Cycle 1961 – S.2

Strongly aware of the urgency of the historical present and its tensions, Emilio Vedova (Venice, 1919–2006) definitively abandoned all trace of geometric structure in his painting in the late 1950s in favour of lacerated gestures developed around nuclei of expanding energy that the critics associated with Informalism.
The theme of the “clash of situations” – a phrase that appears in the title of many works on canvas and on paper, as well as a statement of artistic intent published in Il Verri in December 1962 – can also be discerned in this canvas, where juxtaposed explosions of colour and linear trajectories irreducible to any form of order stand out against a black ground. The presence of sheets of newspaper, which emerge through the thickness of the paint with greater or lesser visibility at numerous points, indicates that
news and history are the substance of Vedova’s art.