Art & Photography: May 2016

Friday, 27 May 2016

Astrazione Oggettiva - Estorick Collection of Italian Art

Aldo Schmid, Untitled,1976-77

The Experience of Colour: Astrazione Oggettiva is at Estorick Collection of Italian Art until 31 July 2016.
You wait years for a 1970s, Italian, avant-garde movement that you have never heard of before to turn up… and then two arrive at once! Having recently discovered Pittura Analitica (courtesy Mazzoleni, see below) I have now discovered Astrazione Oggettiva. (What with falling in love with Ettore Spaletti a short while ago (see here) I am having an Italian moment.)
Astrazione Oggettiva is all about colour – bold and strong. As the gallery blurb explains:
In the autumn of 1976, a group of painters from Italy’s northern Trentino region published their ‘Manifesto of Objective Abstraction’. Reacting against what they considered to be the superficiality of contemporary culture, Mauro Cappelletti, Diego Mazzonelli, Gianni Pellegrini, Aldo Schmid, Luigi Senesi and Giuseppe Wenter Marini called for a renewed attention to the painterly process and its fundamentally abstract concerns.… [W]hat united [the artists] was their desire to make colour the focal point of their artistic practice, exploring its optical and perceptual effects. As the group’s name suggests, instinct was set aside in favour of discipline and control, resulting in the creation of an impersonal, intellectual art that minimised the importance of an emotional response on the part of either the artist or the viewer.
Watch a fabulous film - Astrazione Oggettiva from FilmWork Treno: it’s in Italian so I didn’t understand a word (apart from ‘colore’) but it doesn’t matter because it’s beautiful to listen to and gorgeous to watch.
(Click on images to enlarge.)