“Rigorismo” Exhibition

Unix Gallery

poster for “Rigorismo” Exhibition
[Image: Giuseppe Amadio "Edeo" (2013) Mixed Media on Canvas 52 x 34.25 in.]

This event has ended.

UNIX Gallery presents, Rigorismo, a survey exhibition of Italy’s preeminent artists who represent the genesis, progression, and future of the Spazialismo movement. Rigorismo is rooted in the tradition of the Spazialismo (Spatialism) movement of the late 1940s, as well as the German Zero movement of the late 1950s. For the first time, with these artists, including Guiseppe Amadio, Agostino Bonalumi, Dadamaino, and Turi Simeti, UNIX Gallery is bringing this movement the forefront of the contemporary art world.

Rigorismo challenges the definitions and limitations of space and object within artistic media. As a movement, it is influenced by a philosophical language of existence, which, as defined by Rene Descartes, is reducible to space and movement. It is these themes that the following artists challenge by interrupting the defined artistic spaces by manipulating canvas, metal, and other materials to create work out of space, itself.

Born in 1944 in Todi, Italy, Giuseppe Amadio (1944) creates works with in a multidimensional, evoking sculptural as well as Color Field in his works, much in the vein of Agostino Bonalumi’s estroflessioni works. Amadio studied both technical design and fine art, and continued to study under artist Piero Dorazio for over twenty tears. Amadio found his voice in rigorously stretched monochromatic canvases, which allow light to interact within the folds, resulting in a stylized kinetic glow.

Agostino Bonalumi (1935-2013) studied technical and mechanical drawing, but abandoned these formal structures, teaching himself how to paint at an early age. By age 21 he had his first solo exhibition in Milan. Around this time, Bonalumi started visiting the studio of Lucio Fontana, where he explored elements of spatial planes and produce the first of his estroflessioni works: specially made stretcher bars with dynamic shapes that created reliefs. This gave his paintings movement and mystery beneath their colored surfaces.

With a background in medicine, Dadamaino (1930-2000), gained prominence among the Milanese avant-garde with her Volumi works: punctured canvases, splayed over white stretchers, By opening up the surface of the work, she gives her pieces a dynamic interplay between tangible colors and negative spaces. Dadamaino continued her negative-spatial pieces through the 1950s and 60s, showing with Milan’s experimental Azimuth (Bonalumi, Castellani, and Manzoni) and Group Zero in Germany. Dadamaino’s later works shifted to a linguistic theme of signs, which she exhibited in the 1980 Venice Biennale.

Pino Manos (1930) was born in Sassari, Italy, moving to Milan in 1951, where he attended the Academy of Fine Arts “Cimabue” with Enrico Castellani and Vincenzo Agnetti, and befriended other Spatialism artists including Lucio Fontana. He began creating multidimensional works taking the movement of his canvases, opening them to communicate new expressions of figuration with shade and movement. Manos’ works are in numerous private and public collections in Italy and abroad, three of which are in the collection of Nelson Rockefeller in New York, NY.

Turi Simeti (1929) has spent half a century exploring variations of delicate arrangements of geometric forms within solid planes of vibrant color. The artist’s work embodies a minimalist style with his use of monochromatic surfaces and dynamic patterns. He was active in the Zero Art movement, which was a “silent” new kind of expression in the years following the aftermath of World War II. Simeti’s work captures a sense of movement through his use of the oval protrusions. The way that the light interacts, transforms these surfaces, and produces a structural feel.

Synthesizing color, sound, space, movement, and time into a new type of art, as is the trademark of Spatialism, these artists of Rigorismo continue in this tradition, using innovative materials and tools to bring the movement through the Post-War era and into a more contemporary context.

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