Agostino Bonalumi

Agostino Bonalumi (July 10, 1935, Vimercate – September 18, 2013, Desio) was an Italian painter, draughtsman and sculptor.
Bonalumi studied technical and mechanical drawing, and exhibited his first works at the “Premio Nazionale Città di Vimercate” (hors concours) in 1948, when he was just thirteen years old.He held his first solo show at the Galleria Totti, Milan, in 1956. In 1958 he began working with Enrico Castellani and Piero Manzoni, holding a group exhibition at the Galleria Pater, Milan, which was followed by further shows in Rome, Milan and Lausanne, the foundation of Azimuth magazine and his participation in exhibitions at the Azimut gallery.He started developing the idea of what he would call “pittura – oggetto” (painting-object), following the idea to go beyond the canvas started by their mentor Lucio Fontana. In 1959 he held his first solo show outside Italy in Rotterdam. In 1960 he was one of the founders of the international Nouvelle École Européenne (NEE) movement in Lausanne and his solo exhibition “Agostino Bonalumi. Recent Paintings, Sculptures and Drawings” opened at the New Vision Centre Gallery in London.

 Arturo Schwarz began collecting his works and, in February 1965, organised a Bonalumi exhibition in his gallery in Milan.
He had strong links with the German art scene, thanks to the interest of Udo Kultermann in his work (since 1960) and his collaboration with the Galerie M.E. Thelen in Essen.
He also had assiduous contacts and links with the international Zero movement (both in the Netherlands and Germany), documented by major exhibitions such as “Zero” in London, 1964, and the touring exhibition “ZERO Avantgarde”, which began in Lucio Fontana’s studio in Milan in 1965. 1965 marked the start of a long period of collaboration with Renato Cardazzo, director of the Galleria del Cavallino in Venice and the Galleria del Naviglio in Milan. He was Bonalumi’s sole agent for many years and, in 1973, supervised the publication of a lengthy monograph on the artist by Edizioni del Naviglio, written by Gillo Dorfles.In 1966 he was invited to take part in the 33rd Venice Biennale, where he exhibited a selection of his works in the same room as Paolo Scheggi, while in 1970 he had his own personal room at the 35th Venice Biennale (and a feature written on him in the catalogue by Luciano Caramel), in which he also installed some large environmental sculptures.
In 1967 he was invited to the São Paulo Biennial and the Biennial of Young Artists in Paris. This was followed by a period of study and work in northern Africa and America, where he lived for a while in New York. It was here that he held his first solo show in the United States: “Agostino Bonalumi. Painting–Constructions”, presented at the Galeria Bonino in 1967.

 During this period, Bonalumi embarked on his own particular course of painting and environmental sculpture, which unfolded over the decades in some fundamental stages: in 1967, Blu abitabile (Inhabitable Blue) created for “Lo spazio dell’immagine” exhibition in Foligno (and exhibited again in 1970 in the “Vitalità del negativo” show in Rome); in 1968, Grande Nero (Big Black) at the Museum am Ostwall in Dortmund; in 1979, as part of the “Pittura Ambiente” exhibition curated by Francesca Alinovi and Renato Barilli in the Palazzo Reale in Milan, Dal giallo al bianco e dal bianco al giallo (From Yellow to White and from White to Yellow). More recently, Ambiente bianco – Spazio trattenuto e spazio invaso (White Environment – Detained Space and Invaded Space), created in 2002 for the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice as part of the “Temi e Variazioni” project conceived and curated by Luca Massimo Barbero.
In 1974, a retrospective of the artist’s work, curated by Giulio Carlo Argan, was held in the Palazzo dei Musei in Modena. In 1980, the Regione Lombardia sponsored an exhibition in the Palazzo Te, Mantua, curated by Flavio Caroli and Gillo Dorfles: an extensive review that illustrated his entire artistic career.

 In 1981 he took part, together with Piero Dorazio, Mimmo Rotella and Giuseppe Santomaso, in the “Italian Art: Four Contemporary Directions” exhibition at the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art in Florida. In 1986 he participated in the 11th Rome Quadriennale and the 42nd Venice Biennale. Between 1986 and 1997 Bonalumi was represented exclusively by the Galleria Blu in Milan, which presented solo shows of his work in 1980, 1989, 1991, 1995 (with a monograph published by Scheiwiller as part of the Arte Moderna Italiana series, including a piece written by Vanni Scheiwiller), 2002 and 2005. A monograph by Elena Pontiggia, which documented Bonalumi’s works on paper and made from paper, was also published in 1995, as part of La Scaletta editions, San Polo, Reggio Emilia.

In 1997 he began working with the Galleria Fumagalli in Bergamo, which, in 1998, held an exhibition of his works from 1957 to 1997, accompanied by a monograph by Alberto Fiz and Marco Meneguzzo.Wikipedia

Contemporary art Mikołaj Smoczyńsk

"Mikołaj Smoczyński was a painter, photographer, draughtsman, performance artist, and author of objects and installations. He was born on 22nd March, 1955, in Łódź, and died in Lublin on 2nd January, 2009.
He graduated from the State Higher School of Plastic Arts in Łódź (1974-75) and the Institute of Art Education at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin (1975-79, diploma from Jan Popek's workshop). In 1984-85, he worked as a fellow at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, in Ryszard Winiarski's workshop. In 1979, he started teaching at the Institute of Art Education of his alma mater. Mikołaj Smoczyński was known for creating site-specific installations and black and white photographs resembling abstract paintings. In his works, he focused on the specifics of the material he was applying as well as on matters relating to place and space. The essence of his art lay in capturing an individual's experience in reference to reality in flux.
Smoczyński's early painting works were inspired by American abstractionists, predominantly Franz Kline. He also felt a strong affinity with such styles as minimalism and Arte Povera. 

 He only painted for a short period of time, after graduating from university. In the early 1980s, Smoczyński began producing objects that went past the definition of painting, but could not yet be described as installations. Installation art appeared later on in his practice, as an offshoot of his painting style, which had been elaborated into three-dimensional forms.
The artist decided to start documenting these altered states of space, considering photography to be the most appropriate medium for doing so. For a period of time, Smoczyński created installations in his studio, solely for the purpose of photographing them, such as in the series The Secret Performance. He carried out these kinds of actions during Martial Law. Being able to concentrate on a personal, internal experience allowed him to cut himself off from the unacceptable reality outside of his working space.

 At the same time, Mikołaj Smoczyński referred to himself as a realist, by which he understood the unearthing of that which is felt through art. For Smoczyński, the creative process began with an encounter with space, and most of all with its material structure, i.e. floor, walls, shapes.
From 1992 onwards, Smoczyński created installations that turned him into an architect of space – he didn't want to transform existing constructions, but to create brand new ones. In the process he used an actual construction material – suprema, which came in modules, suitable for shaping desired structures. The colour and texture of a construction are affected by light, which was the fundamental factor in all of the artist's works. Its dramaturgy exposed the rhythm of Smoczyński's realizations and took over the emerging forms.
Some of the works in which Smoczyński used suprema include Parallel Action (Akcja Równoległa), realized at the Stara Gallery in Lublin in 1992, and Temporary Con Temporary, made in the same year, at the ZPAP Gallery in Warsaw.

 In 2004, Smoczyński prepared an exhibition for the Labirynt 2 Gallery in Lublin titled Changing a Local Property (Zmiana właściwości miejscowej). In the lower level of the venue, he placed objects brought from his home – ones that bore special importance, as they were related to his personal history, or perhaps even intimate mythologies (such as the 19th-century icon of St. Nicholas which he had had since his birth). The upper section contained his sculptural creations – abstract and synthetic forms. Visitors were thus given a chance to relate the latter to the pieces displayed downstairs, i.e. those lying at the root of Smoczyński's oeuvre......"(Author: Ewa Gorządek, CCA Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, December 2007; updated: November 2009. Translated with edits by AM, April 2015.  culture.pl )

Hector Julio Paride Bernabo - Carybe

Hector Julio Paride Bernabo - Carybe (Lanús, Buenos Aires province, Argentina, 7 February 1911 – Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, 2 October 1997) was a painter, engraver, draughtsman, illustrator, potter, sculptor, mural painter, researcher, historian and journalist. He settled in Brazil and naturalized as a Brazilian.
While living in Rio de Janeiro, he was a scout. There, scouts were nicknamed after types of fish, and he was given the nickname of Carybé (a kind of piranha). So the artist used it as an alias for his Christian name, which was very similar to his brother’s name, who was also an artist.
He produced five thousand pieces of work, including paintings, drawings, sculptures and sketches. He illustrated books by Jorge Amado as well as Gabriel Gárcia Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. He was an Obá de Xangô, an honorary position in candomblé. He died of heart failure during a session in a candomblé yard.
Some of Carybé’s work can be found in the Afro-Brazilian Museum of Salvador: 27 panels representing the orixás. of the Bahian candomblé. Each board shows an orixá with his weapons and his animal of worship. They were sculpted on cedar wood, with engravings and scaling of various kinds of material. The work was commissioned by the former Banco da Bahia S.A., now Banco BBM S.A., which installed them in its branch on Avenida Sete de Setembro in 1968.
Carybé produced more than 5,000 works; his art was expressed through paintings, engravings, illustrations, wood carvings, mosaics and murals.Wikipedia

 

Alfred Hrdlicka

Alfred Hrdlicka (German pronunciation:27 February 1928 in Vienna – 5 December 2009) was an Austrian sculptor, draughtsman, painter and artist. His surname is sometimes written Hrdlička.After learning to be a dental technician from 1943 to 1945, Hrdlicka studied painting until 1952 at the Akademie der bildenden Künste under Albert Paris Gütersloh and Josef Dobrowsky. Afterwards he studied sculpture until 1957 under Fritz Wotruba. In 1960 he had his first exhibition in Vienna; in 1964 he attained international attention as a representative of Austria at the Venice Biennale, Italy.

 In 2008, his new religious work about the Apostles, Religion, Flesh and Power, attracted criticism about its homoerotic theme.The exhibition was housed in the museum of the St. Stephen's Cathedral of Vienna. He taught many sculptors, such as Hans Sailer, Angela Laich and others.Wikipedia

Magic realism Wolfgang Hutter

Wolfgang Hutter (December 13, 1928, Vienna, Austria - September 26, 2014) was a painter, draughtsman, printmaker and stage designer. Hutter's imagery is characterised by an artificial paradise of gardens and fantastical fairytale-like scenes.

The son of A. P. von Gütersloh, Hutter studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under Professor Robin C. Andersen and then under his father. Together with Ernst Fuchs, Rudolf Hausner, Fritz Janschka, Anton Lehmden and Arik Brauer, he is one of the main representatives and founding members of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. Hutter was awarded the UNESCO Prize at the Venice Biennale in 1954. In 1966, he was appointed a professorship at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.Wikipedia

Surrealism Rudolf Hausner

Rudolf Hausner (Vienna, December 4, 1914 – February 25, 1995) was an Austrian painter, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor.
Rudolf Hausner: A major Austrian painter and printmaker, Rudolf Hausner studied art at the Academy in Vienna from 1931 to 1936, under Fahringer and Sterrer. Many of his early paintings were confiscated and branded as 'degenerate' by the ruling nazi party in 1938. In 1941 Hausner was drafted by the German army and remained a soldier until the war's end in 1945. After the war he returned to Vienna and immersed himself in studies dealing with the unconscious and with the art of Surrealists, particularly that of Max Ernst. Along with Wolfgang Hutter and Anton Lehmden, Rudolf Hausner founded the Viennese School of Fantastic Realism in 1947. During the 1950's and 1960's this became one of Austria's most important movements and Hausner was its most influential artist. During this time he also held principal teaching posts at the academies of Vienna and Hamburg.

 Equally gifted as a painter, lithographer and etcher, Hausner's complex art is based upon potent symbols and imagery. Primary among these is the constantly recurring image of the first man, Adam, who is part auto-biographical and part archetype. Another compelling image is that of the man or boy in a sailor's cap. Hausner claimed that this image symbolized the myth of Odysseus and his epic voyages on the seas. It also, however, is representative of the artist's own boyhood and the integrated relationships of youth and age within the self. As with all of Hausner's monumental works of art, the elements within Adam Bei Sich demand a lifetime of contemplation and study.(rogallery.com)