MAKE IT NEW! Tomas Rajlich and abstract art in Italy
- When: April 22, 2020 - August 22, 2021
- this event is ended
- Place: Genova, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Villa Croce
- Region: Liguria
Modern art Contemporary artArt Exhibitions in Genova
The Museum of Contemporary Art of Villa Croce in Genoa dedicates, from 22 April to 22 August 2021, a large retrospective to a great international interpreter of abstract art, the Czech naturalized Dutch artist Tomas Rajlich, in dialogue with some key works of museum collection (from the abstractionism of the second post-war period to the perceptivist and preconceptual research of the sixties, up to optical art and new painting - analytical painting - from the seventies and eighties).
The exhibition, curated by Cesare Biasini Selvaggi, accompanied by a catalog published by Silvana Editoriale with contributions by Flaminio Gualdoni and Martin Dostál, presents through over eighty works an unprecedented overview of the peculiar artistic path and vitality expressed by aniconic painting.
The exhibition is produced by the Municipality of Genoa and created in collaboration with ABC-ARTE, a contemporary art gallery in Genoa.
The exhibition
After the great abstract season of the thirties, at the height of modernism, in the sixties and seventies, the artists stressed the qualities of both form and content. It is debatable whether the emphasis at the time on minimalism, on the potential of the conceptual and on the aesthetics of reduction perhaps caused a distancing between the artists and their audience. However, it is also clear that this phase represented not only a necessity, but also a period to which the legacy (still vital today) contemporary art returns to address without interruption. Not only for a need for historical-critical recognition, but for the surprising rediscovery of its effectiveness, its qualities, its conceptual genius and its abstract expressiveness. A veritable mine of ideas and stimuli to draw upon to conduct current and vibrant research even today.
And here we are not far from the title of the MAKE IT NEW! Exhibition, which is a focus with an original approach on the inexhaustible innovative power of aniconic painting, which has plowed through the twentieth century to the present day.... leggi il resto dell'articolo»
The exhibition itinerary of the works of Tomas Rajlich, which document over half a century of research, starts from the beginnings in sculpture in the late 1960s, to end with his most recent works, with their variations on the intensity, brightness and consistency of painting itself, through very sensitive textures of matter-color.
A succession of works from room to room, in comparison and dialogue with a selection of precious works specially set up by Italian masters of abstraction, mostly from the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Villa Croce: Rodolfo Aricò, Agostino Bonalumi , Enzo Cacciola, Antonio Calderara, Nicola Carrino, Gianni Colombo, Pietro Consagra, Dadamaino, Piero Dorazio, Lucio Fontana, Marco Gastini, Giorgio Griffa, Riccardo Guarneri, Paolo Icaro, Osvaldo Licini, Piero Manzoni, Fausto Melotti, Bruno Munari, Mario Nigro , Martino Oberto, Claudio Olivieri, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Antonio Scaccabarozzi, Paolo Scheggi, Turi Simeti, Giuseppe Uncini, Nanni Valentini, Claudio Verna, Gianfranco Zappettini.
A succession of unconventional paintings, drawings and sculptures awaits the visitor, such as the aesthetic of the Czech artist. The focus on Italian aniconic research was decided by Rajlich himself, in relation to the exhibition spaces of Villa Croce and to those artists who, since the 1950s, have worked more radically on abstraction and the minimalist use of color. It will thus happen to the public to come across, among others, works such as Achrome (1958) by Piero Manzoni, Cementarmato (1960) by Giuseppe Uncini, Uovo nero horizontal (1961) by Lucio Fontana, Bianco (1967) by Agostino Bonalumi, Theme II and 7 variations (1969-70) by Fausto Melotti.
Inauguration: Wednesday 21 April from 17.00 to 19.30 with procedures to be defined based on the Covid regulations that will be in force
The artist
Tomas Rajlich (Jankov, Czech Republic, 1940) studied at the School of Decorative Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. In 1967 he founded the Klub Konkretistů group, which follows in the wake of the international neo-avant-gardes embodied by Azimut in Italy, ZERO in Germany and Nul in the Netherlands. In 1968 his work experienced a first moment of international visibility thanks to participation in the Sculpture Tchécoslovaque exhibition at the Rodin Museum in Paris.
Exiled from Czechoslovakia in 1969 following the Soviet invasion, he moved to Holland, where he became a teacher at the Vrije Academie in The Hague. Rajlich's interest in building monochrome works on geometrically regular grids is immediately welcomed in the climate of Dutch conceptualism.
In 1974 he held fundamental personal exhibitions at Yvon Lambert in Paris, at Art & Project in Amsterdam and at Françoise Lambert in Milan, for many years his reference galleries. In 1975 he was among the protagonists, with Brice Marden, Robert Ryman, Gerhard Richter and others, of the memorable exhibition Fundamentele schilderkunst / Fundamental painting at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, a milestone in the international affirmation of analytical painting.
In the following years Rajlich was invited to exhibit in fundamental exhibitions such as Elementaire Vormen (traveling exhibition, 1975), Fractures du Monochrome aujourd'hui en Europe (Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1978) and Bilder ohne Bilder (Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn, 1978).
Rajlich's canvases show a growing interest in the "fundamental" in painting, unlike contemporary American minimalists. His early works are characterized by an industrial aspect and a modular quality - the grid is the key - while Rajlich's mature works show a more complex reasoning on the essential idea that painting is an entity that reflects on itself. His most recent monochromes explore the combination of the impersonal, gesture and the creative force of light. They are variations on the intensity, brightness and facture of the painting, while at the same time remaining a clear factual painting.
In 1993 his first retrospective was organized at Palazzo Martinengo in Brescia. His adopted nation, Holland, in 1994 honored Rajlich with the prestigious Ouborg Award for his artistic contribution, at which the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague inaugurated a second retrospective. Ten years later, in 2005, on the occasion of his 65th birthday, the museum hosts a retrospective of his works on paper.
In the Czech Republic, in 1998, the Dům umění města Brna organized an anthology, while in 2008 the National Gallery in Prague opened a retrospective with 27 large canvases, followed by the solo exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague in 2016, in 2017 at the Museum Kampa in Prague and in 2018 at the Museum Boijmans-Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. Rajlich was recognized by right as one of the greatest figures of the international neo-avant-garde.
From 1999 to 2002 Rajlich was a residency artist at the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris which keeps his works in the collection, present, among other institutions, also at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, the Musée d'Art et d'Industrie in Saint Étienne , at the Musée Cantini in Marseille, at the Museum Boijmans-Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, at the National Gallery in Prague, at the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation in Amsterdam, at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, at SMAK in Gent, at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, at the Stedelijk Museum in Schiedam, at the Stedelijk Museum De Lakhal in Leiden, at the Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof in Delft.
Title: MAKE IT NEW! Tomas Rajlich and abstract art in Italy
Opening: April 22, 2020
Ending: August 22, 2021
Organization: Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Villa Croce
Curator: Cesare Biasini Selvaggi
Place: Genova, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Villa Croce
Address: Via Jacopo Ruffini, 3 - 16128 Genova
More info on this website: http://www.museidigenova.it/
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