AGOSTINO BONALUMI
Francesca Pola
All the Shapes of Space
1958–1976
Preface
Our decision to dedicate this exhibition to Agostino Bonalumi was prompted by our profound conviction that his contribution to the Italian art scene of the 1960s was fundamental and on a par with that of his contemporaries Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani. The careers of these three artists developed in parallel during the first few years after the 1958 exhibition in Pater Gallery, Milan, and all three maintained a curious symbiosis in their artistic explorations, even after the closure of the Azimuth magazine in 1960. This occasion provides an opportunity to bring to light the critical importance of Bonalumi – who was acclaimed internationally, first in Europe and then in the United States, where he was already known in the 1960s – a singular artist whose investigation explores the three dimensionality of the canvas according to a creative logic that runs parallel with the work of Manzoni and Castellani. The works we have chosen – dating from his debut in 1958 up to 1976 – testify to the crucial role this artist played in the formation of that particular group of artists who injected new dynamism into Italian art in the post-war period, which at the time was divided between followers of the novelty of American Abstract Expressionism and more conservative exponents involved in the retrieval of the figurative tradition in the wake of the “Corrente” movement. The evidence assembled here clearly bears evidence to Bonalumi’s role as one of the masters of the International Contemporary movement. From his early employment of new and unconventional materials such as ciré (a nylon-based fabric used for industrial purposes in the 1960s and now out of production), through his fibreglass sculptures, to his ingenious and complex wooden structures forming the basis of his creations – Bonalumi’s technical achievements are second to none, and we are very pleased to be able to show the entire gamut of his experimentation here. We are particularly happy to present his rare Blu abitabile (Inhabitable Blue) from 1967, which perfectly encapsulates Bonalumi’s overriding interest in fusing painting and environment, and give it this premiere for an international audience. The multiple layers of painting, sculpture, drawing, and installation highlight Bonalumi as a consummate creator and visionary who has tenaciously followed his own personal path for decades, largely unconcerned with building a “reputation” or a public profile, indeed shunning press and remaining first and foremost a deeply private and authentic artist. This we find inspirational and in great contrast to the current vogue for the superstar artist. Bonalumi’s credibility lies not in a projected persona, nor an ability to spin the media circus, but in the sheer strength and depth of his life-long artistic enterprise. Edmondo di Robilant and Marco Voena
Contents
9
13
Agostino Bonalumi: Form and Appearance Carlos Basualdo BONALUMI All the Shapes of Space 1958–1976 Francesca Pola
187
Beauty has to be experienced, not described A conversation with Agostino Bonalumi Francesca Pola
198
List of Bonalumi’s Works
209
Biography Appendix Stefano Setti
212 214 222
Selection of Artist’s Writings and Interviews Exhibitions (1958–1976) Selected Bibliography (1958–1976)
225
Italian Texts
Agostino Bonalumi: Form and Appearance
In April of 1947 Lucio Fontana travelled to Milan after seven years in Buenos Aires for what initially was planned as a few months stay – a sojourn that will be prolonged until the end of his life. Fresh in his mind was his extensive contact with the
Carlos Basualdo
members of the Argentine avant-garde and the experience of his teaching at the Altamira School. Only one year before, in 1946, a group of his students had signed the text of the progressive Manifiesto Blanco (White Manifesto) calling for an art capable of operating a synthesis of colour, movement, time, and space. Once in Italy, his blazing imagination would animate a nascent art movement, known as Spazialismo, and he would produce his pioneering environmental piece Ambiente Spaziale a Luce Nera, which was exhibited in February of 1949 at the Galleria del Naviglio. Also in 1949, a mere two years after his return from Argentina, he would realise his first “Buchi”, perforating the surface of a sheet of paper first and then a canvas, and by that gesture radically altered the relation between the surface of a painting and the space in which it exists. He would later call this series “Concetto spaziale”, emphasising the novelty and complex implications of these works existing at the very limit of traditional painting. The possibilities inaugurated by the radical gesture of Fontana would have lasting consequences in the art produced in Italy in the 1950s and 1960s. Its reception allowed artists such as Piero Manzoni, Enrico Castellani, and Agostino Bonalumi to overcome the influence of Informalism, which gravitated heavily in the artistic milieu of both Milan and Turin, as well as the growing protagonism assumed by the products of industrial design, whose pervasive presence in the cultural landscape would come to characterise the post-war Italian economic recovery, commonly referred to as the Italian Miracle. For the younger artists such as Manzoni, Castellani, and Bonalumi, the rejection of Informalism took the form of an exploration of the formal qualities of materials – rather than the attempt to delve in the expressive possibilities of matter. As Bonalumi would put it: “My work has never been about indulging a material for the sake of it. It’s the result of an active interest in materials themselves, the intelligence of materials”. The presumed immediacy of the relation between artistic gesture and expressive content, a common assumption both of European Informalism and American Abstract Expressionism, would be questioned in the practice of the Milanese artists, by introducing a project dimension in the production of the work that establishes a hiatus between the generative idea and its ultimate execution.
9
In his writings and interviews, Bonalumi refers repeatedly to this methodological approach, which involved a preparatory stage when the materials are researched, a project stage when the work itself is first conceived, and lastly, the stage of its execution. The technocratic frame of mind implied in such a methodology certainly resonates with the transformations that the North of Italy underwent during the 1950s and 1960s, with its rapid industrialisation accompanied by an accelerated urban growth. Bonalumi situates his work as inhabiting the space between an existential emphasis in the expressive gesture and the growing instrumentalisation of materials in the nascent commodity culture. In the period from 1958 and 1976 he would precisely, brilliantly, and relentlessly explore that space, initially suggested by Fontana’s experiments of the late 1940s. Using a vocabulary with clear philosophical implications, Bonalumi employs the terms “appearance” and “form” to better define the space in which his artistic practice operates. “Form” corresponds solely to the artist intention, and is established in the design stage of the production of the work. “Appearance” refers to the singular character of the work once it is realised. Between form and appearance lies the “artistic coefficient” that defines the work of art as such. For Bonalumi, that coefficient is responsible for the lack of stability of the 10
plastic sign. An artwork would be inherently defined by that instability: a sign in the process of finding its possible meanings. Bonalumi’s shaped canvases from 1959 would begin to explore that dimension which his work would continue to inhabit until today. The deliberate ambiguity of Bonalumi’s work is but just another way in which it manifests a series of refusals that articulate his artistic practice and situate it in the wider context of Italian culture in the 1960s. In the first place it is the refusal to rely on the expressive potential of the material gesture that dominates post-war Informalism. Secondly, and moving in an opposite direction, a refusal to conceive his work in purely design terms, a tendency that he sees incarnated in industrial design. Lastly, a refusal to abandon the space of the wall, and everything that it implies in terms of the pictorial tradition to which he repeatedly refers in his writings. What is attempted then is to produce works that, in their profound ambiguity, both embrace and resist the traditional category of art, objects that escape commodification while remaining methodologically subjected to its logic – and language, as testified by the terminology (project, resistance, materials, realisation, research) that Bonalumi relies on repeatedly to describe his work. These set
1 Bonalumi in his studio, 1970s, photo by Nino Lo Duca
BONALUMI All the Shapes of Space 1958–1976
The distinctive feature of the creative path that Agostino Bonalumi has been constantly pursuing and evolving for over half a century lies in what might be termed a certain contradictory “crucial eccentricity”. His works have always been constructed patiently and relentlessly, gesture after gesture, as catalysts for the exploration of a human space, understood as
Francesca Pola
energy in constant flux, through a strict adherence to the underlying principles of the evolving culture that they have accompanied. Yet in Bonalumi’s output this intrinsic affinity with each successive period of artistic expression has never entailed identifying him with any particular style, language, trend, or movement. Instead, he has invariably endorsed his artistic independence, while knowingly engaging in a constant and fecund dialectic of “interferences” with his evolving contemporary art-historical context. This book, and the exhibition that occasioned its publication, are the first to examine, according to that broad vision, the germination and early development of this Bonalumi’s “lateral centrality”, that is the essential definition, specification and evolution of his creative individuality, over the twenty-year period in which he established the research criteria that, today, make him a master of international contemporary art. The intention is certainly not to confine the interest in his work to this period, but rather to begin, from a historical perspective, a detailed and in-depth analysis of the reasons for his importance as an artist. From the period under examination until the present, which still sees Bonalumi as a protagonist, in the past and the present, due to his amazing creative vitality. In the volume, this historical-critical background essay is seamlessly interwoven with the writings of Bonalumi, artworks
1
and documents, to evoke the vitality and density of his art by Each text is followed by the year of
publication and an identification code
emphasising both its roots and specifically Italian features, as
(for example T1, T2 etc.) which indicates
well as his relationships, dialogues and connections with the
the bibliographical reference.
international scene, and the ideas they shared.1 We shall
2
Agostino Bonalumi, “Evoluzione
dialettica”, in Bonalumi. Evoluzione
examine Bonalumi’s work from both a retrospective and
continua tra pittura e ambiente, exhib.
actualising standpoint, conscious of the difficulty of dividing his
cat., edited by Luca Massimo Barbero,
trajectory into separate stages and of the paradoxical
Parma, Galleria d’arte Niccoli, 13 May – 31 July 2000, pp. 30–31. The volume also
metamorphic continuity of his creativity; indeed it is still
provides an overarching and detailed
enriched by shifts, insights, modifications, choices, risk-taking
critical analysis of the artist’s oeuvre. See
and reprisals, due to what might be described as an obsession
also Gillo Dorfles, Bonalumi, Edizioni del Naviglio, Milan 1973, and Agostino
with change. A constant commitment to research – the most
Bonalumi, exhib. cat., Darmstadt, Institut
authentic value of his continuity – which has led Bonalumi to
Mathildenhöhe, 21 September 2003 –
speak of “dialectical evolution” and to attribute a “helicoidal
18 January 2004 (co-edition Galleria Fumagalli, Bergamo / Galleria d’arte
movement” to his creative path.2 An ascending spiral, like the
Niccoli, Parma).
one we find in the enveloping space of the extraordinary Blu
13
2 Senza titolo (Untitled), 1958 Mixed media on canvas 72.3 x 67.5 cm
14
abitabile (Inhabitable Blue) of 1967 – presented for the first time outside Italy in this London show – a plastic-sensory environment way ahead of its time, which was executed for the historic exhibition “Lo spazio dell’immagine”, in which the creative utopia of the time became a reality. Bonalumi played a key role in a creative movement that aimed to go beyond informal expression and favoured a signifying reduction of the image, by establishing a dialogue with the most innovative experiments of the period, such as those conducted by the artists who congregated around the Azimut gallery in Milan and the Zero and Nul groups in Germany and Holland. Our reconstruction of this period in Bonalumi’s career begins in 1958, with the exceptional rediscovery of Senza titolo (Untitled), published in September 1959 in the first issue of the Milanese art journal Azimuth (figs. 8–9). The painting is emblematic of his relationship with artists such as Enrico Castellani and Piero Manzoni who, like Bonalumi, worked in the wake of Lucio Fontana’s creative legacy. The complexity and wealth of
12 Senza titolo (Untitled), 1959 Mixed media on canvas 70 x 65 cm
22
and its volumetric aspect. The latter, in fact, still prefers not to use the words “extroflection” and “introflection” to describe the sculptural shaping of his works, since these terms imply a “degree zero” of the “surface”, but to speak instead of a vision that unifies form and its generation, creating actual chromatic “volumes”. He sets himself the challenge of “fixing the becoming of objects through their nonobjectualisation”.9 Among the historical sources of this interest in the object shared by the three young Italian artists, were the Merzbilder by the German Dadaist Kurt Schwitters. Not coincidentally,
9
Dorfles, 1973, p. 10.
10
For a detailed reconstruction of the
activities of Azimuth magazine and the Azimut gallery, with a special focus on
Schwitters was among the artists whose works were chosen for
Manzoni as a driving force and catalyst in
publication in the first issue of the art journal Azimuth, founded
the European art world, see Francesca Pola, Manzoni Azimut, Gagosian Gallery,
by Manzoni and Castellani, which came out in September 1959
London, in collaboration with
after a lengthy gestation period.10 The idea behind its genesis
Fondazione Piero Manzoni, Milan 2011.
13* Senza titolo (Untitled), 1959 Mixed media on canvas 59 x 43 cm
‌ I went from figurative art to Expressionism, to a form of Abstract Surrealist art. However, I could never tolerate rules of any kind, and felt the need to use materials other than paints, canvases, and brushes. So I tried using cement, rags, clothes, tubes and twigs, and now I have gone back to real painting. I create canvases in a single uniform colour, or in plain white (washable), but I pad them with forms that create symmetrical reliefs. As you can see, my art is classical and severe. 1965 T1
14 Rosso (Red), 1959 Shaped canvas and vinyl tempera 60 x 90 cm
was to change not only the content of art, but also its modes of relationship, positioning it differently within the system. Again, it was no accident that only a couple of months after the journal was launched an independently run gallery with virtually the same name, Azimut, was opened as a complementary tool for establishing a network of relationships and direct contacts with the whole of Europe to pave the way for a “new artistic conception” (to the point that this was used as the title of the second and last issue of the magazine). The launch of this project coincided with a strengthening of ties between Bonalumi, Manzoni and Castellani. The magazine was originally going to be called Pragma, as attested by a letter Manzoni wrote to Valentino Dori (Giorgio Carmenati Francia’s pseudoynm) at the end of December 1958: “Today, alas, the movement [Arte Nucleare] split in two: I am now with Castellani and Bonalumi and we are following that same line that you saw me begin: we will soon be publishing our own magazine, which will be called Pragma and, as usual, we have a programme that couldn’t be livelier.” Manzoni also told Hans Sonnenberg – the Dutch first Zero group’s manager with whom he had been in contact for some months – about the journal in a letter dated 21 January 1959: “The Movimento Arte Nucleare is about to disband. I, but it’s still a secret, am about to create a new magazine which will be of very high quality, in which I won’t
25
Actuel International continued to contribute to the spread and exchange of new ideas. For example, an article by Verheyen himself, entitled “Essentialisme” was published as early as 1959,
28 Posters for the exhibition “Agostino Bonalumi. Recent paintings, sculptures and drawings”, New Vision Centre Gallery, London, August 15 – September 3, 1960
while in 1960 it featured a piece by Cirlot, dedicated to Megert, and another in which Giulia Veronesi described her visit to the Milan studios of Manzoni and Castellani. In 1960 the magazine also published Kultermann’s essay “Eine Neue Konzeption in der Malerei”, which he wrote for the exhibition “Monochrome Malerei” at the Städtisches Museum in Leverkusen (the piece also appeared in the second issue of Azimuth), which focused on the theme of monochrome painting and discussed many European experiments linked to the new idea of essential expressiveness.15 According to Kultermann “the new painting seeks to objectify the instruments of action, so that the constellation and the true nature of the forming material itself become starting point and canon of effect, and the objective and real structure takes the place of the vague outline of personalistic forms of expression.” These words so aptly
34
15
Leverkusen, Städtisches Museum,
describe Bonalumi’s course of development during those
Schloss Morsbroich, 18 March – 8 May
months that it comes as no surprise that the German critic
1960.
29* Grigio (Grey), 1960 Shaped canvas and vinyl tempera 80 x 100 cm
showed an early interest in his work. First expressed in a letter he wrote to the artist on 18 January 1960 (fig. 23), it led to the establishment of a privileged relationship that lasted for decades; in fact, it was Kultermann who presented Bonalumi to the Galerie Thelen in Essen in 1965 (fig. 24), and in so doing made a crucial contribution to the establishment and diffusion of the Italian artist’s work in Germany.
Pushing the canvas These various stimuli led to a further development in Bonalumi’s work (figs. 11, 12, 13): the surface was covered with a layer of cement in which twigs and strips of canvas were inserted – “finds”, as the artist himself describes them, which were also soaked in the cement and sometimes sprayed unevenly with coloured temperas. The natural materials, namely the twigs and straw, were incorporated as physical and visual structural elements that articulated the pictorial surface, which was treated with cement to “neutralise” any trace of the emotive. From the outset, Bonalumi’s exploration of the three
36
30* Lucio Fontana Concetto spaziale. I Quanta (Spatial Concept. The Quanta), 1959 Water-based paint on canvas 36 x 48 cm Robilant+Voena, London – Milan
31* Lucio Fontana Concetto spaziale (Spatial Concept) 1960 Water-based paint on canvas 93 x 135 cm Robilant+Voena, London – Milan
dimensions was concerned with volumes and masses, but using a method that differed, for example, from the one adopted for the Gobbi (Humps) by Alberto Burri who, in 1950, began to insert irregular-shaped pieces of wood underneath the canvas but merely to achieve formal complexity. This experimentation with materials to give painting an increasingly marked objectual and plastic identity, clarified for Bonalumi the importance of physical projection as a possible way of establishing a spatial dialogue that explored, through the dialectic between threedimensional definition and structuring monochrome, a means of perceptively and concretely complicating the spatial dynamic inherent in the work-object. An article in Art Actuel International stresses precisely this self-evident aspect: “the ‘recreated universe’ is a grey universe in plaster, barely nuanced with mauve, blue and pink, at times, and besieged by shadows and protruberances in rough relief, where the unexpected is never disorder, the immediate is never gratuitous. It is a ‘waste land’ of the spirit, an unexplored area of human reality to which the artist gives life. The unknown and its entire mystery (and, despite the extreme elegance and stillness of these works, these visions, its entire anguished atmosphere) are expressed simply in these works, which makes them something rare among the many that just scratch the surface and, at times, put 16
Giulia Veronesi, “Visite d’atelier:
Bonalumi à Milan”, in Art Actuel International, Lausanne, no. 18, 1960.
us off painting by making it seem like the realm of the fake, of the superficial and of bluff”.16
37
43* Grigio (Grey), 1964 Shaped canvas and vinyl tempera 147 x 97 cm 44* Nero (Black), 1964 Shaped canvas and vinyl tempera 146 x 97 cm
49
45 Rosso (Red), 1964 Shaped canvas and vinyl tempera 70.5 x 60 cm 46 Bianco (White),1964 Shaped canvas and vinyl tempera 83 x 83 cm 47* Blu (Blue), 1965 Shaped canvas and enamel 100 x 80 cm
50
48 Oggetto n° 23 – nero (Object no. 23 – Black), 1965 Shaped canvas and vinyl tempera 120 x 90 cm 49 Nero (Black), 1965 Shaped canvas and vinyl tempera 40.1 x 40.1 cm
53
sensoriality, also through the use of shiny materials like enamel (fig. 47). Thus he defined certain expressive constants that were, at the same time, matrix and result of an interest in space that was not confined to define the composition of the work and enabled it to establish a dialogue with the environment. During these years Bonalumi followed a course that lay between the emergence and compression of the plastic-pictorial body, the solidity and softness of the contours, monochrome colour, and the shaping of the surface according to a formal and tonal dynamic (figs. 50–56). Linked to this was a marked interest in the potential mechanisms of vision, which Bonalumi developed in parallel to contemporary researches on the optical sign, expanding and complicating them to involve the viewer, taking him beyond the two-dimensional into an area apart, which was first threedimensional then completely orientated towards the sensory and the environmental (figs. 61–64, 85). From this standpoint, a fundamental component of many of works was the increasing
importance of shade as a means of accentuating and intensifying not only the concreteness of the plastic-pictorial body, but also the interaction between the body and its space. This concrete and expansive vision of the spatiality of a work was rooted in Lucio Fontana’s “spatial concept” and his transcendence of the two-dimensionality of the surface – the breakthrough coming with the “holes” in 1949 – a lesson that was as indispensable to Bonalumi as it was to the whole of his generation. With his “slashes” of 1958, Fontana postulated a new degree zero of concentration, also regarding execution (that dimension of “expectation” that was registered in the titles of his works during this period), and accentuated his investigations of the multidimensional, between the formal complications of scientific origin in the “quanta” (fig. 30) and the interplanetary evoked by new cosmic trajectories (fig. 31). This would have certainly influenced research like Bonalumi’s, which explored space as physicality in tension and saw shade, the physical presence of the surface projected beyond itself, as
50 Nero (Black), 1965 Shaped canvas and vinyl tempera 100 x 80 cm 51* Rosso (Red), 1965 Shaped canvas and vinyl tempera 120 x 90 cm
60 Exhibition “Bonalumi”, Galleria Il Punto, Turin, September 30 – October 13, 1965
61 Bianco (White), 1965 Shaped canvas and vinyl tempera 65 x 55 cm 62 Verde (Green), 1965 Shaped canvas and vinyl tempera 101 x 82 cm
objectual painting is confirmed by the fact that this was the venue where Roy Lichtenstein first showed in Italy between 1963 and 1964. This solo exhibition came immediately after his participation in the one devoted to programmed art presented by Umbro Apollonio in the same venue, and was contemporaneous with his presence in the section curated by Celant of the “Mostra del Linguaggio Grafico nella Comunicazione Visiva” at the Castello del Valentino in Turin. Despite the fact that Bonalumi’s work was shown alongside the visual researches gathered under the Nuove Tendenze umbrella (fig. 76), it is important to emphasise the fundamental difference between his perspective and their para-scientific stances – as expressed at the events in Zagreb and Paris during the first half of the decade. The artist himself defines this difference: “One came to understand that for the artists who carefully analysed the problem, the concept of methodology resolved itself in a kind of overlapping of codification and technology: this reduced the concept of method simply to the way of making a work”.24 In fact, Bonalumi held that “method” should not be
24
Agostino Bonalumi, “Ricerca di un
punto di equilibrio tra vita e opera dell’artista. Una lezione delle Nuove Tendenze”, in Avanti, Milan, year LXXXIV, no. 221, 19 September 1980, p. 8.
98 Blu abitabile (Inhabitable Blue), 1967, exhibition “Lo spazio dell’immagine”, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno, July 2 – October 1, 1967, photo by Ugo Mulas (Photo Ugo Mulas © Eredi Ugo Mulas. All rights reserved)
Page 106 99 Blu abitabile (Inhabitable Blue), 1967, exhibition “Lo spazio dell’immagine”, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno, July 2 – October 1, 1967 (detail), photo by Ugo Mulas (Photo Ugo Mulas © Eredi Ugo Mulas. All rights reserved)
Gino Marotta, Eliseo Mattiacci, Romano Notari and Pino Pascali). The show is documented by a remarkable series of photos taken by Ugo Mulas, and was widely reviewed in specialist publications, especially the second issue of Flash magazine, launched by the Italian art critic and publisher Giancarlo Politi (who would soon rename it Flash Art) in July
Pages 107–109 100–101 Blu abitabile (Inhabitable Blue), 1967 Shaped canvas and vinyl tempera 16 elements, 300 x 70 cm each Internal diameter 300 cm Bonalumi Archive, Milan Installation at Robilant + Voena, London, 2013 (detail)
1967. Bonalumi’s Blu abitabile (figs. 98–101) is a walk-through environment with an internal diameter and height of around three metres, constructed on a circular plan and characterised by a series of ascending extroflections created by the sixteen elements of which it is composed, and the sensual softness of the lens-like floor. The immersive experience of this work is based on a combination of the “tactility” of the gaze, stimulated by the plastic-chromatic body of the extroflections, and the rhythmic, enveloping progression of its formal architecture. In fact, the circular plan invites the viewer to stand in the centre of the space and, turning on himself, to “feel” with his eye the projections of the canvas arranged in an ascending spiralling diagonal, which draws his gaze upwards. A sensory development that ideally evokes certain Baroque architecture
110
102* Study for Blu abitabile (Inhabitable Blue), 1967 Mixed media 60 x 47 cm
111
103* Progetto (Project), 1971 Mixed media 51 x 73 cm
by Borromini, as well as the sinuous future spaces later designed by Zaha Hadid. The dynamic aspect of the experience is further heightened by the lens-like pavement, conceived as a soft element that renders the point of view unstable and accentuates the indissoluble unity of the plastic-chromatic body and the environment. The immersive effect is further emphasised by the fact that the opening through which one enters disappears when we reach the centre of the space. Thus the visitor can allow himself to be completely enveloped by the psycho-physical movement of the work. It is an extremely advanced sensorial dynamic, designed to physically involve the viewer, which Bonalumi developed
36
Achille Bonito Oliva, “Le circostanze
spaziali”, in Ricognizione cinque
while Gianni Colombo was investigating the dynamic
(Agostino Bonalumi / Achille Bonito
possibilities of his Spazio elastico (fig. 107). At the same time, it
Oliva, Marcolino Gandini / Maurizio
anticipates the immersive solutions adopted decades later by
Fagiolo, Aldo Mondino / Germano
artists like Anish Kapoor (fig. 106). It was no coincidence,
Celant, Gianni Ruffi / Renato Barilli, Gilberto Zorio / Alberto Boatto), exhib.
therefore, that in 1968 Achille Bonito Oliva was already
cat., Salerno, Einaudi 691 (Bonalumi,
describing Bonalumi’s research as “aiming to establish and
Gandini, Ruffi, Zorio), and New design
emphasise the changes brought about by the spatial event”,36
(Mondino), from 3 May, exhibition organised by the Centro Studi Colautti,
using the word “event” to stress the unpredictable, sensory and
Salerno, p. 15.
open nature of the spatial experience proposed by the artist. At
104–105 Blu abitabile (Inhabitable Blue), 1967, exhibition “Vitalità del negativo nell’arte italiana 1960/1970”, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, November 1970 – January 1971 (detail), photo by Ugo Mulas (Photo Ugo Mulas © Eredi Ugo Mulas. Al rights reserved)
148
140 Exhibition “Agostino Bonalumi. ‘Vorrei incontrare gli architetti’”, Galleria del Naviglio, Milan, October 22 – November 18, 1969 (Photo Ceriani e Verri) 141 Bonalumi’s scenes for Partita by Goffredo Petrassi, in Il Dramma, no. 9, year 46, Rome, September 1970
142 Exhibition “Agostino Bonalumi. ‘Vorrei incontrare gli architetti’”, Galleria del Naviglio, Milan, October 22 – November 18, 1969