, with a wide-ranging retrospective devoted to the main series of his art.

The exhibition proposes a panorama of some twenty works by Scaccabarozzi, from works that examine the Concrete abstract heredity, produced halfway through the 1960s, to those from the 1970s such as Fustellati [Die cut] or Prevalenze [Prevalences], and to those created in the following decade such as Misura-Distanza [Measure-Distance], Quantità libere [Free Quantities], Essenziali [Essentials], and Polietileni [Polyethylenes].

From 25 October to 20 December 2018, the Galleria 10 A.M. Art, in its new venue at 5 Corso San Gottardo in Milan, will be hosting a show devoted to Antonio Scaccabarozzi (1936-2008), one of the most interesting figures on the Italian art scene in the second half of the twentieth century and the exponent of a pictorial research that, in over forty years, was developed through multifaceted series, with a language of international resonance.

The show, titled Destinazione: presente, curated by the Archivio Antonio Scaccabarozzi directed by Anastasia Rouchota, with critical essays by Ilaria Bignotti and Paolo Bolpagni, will be a much-needed retrospective devoted to the artist at ten years since his death, a show that will give an overview of his whole creative evolution.

An intellectually restless artist, one free from precepts and fashions, Scaccabarozzi frequented some of the protagonists of the post-war period, from Lucio Fontana to Enrico Castellani, Paolo Scheggi, and Luciano Fabro. With his thoughts about the meaning of painting in its space-time and perceptive-environmental relationships, he was in fact able not only to take on the responsibility of deeply rethinking the heredity of the Concrete avant-garde movements of the post-war period, but also to develop a highly personal inquiry, the herald of developments of absolute contemporaneity.

This exhibition itinerary, carefully designed ad hoc for the rooms of the gallery, is concentrated on his best-known series of paintings, such as those of the Fustellati [Die cut] and the Prevalenze [Prevalences] series, made in the 1970s, and represented in the show by such masterpieces as Giro completo in 8 pezzi (pezzo 8) and Grigio 1/5 prevalenze B.V.A.G.R.; it continues with works created in the successive decades, from the 1980s to the start of the new millennium, to reveal the complex lyricism of the artist.

The anthology will recount all this by proposing pertinent works from the series Linee Quasi Rette [Almost right Lines], Distanze Reali e Distanze Rappresentate [Real Distances and Represented Distances], and Peso di frammenti di colore [Weight of fragments of colour]; and then there are the Iniezioni [Injections], in which the artist directly injected paint into the canvas, and the Immersioni [Immersions] works where Scaccabarozzi acted on the canvas by immersing it directly in the paint. The itinerary continues with Quantità libere [Free Quantities], then Essenziali [Essentials], palette-knife strokes of thickened paint which emerge from the parietal surface, and with the Polietileni [Polyethylenes] works, sheets of plastic treated as though they were layers of paint to become coloured membranes that float in space, suspended from the wall or ceiling by nylon threads.

This retrospective exhibition of works by Antonio Scaccabarozzi comes at a crucial moment for his rediscovery, which was concretised by the entry of his work Iniezione-Delimitazione [Injection-Delimitation], 1980-1981, in the Intesa Sanpaolo bank’s collection in the Gallerie d’Italia, Piazza della Scala, Milan; the selection of the project Rotazione continua orrizontale [Continuous horizontal Rotation], originated by the artist in 1976, in the show “WunderMore”, at MAAXI, Rome; the solo show at the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Lissone, that is to open at the end of September; and the preparation of the catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work which will be published shortly.