Estroflessione bianca

In the late 1950s, together with Enrico Castellani and Piero Manzoni, Bonalumi championed the calls published in the magazine Azimuth for renewal through the complete negation of all previous artistic experiences. The artist thus stripped the painting as object of all non-essentials and happily went back to the canvas alone, whose blankness was agitated by rippling the surface with elements of wood and metal inserted on the rear. The resulting extroverted canvases thus became the stylistic hallmark of Bonalumi, who used a whole variety of metal rods and shapes in an obsessive investigation of effects of light and shadow. The White Extroversion on cardboard exhibited here attests to the artist’s constant experimentation: “I use work on paper to push the envelope of my art. I can make mistakes and throw them away. Paper is the place where I can venture past my line.” (PEGORARO, 2003, p. 9) A “wind of monochromatic disquiet” passes over this work on paper. (Transl. by Paul Metcalfe per Scriptum, Roma) Bibl: Agostino Bonalumi. Carte 1960-2002, a cura di S. Pegoraro, Catalogo della mostra (Mantova, 20 gennaio - 9 marzo 2003), Mantova 2003.