Claudio Costa - Italian Avant Garde Art

 

 Claudio Costa (1942 – 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

Maria Lai - Italian Contemporary Art

 

 Maria Lai (Ulassai, 1919 – Cardedu, 2013) was one of the most singular voices in Italian art from World War II on.
Her special talent for drawing led her in 1939 to enrol in the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice, the only woman in those years to study sculpture under Arturo Martini. In the fifties, she moved to Rome, where she was able to observe various contemporary artistic developments, first through contacts with Art Informel and then, in the next decade, with the emergence of Arte Povera and Conceptual Art. From these movements, she derived an interest in materials, both organic and those related to pre-industrial civilization, and in the gesture as a process, filtering these interests through an absolutely individual sensibility. From this period the relationship with the traditions of her land became central to her work, in a conceptual outlook with an anthropological matrix. Together with drawing, her output was enriched with subjects and materials close to an ancient, popular culture as in the case of her sculptures of bread, in itself a plain and perishable product, closely associated with everyday life and women’s work.
During the Seventies, the artist also created a series of works central to the development of her artistic language, which she called Telai (“Looms”), works that combined painting and sculpture and in which the age-old tradition of weaving was opened up to new compositional possibilities. The community, relational and memorial impulse finds its summation in the artist’s environmental interventions. (From MADRE, Naples site)

 

Jannis Kounellis - Art Installations

Jannis Kounellis (1936 – 2017) was a Greek Italian contemporary artist based in Rome. A key figure associated with Arte Povera, he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome.n 1967, Kounellis became associated with Arte Povera, a movement theorized by curator Germano Celant as a major shift from work on flat surfaces to installations. Kounellis participated in the exhibition 'Arte Povera – e IM Spazio' at the La Bertesca Gallery in Genoa curated by Celant, which brought together artists whose work was concerned with the space between art and life, and nature and culture. Examples of artists who substantiated this basis of Arte Povera as a movement include Alighiero Boetti, Luciano Fabro, Giulio Paolini, Pino Pascali and Emilio Prini. To solidify the movement, Celant curated yet another group show, 'Arte Povera', which was exhibited at the De' Foscherari gallery in Bologna in 1968 with similar artists. In the same year Kounellis exhibited 'Senza titolo (Untitled)', which consisted of raw wool, rope and a wooden structure all leaning against a wall. Finally, Kounellis was also included in 'RA3 Arte Povera + Azioni povere' which was organized by Marcello Rumma and curated by Celant.In 1967, Kounellis installed "live birds in cages along with rose-shaped, cloth cut-outs pinned to canvas" alongside his painting. Through this shift in his work, "Kounellis was more interested in anarchical freedom from linguistic norms and conventional materials. The space of the gallery and the exhibition site in general were transformed into a stage where real life and fiction could join in a suspension of disbelief." The viewers became part of the scene of these living natural sources of energy within the gallery space. He continued his involvement with live animals later in 1969, when he exhibited twelve living horses, as if they were cars, in the Galleria l'Attico's new location in an old garage in Via Beccaria. Gradually, Kounellis introduced new materials, such as propane torches, smoke, coal, meat, ground coffee, lead, and found wooden objects into his installations. He also looked beyond the gallery environment to historical (mostly industrial) sites. In 1997, Kounellis installed thirteen wardrobes and two doors that were sealed in lead along a scaffolding ledge that blocked the entry to a central hall. In 1968, in an interview by Marisa Volpi, Kounellis stated that incidental adjustments are certain as aspects that can indicate the human liberty of life.Wikipedia