Between the end of the fifties and the beginning of the sixties, after the long season of Informal art ended, a new artistic sensitivity emerges in Western society that looks with interest at scientific and technological advances and their impact on daily life. Many artists adopt the teamwork model typical of scientific research and characterized by a variegated subdivision of tasks and skills, to join groups that aim to undertake an in-depth investigation of the perceptive and cognitive mechanisms linked to the psychology of form (Gestalt). Among these the Zero Group of Düsseldorf, the Italian Group N of Padua and Group T of Milan, the Parisian GRAV - Groupe de Recherches d'Art Visuel, the Spanish Equipo 57 and the Yugoslavian Exact 51, who shared the same design attitude and willingness to experiment with industrial materials and technologies in the aesthetic field to create works that are functional to the active involvement of the observer. Getulio Alviani's work emerges in this period of fervent collaboration, while always maintaining a specific and distinctive character, derived from his working background in the field of industrial design and graphic and architectural design. These experiences teach him, in fact, to deal with practical and functional problems through rigorous planning, based on mathematical calculation and inevitably lead him to contact with specialized technicians and suppliers of materials from whom he learns the wealth of knowledge which he then transfers to his artistic production. "Every aspect of her work", notes Loredana Parmesani, "starts from the assumption that designing an artistic object or an object of use is the answer to a visual or functional problem and, therefore, the result must be of a logical order, whose procedure is calculable and verifiable ". For Alviani, the work of art is not the product of an individual's expressive need, but the consequence of a need to solve problems concerning the optical and cognitive mechanisms. "We worked with the idea of involving the observer", says the artist, "with works that required the attention, intelligence, imagination of those who approached them and could also complete them in his head". His interest in perceptual phenomena arose from the observation of the dynamic behavior of matter and its relationship with geometry and light. Already in the works of the late fifties, from the Micas, composed of alkaline silicates, to the tables of the Whites and Blacks, built by assembling modules of plastic laminates, glass, papers, fabrics and paints, up to works such as "Glossy and matt black" and "Smooth and rough", based on the juxtaposition of surfaces of different nature, Alviani is committed to investigating the dynamism of luministic phenomena. But it was only at the beginning of the 1960s that the artist found the ideal surfaces in aluminum sheets for conducting his experiments on light. This is how the "Lines of light" and above all the "Surfaces with vibratile texture" were born (an example of which is the one dated 1974, exhibited at the Denise René gallery in Paris in the 1996 edition of the famous exhibition Lumiere et mouvement), where the aluminum or steel plates are milled in order to produce a modulation of the light incidence as the viewing angle of the work varies. They are perfectly calibrated works, in which the mathematical relationship between the milled modules generates an articulated texture of optical effects that "activate" the observer's attention. The first aluminum is exhibited at the Mala gallery in Ljubljana in 1961, precisely at the same time as the first Nove Tendencije exhibition takes place in the Gallery of Modern Art in nearby Zagreb. Visiting the exhibition, Alviani discovers a plethora of young artists - from Le Parc to Mavigner, from Morellet to Picelj, from Castellani to Group N in Padua - who work with intentions similar to his. From the following year, in fact, he will take part in all subsequent editions of Nove Tendencije, sharing with artists from all over the world the vision of a logical and rational art oriented towards design, architecture, sociology and psychology . "We worked with commitment and devoid of any will to clamor", says the artist, "on optical and perception problems, on virtual images, on the intrinsic dynamism of the work, on the intervention of the user, on light and space, on seriality, on new materials […] based on mathematics and exact forms ”. Also in 1962 Alviani took part in the important exhibition Arte programmed, inspired by Bruno Munari and curated by Umberto Eco for Olivetti of Ivrea, a company at the forefront of electronic research and manufacturer of Elea 9003, the first transistorized computer in the world, included in the exhibition "ZERO - Der neue idealismus" at the Galerie Diogenes in Berlin and began collaborating with Denise René's Parisian gallery, the epicenter of optical and kinetic research since the mid-1950s. During these years, Alviani met Josef Albers, Max Bill, Sonia Delaunay, Pavel Mansuroff, Walter Gropius and Lucio Fontana who will allow him to clarify his line of investigation and deepen the links with the tradition of the abstract avant-garde of the twentieth century. In 1965 he also participated in the famous exhibition "The Responsive Eye" curated by William C. Seitz at MoMA in New York, on the occasion of which the American museum acquires its own "Surface with vibrating texture." Meanwhile, his research begins to include the dimension of space, both in the illusory two-dimensionality of surfaces and in the form of virtual objects and environments . Works such as Virtual Circles (1967) and Interpenetrating Virtual Circles (1967-69) are made by fixing chromed copper semicircles on steel surfaces speculate to virtually complete the illusion that they are three-dimensional structures. Many surfaces, such as Virtual Cube (1978-79), also reproduce virtual spatial effects through the combination of laminated and milled aluminum modules. The natural relationship with architecture, on the other hand, is specified with the creation of structures such as "Curved specular interrelation" (1965-67), "Reflection relief with practicable orthogonal incidence" (1967) and above all "Chromospecular interrelation" (1969) . The latter is one of the artist's most significant works, an environment with walls painted in primary colors and dotted with mirrored steel panels that rotate as the user passes by and transform the environment into a dynamic space. In these, as in other two-dimensional and graphic works, Alviani tackles the infinite range of optical effects through the search for adequate mathematical-geometric rules and proportions. In Fifty fifty, an aluminum surface mounted on a board from 1968 (also published in the catalog of the exhibition "Kinetic and programmed art in Italy 1958-1968" which touched various Japanese museums between 2014 and 2015), the surface of the plate it is divided equally into opaque and reflective modules, while giving the observer the impression that one part prevails over the other. However, the optical deception is more evident in the homonymous series of oils on wood and serigraphs with green and red color variations. Even in 1978, to create a series of acrylics on wood with polygons inscribed in the circle, Alviani studied with an engineer a mathematical rule to increase the progression of the sides until obtaining what appears as a full circle. His attention to the design method and the verifiability and applicability of the process can be found in all of his research, characterized by a multidisciplinary attitude from the beginning. Just think of his many achievements in the fields of design, graphics, architecture, fashion and even boating. Throughout his life, Alviani has designed switches, switchboards, automatic valves, lamps, furniture, sets, displays, posters, rings, watches and even clothes and fabrics (in 1963 for Gaia Marcelli's Op Art collection and in 1966 for Rudi Gernereich ) and he modeled in the image and likeness of his constructive principles first his studio-houses in Udine and Cortina, then that of Milan. His rigorous vision, based on faith in the creative process, led him to think that he could make his works over the phone, simply by dictating the instructions to a good technician. The truth is that all his creations, the artistic ones as well as the functional ones, are the result of a great methodological knowledge, of a culture of doing applied to the solution of the problems of individuals and of the community. Alviani wanted to use this culture to improve society. He even claimed that if politics had been done as a Max Bill's work, it would have been real politics and not boorishness. Perhaps this is why he never tired of repeating that he "made art to make people think" and that beauty was a secondary thing. As he wrote in a 1999 text, "logic, rationality and essentiality have been for centuries the fundamental elements of conception, which in the world of art - with research ranging, for example, from Piero della Francesca to Leonardo Da Vinci, from the Bauhaus school to the Constructive Art, from the Concrete Art to the Programmed Art - they have made the West, and in particular Central Europe, reach its highest moments ".
Tags: Getulio Alviani - Alviani - Group Zero - Group N - Group T - Nove Tendencjie - Programmed Art - The responsive eye - surface with vibrating texture - virtual circles - kinetic and programmed art - Constructive Art - Concrete Art