Claudio Costa - Contemporary Avant-Garde Art

Claudio Costa (1942, in Tirana – 1995, in Genova) was a Contemporary Artists from the 1970s avant-garde. Costa's artistic production is divided in several different periods. He explored Arte povera, Conceptual Art, paleontologist and anthropological art, alchemic art. As an artist associated with the Arte Povera movement, Costa's first exhibition took place at the La Bertesca Gallery in Genova directed by Francesco Masnata. He produced a series of "tele acide" (acid canvases) (1970–1971), where he deployed a new pictorial language made of symbolical and magic elements by mixing them with materials and glue-earth-bone-blood-acids. Costa explained the acid canvases in his writings: "I used three acids and a sulfate; nitric acid, which corroded the support almost immediately, iron chloride which gave a brownish colour, and copper sulphate, which reminded me of the wonderful color of vine leaves when they are sprayed and which I needed to obtain a light blue base". In 1971, Costa investigated the confines between science and art as a paleontologist and anthropologist. He returned to the remote prehistoric past in search of the roots of mankind, especially in pieces like "Museo dell'Uomo" (Museum of Man), where he attempted a summary and condensation of his anthropological studies. "Alchemic Art" was also his main focus when he exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1986In 1988, he started working in Psychiatric Hospital in Genoa as an art-therapist. Costa had a large workshop inside the hospital. In this period he founded the "Institute for Unconscious Matter and Forms", where he exhibited works of patients as well as professional artists. Wikipedia