Emilio Vedova
Biography
Emilio Vedova was born in Venice on August 9, 1919 into a large family of workers. He began working at the age of 11 in a decorating factory, but the hard and unhealthy work and an early rebellious character led him to the protest for which he was fired. He began to draw and attend libraries and bare school at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. During the war the contact with other artists, at exhibitions and conferences, led him to join anti-fascism and then to military in the Resistance. Until the 1950s Emilio Vedova actively participated in the various artistic groups that arise in Italy, from Current, to the Manifesto of Realism of painters and sculptors (beyond Guernica), to the New Front of the Arts, to the Group of Eight. During this period his painting is characterized by a certain geometric rigor that will pass only at the end of 1950. In 1953, Emilio Vedova painted the great canvases of the Cycle of Protest, of the Ciclo of nature, of the clash of situations that place him among the leading exponents of the European Informal for which he is invited to participate in the great artistic events in Italy and abroad. Between 1963 and 1965 he moved to Berlin as an "Artist in residence" invited by the Ford Foundation and where he performed the works called Plurimi of the Cycle of the Absurd Berliner Tagebuch. With these works Emilio Vedova intends to overcome the wall placement of the works by creating a middle ground between sculpture and painting. In this case, in fact, the works are placed on the floor, the support is generally a board painted on both sides and several boards are joined together by hinges so that they support each other. In Plurimi painting is polythemic with different techniques, collages, graffiti, combustions, etc. In this way the viewer can turn around the work and therefore can interact with the work itself. Between the 70s and 80s Emilio Vedova realized the cycles of lacerations, of The Excinations, of the ... Als Ob..., From Where,and others. Particularly in the Lacerations the artist pours all his existential discomfort of the moment; the gesture is particularly incisive, interrupted, thick in a succession of signs until the spasm. In these years he resumed his collaboration with the composer Luigi Nono, with whom he had already worked in 1961 on the occasion of the opera Intolleranza 1960, for the opera Prometheus -Tragedy of Listening, for which he creates sketches, costumes and sets and which is staged in 1984. In the 80s Emilio Vedova works on large works painted on both sides, are the cycles of the Tondi, The Beyond and The Not where. Among the last works of considerable artistic depth are the work That burns a book burns a man of 1993, disco-plurimo that the artist makes on the occasion of the bombing of the National Library of Sarajievo. In addition to painting, Vedova also engaged in graphics and engraving with a remarkable production. In this capacity he participated in various events and competed in various awards. His painting, made of impulsive, spontaneous and violent gestures, attracted the attention of critics all over the world. For this reason he was called to participate in artistic events everywhere, we remember the Venice Biennials of 1948 and 1960, and to teach for various periods in different academies and schools of painting. He died in Venice on 25 October 2006.
Emilio Vedova - Informale (Informal)
The Informal was born after the Second World War involving both European and American artists. It can be considered the point of convergence of previous artistic experiences such as Cubism. Expressionism and Surrealism. The name itself shows that informal art is a formless art and therefore stands out from both figurative art and abstract art. In fact, figurative art is based on the representation of what is seen, while abstract art is essentially composed of geometric figures. Informal art to develop a work also uses unusual materials, just think of the jute bags and plastics of Burri or the matches of Aubertin. Informal art is also characterized by the use of forms that have a clear three-dimensionality, typically the works of Bonalumi and Castellani,which allow to play both on their distribution on the canvas floor and on the alternation of lights and shadows depending on the incident light. As mentioned, the Informale was a worldwide movement of which the German naturalized French Hans Hartung, the Swiss Schneider, the Zero Group were part; Pollock and De Kooning in the United States, group GUTAI in Japan with, among others, Shozo Shimamoto and Kazuo Shiraga.
Tags: Informal - Aubertin - Bonalumi - Castellani
