Agostino Bonalumi

Italian artist Agostino Bonalumi (1935-2013) was a self-taught painter with a background in technical design and mechanics. In 1958, alongside Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani, with whom he co-founded the groundbreaking “Azimuth” journal, Bonalumi garnered attention with an exhibition at Milan’s Galleria Pater, soon followed by others in Rome, Milan and Lausanne. “Azimuth” pursued the absolute of images, and in that quest, Bonalumi conceived his work in experiential terms, aiming to create objects that foregrounded the basic mechanisms of visual perception. He quickly established himself as a key figure within Milan’s artistic vanguard of the 1960s. He became associated to a new generation of artists seeking to overcome personal and existential expression in art to examine its fundamental structural principles.

Bonalumi is renowned for his monochromatic “quadri-oggetto” (“picture-objects”) series, three-dimensional canvases conceived in experiential terms. Composed of elasticised canvas, tightened on special looms structured to determine the embossed shapes of their compositions, these works and their geometric clarity bridge the gap between painting and sculpture, challenging the notion of the flat canvas as painting’s necessary prerequisite. Bonalumi approaches the canvas as a pliable medium, bending and flexing it to create a three-dimensional surface able to reflect light and colour, projecting it into the real space of the viewer’s domain, and taking on an almost architectural quality.

“Bianco” (White), 1989 is an exceptional example of Bonalumi’s “quadri-oggetto”, which articulate light and space through subtle deformations of the canvas surface. Here, the white painted fabric is stretched and pinned to highlight the shape of a striped geometric structure, where diagonal and horizontal lines intersect and give shape to surprising optical effects, creating striking variations of light and shadow, presence and void.