Agostino Bonalumi *
(Vimercate/Monza 1935–2013)
Bianco, 1964, signed and dated on the reverse, vinyl tempera on shaped canvas, 180 x 140 x 6 cm
This work is registered in the Archivio Bonalumi, Milan and is accompanied by a photo certificate of authenticity
Provenance:
Galleria Fumagalli, Bergamo
European Private Collection
Exhibited:
Venice, Materia ↔ Niente. Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, 27 April - 28 May 2001, exh. cat. p. 54
Rome, Agostino Bonalumi Premio Presidente della Repubblica 2001, Accademia Nazionale di San Luca, 2002, exh. cat. p. 27, with ill.
Milan, Agostino Bonalumi, Opere scelte dal 1960 ad oggi, Studio AS - Arte Contemporanea, 2003, exh. cat. p. 13
Termoli, Cinque Maestri dell‘astrattismo italiano del dopoguerra: Boille, Bonalumi, Castellani, Pace, Perilli, Galleria Civica d‘Arte Contemporanea, 19 July - 10 September 2003, exh. cat. p. 24
Milan, Bonalumi 1958 - 2013, Palazzo Reale, 16 July - 30 September 2018, exh. cat. p. 67 with ill.
Literature:
Agostino Bonalumi. Malerei in der dritten Dimension, Institut Mathildenhöhe, Darmstadt 2003, exh. cat. p. 90
F. Bonalumi, M. Meneguzzo (ed.), Agostino Bonalumi. Catalogo Ragionato, vol. II, Skira, Milan 2015, p.355, no. 138 with ill.
The work Bianco by Agostino Bonalumi is an example of his large monochrome canvases. In this case, as the title of the work suggests, the surface is painted with white vinyl tempera. The decision to name the work after colour was a conceptual stance for the artist: colour does not serve to represent form, but is - to use his words - "itself the possibility of form", which is not painted, but instead emerges from colour.
Three circles are lined up vertically on Bianco's canvas: the first, in a central position, barely emerges from the surface of the canvas; only the perimeter of the second can be glimpsed, tangentially touching the first and crossing the centre of the third; the latter, which is the lowest, emerges from the canvas like a bulge, a full volume that lends three-dimensionality and balance to the composition.
The effect that works like this provoke in the viewer is well described by the artist himself: "Sometimes the circle is placed perpendicular to the surface of the work-object, emerging from within, accentuating the tension that is always perceptible in my works. An effect which, when created by the opposition of the canvas-surface and internal thrusts and pressures, becomes psychological tension through the emergence in the abstraction of a morphism that is the intrusion of a natural element".
If the creation of an everted canvas immediately recalls Enrico Castellani - with whom Bonalumi shared a period of mutual exchange as their respective artistic research matured in tandem - the conceptual element that distinguishes the two artists is strong: if for Castellani it was about the surface of the canvas, for Bonalumi it is all a question of content, of attention to what is behind the canvas, to its stuffing.
1964 - the year in which the work presented here was created - is a significant year in his career: on the one hand, public recognition of his artistic production increases; on the other, the poetics of what critics have called his "object-painting" is defined, of which the outline of a circular shape emerging from a monochrome canvas becomes perhaps the most clearly distinctive feature. Bianco is thus exemplary of the artist's work from the early 1960s.
Bid on this lot
(Vimercate/Monza 1935–2013)
Bianco, 1964, signed and dated on the reverse, vinyl tempera on shaped canvas, 180 x 140 x 6 cm
This work is registered in the Archivio Bonalumi, Milan and is accompanied by a photo certificate of authenticity
Provenance:
Galleria Fumagalli, Bergamo
European Private Collection
Exhibited:
Venice, Materia ↔ Niente. Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, 27 April - 28 May 2001, exh. cat. p. 54
Rome, Agostino Bonalumi Premio Presidente della Repubblica 2001, Accademia Nazionale di San Luca, 2002, exh. cat. p. 27, with ill.
Milan, Agostino Bonalumi, Opere scelte dal 1960 ad oggi, Studio AS - Arte Contemporanea, 2003, exh. cat. p. 13
Termoli, Cinque Maestri dell‘astrattismo italiano del dopoguerra: Boille, Bonalumi, Castellani, Pace, Perilli, Galleria Civica d‘Arte Contemporanea, 19 July - 10 September 2003, exh. cat. p. 24
Milan, Bonalumi 1958 - 2013, Palazzo Reale, 16 July - 30 September 2018, exh. cat. p. 67 with ill.
Literature:
Agostino Bonalumi. Malerei in der dritten Dimension, Institut Mathildenhöhe, Darmstadt 2003, exh. cat. p. 90
F. Bonalumi, M. Meneguzzo (ed.), Agostino Bonalumi. Catalogo Ragionato, vol. II, Skira, Milan 2015, p.355, no. 138 with ill.
The work Bianco by Agostino Bonalumi is an example of his large monochrome canvases. In this case, as the title of the work suggests, the surface is painted with white vinyl tempera. The decision to name the work after colour was a conceptual stance for the artist: colour does not serve to represent form, but is - to use his words - "itself the possibility of form", which is not painted, but instead emerges from colour.
Three circles are lined up vertically on Bianco's canvas: the first, in a central position, barely emerges from the surface of the canvas; only the perimeter of the second can be glimpsed, tangentially touching the first and crossing the centre of the third; the latter, which is the lowest, emerges from the canvas like a bulge, a full volume that lends three-dimensionality and balance to the composition.
The effect that works like this provoke in the viewer is well described by the artist himself: "Sometimes the circle is placed perpendicular to the surface of the work-object, emerging from within, accentuating the tension that is always perceptible in my works. An effect which, when created by the opposition of the canvas-surface and internal thrusts and pressures, becomes psychological tension through the emergence in the abstraction of a morphism that is the intrusion of a natural element".
If the creation of an everted canvas immediately recalls Enrico Castellani - with whom Bonalumi shared a period of mutual exchange as their respective artistic research matured in tandem - the conceptual element that distinguishes the two artists is strong: if for Castellani it was about the surface of the canvas, for Bonalumi it is all a question of content, of attention to what is behind the canvas, to its stuffing.
1964 - the year in which the work presented here was created - is a significant year in his career: on the one hand, public recognition of his artistic production increases; on the other, the poetics of what critics have called his "object-painting" is defined, of which the outline of a circular shape emerging from a monochrome canvas becomes perhaps the most clearly distinctive feature. Bianco is thus exemplary of the artist's work from the early 1960s.
