Exhibitions, Italy, Cosenza, Acri, 17 December 2011
From Saturday, December 17, 2011, the MACA (Museum of Contemporary Art of Acri) presents an important exhibition dedicated to one of the most significant experiences of the Italian art of the 20th Century: the Group of Eight Painters.
Following the split between figurative painters and abstractionists, which took place in 1950 among the members of the group called Fronte Nuovo delle Arti, two years later, in 1952, Afro Basaldella, Renato Birolli, Antonio Corpora, Mattia Moreni, Ennio Morlotti, Giuseppe Santomaso, Giulio Turcato e Emilio Vedova gathered around the art critic Lionello Venturi and gave birth to the Group of Eight Painters – a circle of non-figurative artists which wanted to open themselves to the gusts of innovation that were coming from the rest of Europe and the United States, with the intention of surpassing the sterile fight which was taking place between the paladins of figuration and the ones of abstraction.
« They are not and they don’t want to be abstractionists – wrote Venturi on the Group’s Manifesto –; they are not and they don’t want to be realists; they intend to go out from this antinomy. […] They employ the pictorial language which belongs to that tradition that started around 1910, which includes the experiences of Cubism, Futurism and Abstraction. […] As artists, they are not puritans, instead, they follow their own needs; abstraction doesn’t reject a relationship with nature ».
60 years after the formation of the Group of Eight Painters, the MACA, in collaboration with De Arte projects and services for the arts, dedicates a wide retrospective to its members. The more than 30 large paintings that compose the exhibition – some of which testify of the presence of the group at the 1952 Venice Biennale – recapitulate its vicissitudes, intense and rich of important experimentations, from the start of Abstraction in Italy, of which they were among the beginners, to the latest masterpieces painted by the eight Maestros. To the inspirations coming from across the borders, they added a sharp sensibility and a vitalistic attachment to the concrete world, which they translated through works that are both heterogeneous and strongly linked to each other by the necessity of finding a point of balance in the abstract-concrete dichotomy, a place where the radicalism of the informal gesture and the depth of life could be united.
ABSTRACTCONCRETE
the Group of Eight Painters
Where: MACA (Museum of Contemporary Art of Acri)
Piazza Falcone, - 87041, Acri (Cs)
Curator of the exhibition: Marisa Vescovo
External curator of the MACA: Boris Brollo
Vernissage: December 17, 2011, 5:30 pm
Exhibition period: from December 17, 2011 to February 26, 2012
Exhibition hours: from Tuesday to Sunday, 9 am – 1 pm and 3 pm – 7 pm; closed on Monday
Info: MACA press office, tel. +39 (0)119422568
maca@museovigliaturo.it, www.museovigliaturo.it
http://www.facebook.com/MACA.Silvio.Vigliaturo
Following the split between figurative painters and abstractionists, which took place in 1950 among the members of the group called Fronte Nuovo delle Arti, two years later, in 1952, Afro Basaldella, Renato Birolli, Antonio Corpora, Mattia Moreni, Ennio Morlotti, Giuseppe Santomaso, Giulio Turcato e Emilio Vedova gathered around the art critic Lionello Venturi and gave birth to the Group of Eight Painters – a circle of non-figurative artists which wanted to open themselves to the gusts of innovation that were coming from the rest of Europe and the United States, with the intention of surpassing the sterile fight which was taking place between the paladins of figuration and the ones of abstraction.
« They are not and they don’t want to be abstractionists – wrote Venturi on the Group’s Manifesto –; they are not and they don’t want to be realists; they intend to go out from this antinomy. […] They employ the pictorial language which belongs to that tradition that started around 1910, which includes the experiences of Cubism, Futurism and Abstraction. […] As artists, they are not puritans, instead, they follow their own needs; abstraction doesn’t reject a relationship with nature ».
60 years after the formation of the Group of Eight Painters, the MACA, in collaboration with De Arte projects and services for the arts, dedicates a wide retrospective to its members. The more than 30 large paintings that compose the exhibition – some of which testify of the presence of the group at the 1952 Venice Biennale – recapitulate its vicissitudes, intense and rich of important experimentations, from the start of Abstraction in Italy, of which they were among the beginners, to the latest masterpieces painted by the eight Maestros. To the inspirations coming from across the borders, they added a sharp sensibility and a vitalistic attachment to the concrete world, which they translated through works that are both heterogeneous and strongly linked to each other by the necessity of finding a point of balance in the abstract-concrete dichotomy, a place where the radicalism of the informal gesture and the depth of life could be united.
ABSTRACTCONCRETE
the Group of Eight Painters
Where: MACA (Museum of Contemporary Art of Acri)
Piazza Falcone, - 87041, Acri (Cs)
Curator of the exhibition: Marisa Vescovo
External curator of the MACA: Boris Brollo
Vernissage: December 17, 2011, 5:30 pm
Exhibition period: from December 17, 2011 to February 26, 2012
Exhibition hours: from Tuesday to Sunday, 9 am – 1 pm and 3 pm – 7 pm; closed on Monday
Info: MACA press office, tel. +39 (0)119422568
maca@museovigliaturo.it, www.museovigliaturo.it
http://www.facebook.com/MACA.Silvio.Vigliaturo
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