"Concrete Thinking" exhibition at Bianconi Galleria

Mario Davico, Grande composizione (Meccanicità), 1949-50

Galleria Bianconi, together with START Milano, will be opening "Concrete Thinking" at 6 p.m. on 15 September 2011. Curated by Flaminio Gualdoni, the exhibition is devoted to a generation of Italian artists who first trained in the world of abstract and concrete art in the late 1940s and early ʼ50s, from the maestro Atanasio Soldati to Mario Nigro, Mario Davico, Gualtiero Nativi, and Roberto Crippa.

With works shown on the international scene and an interesting series of canvases by Davico which were presented in a historic show at Galleria La Bussola in Turin in 1950, the exhibition does not intend yet again to reconstruct a world that has already been fully explored. Rather, it aims to give examples that shed a different light on those of the younger generation whose studies took place in the world of abstract and concrete art.

The reconstruction of this important moment in Italian art – works by Crippa in this period are for example quite rare – thus shifts in a unique and profound manner towards the nuances of a historical transition that had a radical effect on later art, in which new visions of art and interpretations of the role of artists and of their commitment gradually took shape.

In Concrete Art, "something that previously existed in the world of ideas becomes a reality that can be controlled and observed. Concrete painting is thus a representation of the reality of abstract, invisible thoughts". Thus wrote Max Bill in February 1946 in his essay Pittura concreta, which paved the way for the new geometric art in Italy.

Working on this concept in the exhibition, Flaminio Gualdoni and Renata Bianconi have brought together a significant series of works that illustrate the moment when, in about 1950, artists such as Mario Nigro, Mario Davico, Gualtiero Nativi, and Roberto Crippa took up the lesson taught by Atanasio Soldati, the father of historic abstractionism. This led them to approach concrete form as an essential way of asserting the non-negotiable autonomy of artistic practice at a time when conventional wisdom made it
subordinate to beliefs, ideologies, and programmes inspired by other motives.

"In their view, modernity was primarily a radical demand for the non-negotiable independence of artistic practice, and an awareness that the artistʼs historical responsibility and commitment were all the stronger when they were no longer dependent on unrelated extempore factors but rather on a philosophy of action capable of modifying existing reality", writes Gualdoni in his introductory essay in the catalogue.

This new generation chose "not the path towards irrelative form but rather a natural adoption of that irrelativity and a metabolism towards the infinite adventures of possible form", turning concrete thinking into one of the great roots of art in the post-war period.

It is no coincidence that, in offering the vision of a younger generation in her own contribution to the catalogue, the art critic and journalist Santa Nastro states that “Concrete thinking” is neither a motto nor some witty pun” but sounds “more than anything like an invitation, a possibly enigmatic way of once again considering art as a necessary leading actor in society, and in its increasingly rapid and painful transformations. ʻConcrete thinkingʼ can give us an opportunity to look at today while telling a story of yesterday."

Duration: 15 September 2011 – 8 October 2011

Opening: 15 September 2011, 6 p.m. – 9 p.m.

Extraordinary opening START Milano:

16 September, until 10 p.m.

17 September, until 9 p.m.

18 September, 12 noon – 7 p.m.

Opening hours: Monday > Saturday 10 a.m. – 1 p.m., 2 p.m. – 7 p.m.