Page 26 - Studio International - September 1973

will do, adopting free forms and colours. We Meantime, Magnelli returned to abstract influences. The surfaces arc, so to speak,
will show that geometry may become feeling, a painting after the period 'realismo delle rocce' mosaics, hermetically closed, visions,
po :try more interesting than the expressions (realism of the rocks). This same year, 1935, almost neoplatonic, but the material is
of a man's face. Canvases that represent saw in Turin the first group show of Italian terrestrial and comes from lucidity and
nothing, but that when looked at produce a true abstract art, hung in the studio of Casorati sensibility under the control of intellect. The
refreshment for the spirit.' and Paolucci, marking the clash of the new art development of this language, right up to the
In his turn, Soldati, at the show two months against every remnant of a provincial last post-war years, tended always much more
earlier in the same gallery, had declared, nineteenth century. Artists who exhibited were towards non-figurative compositions; and in the
`Abstract painting (even though the adjective Bogliardi, Cristoforo De Amicis (already end, since the methods are rigorously abstract,
may not be correct) loves analysis, order, the become abstract), Ezio D'Errico,3 the sculptor there is no real distinction to be made between
harmonious relationships of geometry, the Fontana, Ghiringhelli, Licini, Melotti, Reggiani, those paintings that disrupt the distant memory
clarity proper to every work of art.' Soldati, Veronesi. of objects in a metaphysical code and those that
`Every line', he went on, 'like every form is a The following year, the Bragaglia gallery:in are unmistakably non-figurative. The rhythm of
miracle. The mystery of art. The lines love Rome put on a show of Soldati, whilst in Como the colours in the spaces, the rigour, the
space, create rhythms, logically from functions.' a new group of abstract artists was formed — pellucid brilliance, are the qualities of an artist
This climate of non-figurative research Mario Radice, Manlio Rho and Carla Badiali, whose quest has been after absolute purity.
unfolded around the Galleria del Milione, which who joined with the Milione group. In Como Mauro Reggiani, on the other hand, in the
became in those years the most active cultural there was the architect Terragni, the relations initial momentum of his non-figurative painting,
centre for abstract art in Italy. with rational architecture were much more alongside research into the laws of
The critic Edoardo Persico2, who arrived keenly felt and neoplasticism stimulated the proportion — Golden Mean in the writings of
from Turin in 1929, had already contributed to artists to a greater rigour, order and Ghyka — tended towards compositions
the liveliness of the Milanese scene, arguing the commitment. analogous to those of van Doesburg, still
necessity for an opening to Europe, against the By now all these artists had entered into unknown to him, rather than to those of
rhetoric and monumentalism of certain official avant-garde culture and were invited Mondrian. At the same time, however, he was
`modernist' imitators. At first a member of the to the principal group exhibitions, including attracted by the evocative effects of a much
editorial staff of the review Belvedere edited by international ones. But the most subtle and the worked 'facture', by that very personal reality of
Bardi, he afterwards joined Casabella, finally most inspired poet among Italian abstract colour. Even when in the course of his career his
editing it with Giuseppe Pagano. He it was who artists, who had shown how geometry could forms became more free, although never
had urged the founding of the Galleria del become feeling, was Osvaldo Licini; rather than abandoning a rigour which at times seemed
Milione where he remained for several months from the neoplasticists, his cultural lineage, his schematic and preconceived, Reggiani's works
and which he opened with an exhibition of lyrical and penetrating blend of allusive line and became increasingly defined. He always kept to a
Rosai. But while Persico sought to establish a transparent colour, came from Kupka from tonal gamut of colour relations, in the sense that
new meeting place between rational Kandinsky and from Klee. One can appreciate he always took extreme account of the 'tonal
architecture and painting directed towards how, from the first more geometric relations of the different colours in the picture,
clarity, without volumes, the gallery, now compositions — Rhythm of 1931, for example— of their interferences with each other, of their
directed by Gino Ghiringhelli with all the he could realize the later series of images, dominance and subordination.'
passion of the avant garde, became the centre Amalasunta. Abstraction, pursued with an Among the best examples of his work of the
of the first group of Italian abstract artists. hallucinating rigour, does not exclude first Milanese period are Composition n. 9,
In its first bulletins, through the various texts, relationship with memory turned fantastic, where cubist and purist influences are resolved
the poetics of Italian abstraction gained with emotion filtered through mental not only in a spatial balance, but also in the
consistency, and it was the Galleria del Milione detachment, with the secret interior life. The subtle chromatic assonances of browns and
that a little later on published Belli's Kn. purity of Licini's imagery arises from an greys, in a fastidious handling, resonant in its
Already in 1932 the gallery had put on a show imagination that is a fantastic flight, as modal structure, and the two paintings
of Léger, and the following year, with Atanasio unforeseen as a revelation. He cannot, in the Composition and Composition 7 of 1935, where
Soldati (who had first shown in 1931) it hung strict sense, be called a non-figurative painter. the neoplastic influence is resolved in a subtle
the first one-man exhibition of abstract art in From the series of the Dragon to those of the chromaticism.
Italy. In 1934, for the first time in Italy, it Rebel Angel and Amalasunta, the figurative Along with Reggiani in November of 1934,
exhibited Kandinsky, followed later on by ideal is developed in an abstract process, Oreste Bogliardi and Virginio Ghiringhelli
Vordemberge-Gildewart with a foreword by outside time, in a space no longer possessing exhibited at the Milione. While the latter
Grohmann. At the end of that same year, naturalistic references, but still not destroyed, left painting to become a dealer, Bogliardi
Bogliardi, Ghiringhelli and Reggiani, on the enduring ever, autochthonous and tenuous. developed in his abstract compositions themes
occasion of their show of abstract art, wrote a Clarity of composition could not then be based in many ways akin to those of Soldati. The
number of declarations that can be taken for the simply upon geometry, but through geometry limpid spatial rhythms, of a metaphysical
first manifesto of Italian abstractionism. 'We exhalting the mystery, binding itself to the origin, achieved the hovering and lyrical lucidity
are favourably disposed to sympathize with the irrational urgency of romanticism, not in its of the neo-Platonic idea in their pallid colours.
cycle of classicism. But it is evident that it will external aspects, but in its deepest colours, The abstract experiments of Luigi Veronesi,
never be a question of columns and arches . . . generating poised rhythms, suspense and right from 1933 when he freely disposed precise
Technics and science find us particularly flights, an abstract frenzy of psychic origin, areas of colour on his surfaces, were based upon
attentive since they clear the ground for us of often on the threshold of surrealism. graphic structures. The parabolic lines, in
every external necessity. They are formidable Atanasio Soldati is a different case. In his lucidly organized spatial relations, determine
collaborators since they carry us inescapably works, besides the ordered composition, one the rhythms and the limits of the chromatic
to meet a marvellously exact reality.' cannot but admire his clean subtle pictorial passages. From them he derived compositions
In December of 1934 there was an exhibition matter. With him, too, instinct is filtered by a like simple mechanisms, of pure invention and
of wood engravings by Josef Albers and mental lucidity. The premises of his language, mental tension. Veronesi was among the first
Luigi Veronesi, in 1935 abstract sculpture however, especially during the Milione period, Italians to belong to the group 'Abstraction-
by Fontana, another show by Soldati, and in lie more in the Metaphysical4 experience, with Creation Art non-figuratif', founded in Paris in
May the abstract sculpture of Fausto Melotti. its upset planes suggesting even cubist 1933 and constituting the first international

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