PARIS.- Tornabuoni Art Paris is presenting La nuova concezione artistica 1960 (A new artistic conception 1960) as its first appointment of 2023. This show looks into a 1960 exhibition housed by the Circolo Il Pozzetto in Padua, which had previously been held in Milan at the Azimut Gallery. The exhibition La nuova concezione artistica (A new artistic conception) presented together for the first time works by Alberto Biasi, Enrico Castellani, Heinz Mack, Piero Manzoni and Manfredo Massironi, giving an overview of the transformations which were underway in the panorama of post-war Italian and European art.
A renewal of the conception of the arts was ongoing following the pioneering work of Lucio Fontana whose Concetto Spaziale. Attese completely broke with the traditional ideas of painting and sculpture. Elements such as absence, the void and monochrome inhabited the production of Manzoni and Castellani. These ideas echoed with the works and research of artists working in smaller cities such as Padua (Biasi, Massironi).
The exhibition at Tornabuoni Art Paris is an occasion to delve deeper into this chapter of post-war Italian art of the La nuova concezione artistica exhibition through major works of the 1960s as well as more recent pieces by these emblematic artists. In many ways, the works present in the 2023 exhibition provide different answers to the same questions which were behind the production of these artists and that Piero Manzoni openly asked in 1961:
« Why not, on the contrary, free this surface? Why not try to understand that art history is not a history of “painters” but of discoveries and innovators? Allude, express, represent, abstract: these problems no longer exist. Form, colour, dimensions are meaningless: the only problem for the artist is that of conque- ring the fullest freedom: barriers are a challenge, the physical ones to the scientist just as the mental ones to the artist.»
The liberation of the surface and the relationship between matter and light are at the forefront of the works exhibited. In Milan, Piero Manzoni’s works from the late 1950s such as Achrome (1958-59) present unconventional materials such as tar or kaolin on their textured surfaces through which the artist questioned the techniques essential to traditional painting. Enrico Castellani who was a student of Lucio Fontana creates chiaroscuro effects which underline his desire to go beyond the two-dimensional format of canvases with his Superfici such as Superficie Blu (1961) through the rhythmic application of nails underneath the monochrome canvases.
The artists from Padova approached the surface with an interest in optical effects. This is particularly visible of Biasi’s Oggetto ottico-dinamico (1961) , a remarkable example of a work that breaks with the classical idea of what a pictorial surface can be. The very structure of the work becomes a tool to search for optical vibrations and dynamism. Manfredo Massironi’s works of art such as Struttura Trasparente (1961) echo the same themes through similar gestures. A two dimensional piece which however has nothing of a traditional ‘‘painting’’ where in fact the actual canvas does not exist.
The presence of Heinz Mack allows this exhibition in Padua to open the provincial city to the European artistic panoramaand in particular to the theories of the ZERO group of which he is the founder with Otto Piene, then Günther Uecker who joined them in 1962. Emphasizing variable geometry, Mack seeks a kinetic renewal of abstraction through light and shadow. The work of the German artist of this period refers us to themes and questions parallel to those of his Italian counterparts particularly in the case of Erzengel Michael und Gabriel (1972).
