Spazio Vedova, Amendola. Burri, Vedova, Nitsch: Azioni e gesti - Installation View - BURRI - foto Vittorio Pavan

With the photographic exhibition Amendola. Burri, Vedova, Nitsch: Azioni e gesti (Action and Gesture), mounted by the Fondazione Vedova together with the Fondazione Palazzo Albizzini Collezione Burri, the Spazio Vedova in Venice will host from May 4, 2024, a series of studies by the celebrated Pistoia photographer chronicling the work of three key players in 20th century art.

In a career spanning more than 60 years Aurelio Amendola has passionately dedicated himself to capturing artists at work in their studios, elaborating over time the notion of an exhibition devoted to their “live” actions and gestures: an idea that has led him to put together, at different times and places, the corpus of photographs of Alberto Burri, Emilio Vedova and Hermann Nitsch that make up this show. Three of the artists’ works complement the photographic selection: Burri’s Plastica M1, 1962, Vedova’s Non Dove/Breccia 1988 III (op. 1 – op. 2), 1988, and Nitsch’s 18b.malaktion, 1986.

The interaction between Emilio Vedova and the photographer Aurelio Amendola is documented in the sequences devoted to the artist and his works in the studio. A detail that creates a particular “time travel” effect is that the exhibition space, with its white-painted exposed brick walls, is the very one in which Vedova was moving around during Amendola’s shoot.

In Amendola's photographs, Vedova's gestuality is displayed in infinite modes of attack, where scoring, engraving, overpainting, rapid sketches and globs of matter set up a constant pictorial tension. Just as the photographer's lighting illuminates Burri's combustion and freezes the instant of Nitsch's action and his disruptive will to liberate body and spirit.

“The Fondazione Vedova rounds off here in Venice a brief exhibition tour mounted in partnership with the Ex Seccatoi del Tabacco in Città di Castello (Umbria) and the Hermann Nitsch Museum in Naples, where Hermann Nitsch worked for many years, mirroring the trajectory of the three artists, in their regular interactions and many shows over the years in Rome, Venice and elsewhere” – writes the curator, Bruno Corà.... read the rest of the article»

Alfredo Bianchini, President of the Fondazione Vedova, adds: “The exhibition highlights the different modus operandi of each of the three artists and his expressive approach, while at the same time providing the wider public with an overview of the characteristics of a great Italian photographer who enjoyed a lasting and mutually fruitful friendship with the three masters”.

Amendola. Burri, Vedova, Nitsch: Azioni e gesti is an exhibition that is emblematic of Amendola's work: in these large photographic prints, the photographer engages in a dialogue with the works of Burri, Vedova and Nitsch. The project conveys well the photographer's extraordinary ability to let artists and their work speak through his images.

Alberto Burri (Città di Castello [Perugia], 1915 - Nice, 1995) was one of the more significant Italian artists and painters of the 20th century, anticipating such movements as arte povera and the New Realism, deploying experimental materials and elaborating a new expressive language.

Emilio Vedova (Venezia, 1919 - 2006) was one of the most representative artists of the Informal school, a movement based on gesture, matter and sign. His artistic explorations went hand in hand with a strong ethical, social and political commitment.

Hermann Nitsch (Vienna, 1938 - Mistelbach, 2022), an exponent of Wiener Aktionismus, represents the high expressive tension of European Body Art and was an originator of the total art experience linked to the psychoanalytic concept of “abreaction” – cathartic emotional discharge.

Aurelio Amendola, born in Pistoia (1938) is Italian art photographer with an exceptional career: he is known worldwide for his famous photographs of Italian Renaissance sculpture and for his work on the classical tradition, fuelled by a tactile, emotional, sensory vision.

He has also immersed himself in contemporary subjects, compiling a sort of Pantheon of Illustrious Men, documenting the works of such modern masters as de Chirico, Pomodoro, Schifano, Lichtenstein, Warhol, alongside Manzù, Fabbri, Ceroli, Vangi, Kounellis, Pistoletto, Parmiggiani, Paladino, Barni, Ruffi, Mainolfi and Marini.

The Fondazione Emilio e Annabianca Vedova, established in Venice by Vedova himself and his wife Annabianca Manni in 2004, has for more than two decades aimed to promote the artist’s art and work with a range of cultural initiatives: studies, research, analysis, exhibitions, conferences, scholarships, and awards. The Foundation, chaired by Alfredo Bianchini, is committed to the safekeeping and maintenance of the artist's works and to spreading awareness of them, in partnership with major international museums and cultural institutions.

The Fondazione Vedova devotes special attention to the themes “painting - space - time – history” that constitute the cardinal points of Emilio Vedova's art and commitment. The Fondazione has two exhibition spaces on the Zattere: the Magazzino del Sale, restored under a project conceived by Renzo Piano and realised in 2008 by Maurizio Milan and Alessandro Traldi, is equipped with advanced technologies for the conservation and presentation of the works, foremost among which the robot machine, which permits the creation of different display scenarios; and the Spazio Vedova is a multi-purpose space capable of hosting both exhibitions and other events. From the inaugural 2009 show, the artistic direction of the foundation was entrusted to the critic Germano Celant (1940 - 2020), with Fabrizio Gazzarri (1953 - 2023) overseeing the archive and the collection.