Agostino Bonalumi Italian, 1935-2013

Agostino Bonalumi (Vimercate, Italy 1935 - Desio, Italy 2013)

Born in Vimercate in 1935, after technical-mechanical studies, Agostino Bonalumi, the self-taught artist entered the Milan art world at a very young age, frequenting the studio of Enrico Baj, where he met Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani.

His first solo show at the Totti Gallery in Milan took place in 1956.

In the following years, following important exhibitions in 1958 in Rome, Lausanne and Milan, he founded the magazine Azimuth together with Manzoni and Castellani and frequented the studio of Fontana. Thus began his research on space, leading to his first extroflection creations.

Starting from the famous cuts of Lucio Fontana, Bonalumi developed his own expressive technique, positioning objects under the stretched canvas to give his paintings a three-dimensional effect. Hiding mysterious objects underneath the surface added an illusory element that allowed him to cross the physical space to his audience.

In 1961, he was among the founders of the New European School group at the Kasper Gallery in Lausanne.

From the 1960s, the transformation of the two-dimensional canvas into a three-dimensional object became his artistic language, whose commitment to monochrome did not exclude a strong fascination with colour.

He took part in the Venice Biennale in 1966 and 1986 as well as with a personal room in 1970.

Over the years, his research evolved towards the creation of environmental works, in which the spectator actively physically participated.

In 2002, he earned the President of the Republic Award and the S. Luca National Academy dedicated a retrospective to him in the Carpegna Palace in Rome. That same year, he was the special guest at the Themes and Variations exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim Foundation in Venice, creating an exceptional installation on perceptive value, synthesising his vision of art as tension between thought and physical reality.

Between 2003 and 2004, a major exhibition was dedicated to him at the Mathildenhöe Institute in Darmstadt, including artworks from 1959 to 2003. In November 2003, he participated in the Italian Future exhibition in the European Parliament in Brussels. In 2013, he held an important exhibition at the Robilant+Volena London gallery, marking a general 1960s trend for the exploration of Italian experiences. The artist died a few weeks before this exhibit.

Copyright the artist. Photo UniCredit Group