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Agostino Bonalumi

May 02 - June 29, 2012

Nero 1967 Vinyl tempera on shaped canvas 24 x 20 i...

Nero

1967

Vinyl tempera on shaped canvas

24 x 20 in; 61 x 51 cm

Signed and dated on verso: Bonalumi 67

Rosso 1966 Vinyl tempera on shaped canvas 35 7/8 x...

Rosso

1966

Vinyl tempera on shaped canvas

35 7/8 x 27 1/2 in; 91 x 70 cm

Signed and dated on verso: A Bonalumi 66

Bianco 2011 Water based enamel on shaped canvas 47...

Bianco

2011

Water based enamel on shaped canvas

47 1/4 x 35 7/16 in; 120 x 90 cm

Signed and dated on verso: Bonalumi 2011

Rosso 2009 Vinyl tempera on shaped canvas 27 1/2 x...

Rosso

2009

Vinyl tempera on shaped canvas

27 1/2 x 35 3/8 in; 70 x 90 cm

Signed and dated on verso: Bonalumi 2009

Bianco 2012 Water based enamel on shaped canvas 39...

Bianco

2012

Water based enamel on shaped canvas

39 1/3 x 39 1/3 in; 100 x 100 cm

Signed and dated on verso: Bonalumi 2012

Bianco 1972 Acrylic on shaped canvas 47 1/4 x 47 1...

Bianco

1972

Acrylic on shaped canvas

47 1/4 x 47 1/4 in; 120 x 120 cm

Signed and dated on verso: Bonalumi 72

Argento 2012 Acrylic on shaped canvas 27 1/2 x 35...

Argento

2012

Acrylic on shaped canvas

27 1/2 x 35 3/8 in; 70 x 90 cm

Signed and dated on verso: Bonalumi 2012

Bianco 2012 Water based enamel on shaped canvas 35...

Bianco

2012

Water based enamel on shaped canvas

35 3/8 x 27 1/2 in; 90 x 70 cm

Signed and dated on verso: Bonalumi 2012

Bianco 2011 Water based enamel on shaped canvas 39...

Bianco

2011

Water based enamel on shaped canvas

39 1/3 x 39 1/3 in; 100 x 100 cm

Signed and dated on verso: Bonalumi 2011

Artist Page

Press Release

Barbara Mathes Gallery is pleased to announce its inaugural exhibition as the exclusive American representative of Agostino Bonalumi. Featuring a survey of work from the artist's five-decade career, it will be his first solo show in New York since 1982 and fifth in the United States.

Born in Vimercate, Italy in 1935, Bonalumi has been a leading figure in the post-World War II Italian avant-garde. Seeking an alternative to the gestural abstraction of Informel painting that predominated much of the fifties European art world, he achieved his breakthrough in 1959 with his discovery of the "extroflection." Specially outfitting his stretcher bars with dynamically shaped relief elements that pressed against the back of the taut canvas, Bonalumi created paintings that appeared animated by a mysterious presence lurking beneath their surface. While using the traditional tools of painting, he dispensed with illusionism, conceiving real three-dimensional volumes that abandoned the picture plane for the real space of the viewer.

Joining Bonalumi in his reinvention of painting were his friends, Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani. Inspired by Lucio Fontana's radical conception of space in his sliced and punctured canvases, they devised practices that emphasized the physical presence and forthright materiality of the work of art. Together, these three artists founded the short-lived but influential gallery Azimut in Milan, as well as its two-issue in-house journal, Azimuth. Operating out of the sub-basement of a furniture store, the gallery exhibited some of the most innovative art of its time and, along with its publication, was instrumental in propagating international currents of the avant-garde, such as the German Zero group, the French Nouveau Réalistes, and the American Neo-Dada art of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg.

Featuring work from all phases of the artist's career, this exhibition will present an overview of Bonalumi's paintings. The extroflection has proven to be a highly adaptable innovation that has resulted in a remarkably diverse body of work. Demonstrating a sculptor's capacity for inventive three-dimensional forms, Bonalumi has enlivened his canvases with bulging pneumatic volumes, undulating linear elements, geometric patterning, and mysterious involutions. At various points in his career, he has brought his work fully into three dimensions, creating sculptures as well as immersive environments of extroflected architecture. Unlike his contemporaries, Castellani and Manzoni, Bonalumi has embraced color, often working with saturated jewel tones that captivate the eye. This exhibition promises to reveal an artist of singular vision, whose work has been out of view to American audiences for far too long.

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