Page 92 - Studio International - May June 1975

asymmetric and the top half (surface, colour, and horizontal was often of no more than a thin modes, of course, share a turning
roughly balances the lower. Two and vertical lines) and insisting sheen of flashing colour. away from experience other than
soft shapes extend from both that the viewer's attention was Guarneri's paintings invite that proposed by the practice of
right-hand corners, while the left- focused on them. Just as their comparison with Flavin's pure art itself.
hand edge is marked out by work involved effacement of light surfaces , and with Hunter's Peter Fuller
clearer bands of colour. The individuality, it also eschewed any shadows of paint upon the wall
central yellowish area is made specific regional or national (recently seen at the Lisson
interesting by a number of characteristics. The context of Gallery). Despite his insistence on Rita Donagh
textural devices, including a formalist painting is not the point an underlying formal structure of
collaged section which overlaps of contact between art and horizontal and vertical divisions, The Gallery
the point at which the two experience, but that between art it would hardly be surprising if 11 March-5 April
canvases are joined. Martin's and its own conventions. Thus, he, too, eventually found the Anne Brodrick
work displays a quality of brash these painters appeared to address problematic of the physical canvas
assurance, which ensures that his themselves exclusively to those surface intolerable, and found a Park Square Gallery, Leeds
paintings stir definite reactions. who already have a self-conscious way of working without it. (with an exhibition of drawings
One may object to the provocative response to painting, and their Perhaps the most interesting of by Stephen Chaplin)
vigour of the often clumsy shapes, devices, in this respect, were very the three was Giorgio Olivieri, 5 March-5 April
but it is difficult to remain similar to those manifested in who lives and works in Verona,
unaffected by their vitality. Bold comparable tendencies in Britain and has pursued an alternative Rita Donagh's exhibition at The
organization and brilliant colour and America. direction. He has abandoned . Tate Gallery consisted of a
have become sufficiently rare at The most `painterly' of the paint altogether, and yet chosen drawing and two photographic
the moment for one to look three was Claudio Verno, who to retain the format of the reproductions of the same work
forward to the Hoya's full-scale lives and works in Rome. mounted canvas. He relies on adapted to fit inside a display
exhibition of his work, planned Admittedly, an acrylic of 1973 variations in the colour of frame designed by Vaughan
for next September. exhibited a familiar preoccupation juxtaposed areas of unprimed, Grylls. This display, a square
Fenella Crichton with the paradox of the framing but stretched, canvas surfaces. free-standing aluminium frame,
edge, exaggerated by a painted Characteristically, he perpetually has allowed each of the recent
border, binding and containing a returns to the nature of line: exhibitions of fine, commercial,
field of colour. But the remaining sometimes it is represented by a and didactic art at The Gallery to
Riccardo Guarneri six canvases, executed last year, physical division of the canvas; be treated with the same
Giorgio Olivieri indicated a more complex sometimes by a piece of string professional detachment and
exploration of variations of colour attached to it; sometimes by a emphasis on the non-exclusive. In
Claudio Verna within an internal grid structure. mark on the surface. Olivieri has Rita Donagh's case the drawing,
Annely Juda In them, Verna had interestingly come to abandon almost all the a study for her painting, Evening
25 February - 27 March reverted to oil-painting, and familiar components of his Papers, Ulster, 1972-74, had been
apparently revived a restrained medium, except the picture photographed twice so that the
The three Italian artists whom interested in the gestural surface itself. Thus, he really image and its mirror image could
Annely Juda brought over for potential of the brushstroke. passes into the area of visual be placed in the frame back-to-
this exhibition all work within the However, Riccardo Guarneri - polemics. His works are about back adjacent to the drawing.
conventions of formal abstraction. a Florentine - worked in such questions as 'What is line?' Apparently the original drawing
Their canvases are reductionist, horizontal bands of acrylic which and they are starkly formulated. had itself been modified in
and - in terms of iconogaphy - were so thinly applied to the white Interestingly, he indicates the preparation for the camera with
almost anonymous. In distinct canvas surface that they seem route by which purely formalist the result that the fundamental
ways, it seemed that the three were like reflections of pale light on it. investigation finally intersects with grid and diagonal rows of dashes
developing visual critiques of Although a wide chromatic range the kind of rhetorical probings of prevailed over other more
painting by stripping it down to might be involved in a single art put forward by Manzoni and indeterminate pencilled shapes. In
its most basic constituents canvas, the impression received Klein in the late fifties. The two spite of this simplification the

Giorgio Olivieri 1974. Acrylics and string on canvas

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