Visitors stepping into the first floor of Milan's Palazzo Reale will find themselves surrounded by a futuristic world made of lights and minimal geometries. This is Nanda Vigo's own sci-fi universe.
The artist and architect is currently being celebrated in a retrospective entitled "Nanda Vigo. Light Project" (on until 29th September), dedicated to her work from the late '50s on and to her connection with her hometown, Milan.
Born in 1936, Vigo graduated from the Institute Polytechnique in Lausanne and, after a stage in San Francisco, she opened her studio in her hometown in 1959.
From then on she started studying the dichotomy between conflict and harmony and light and space and she developed a personal research on light, transparency and immateriality that led her to the creation of the "cronotopi" in the early '60s.
The "cronotopi" were actually anticipated by a shocking solution to a spatial problem that Vigo presented at an architectural competition, a proposal for a "cemetery tower" where the cemetery of the future grew upwards on various floors. The artist then transformed this sci-fi graveyard into a structure with a metallic frame support on which industrial patterned glass was inserted.
These minimalist and even simple towers, as mysterious as the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey, were not destined to a particular function or purpose, but they were designed for intellectual contemplation.
At times, these pieces incorporated inclined glass cut in such a way as to reflect a new vision of reality, but the final purpose was just one, creating material metaphors for lightness and mutation.
In those years there were quite a few avant-garde groups in Italy: the "Azimuth" group founded by Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani tended towards Fontana, while the kinetic-programmatic group "T" owed a lot to Bruno Munari.
Vigo sided with "Azimuth" and, being interested in exploring the cosmic horizons opened by Fontana's spatialism, she became a partner of Gruppo ZERO, a transnational group of artists from Germany, The Netherlands, France, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy, collaborating with Giò Ponti and Lucio Fontana (she curated the 1965 ZERO show at Fontana's Milan studio).
She also continued her architectural projects, developing the interior design for the so-called "ZERO House" (1959-62), and the interiors for the "Casa blu" (1967-72), "Casa nera" (1970) and "Casa gialla" (1970), as well as for the "Casa sotto la foglia" (House under a leaf) designed by Giò Ponti in 1965-69 in Malo. Her greatest architectural achievement remains the Museo Remo Brindisi at Lido di Spina (1967-1971).
In 1971 Vigo received the New York Award for Industrial Design for her Golden Gate lamp; the 1980s were characterized instead by a fascination for Postmodernism, while her later output returned to the seductiveness of neon, radiant and diffused light, and simple and dynamic forms.
In 2019 the environments made by Nanda Vigo and Lucio Fontana were included in the show "Lucio Fontana. On the Threshold" at The Met Breuer and The Met Fifth Avenue, New York.
The retrospective at Milan's Palazzo Reale rediscovers Vigo through 80 works, among them projects, sculptures, and installations. The focus of the exhibition is the environment that fills the Sala degli Specchi and that invites visitors to live a transcendental experience that goes beyond the materiality of everyday life to perceive a higher reality through contemplation and dematerialization.
At the palazzo there is a bit of everything, from the "cronotopi" of the early 1960s, to the more recent "Deep Space" pieces, passing through the "Pyramids". Vigo found her "form of freedom" in each work she created, often suspended between an industrial aesthetic, a kind of architectural brutalism and the purest sci-fi.
Light remains the unifying element between space and time in all her works and in particular in her mesmerising luminous geometrical paintings. Geometries are also the inspiration behind her trapezes or pyramids of mirrors, some of them lit from the inside. In other cases mirrors are placed in a room in such a way as to reflect parts of the building creating destabilising optical illusions.
Vigo's works from the past twenty-five years are often characterised by a blue light, they are dynamic, but they do not have a final purpose, they are just there to create relationships with other forms surrounding them and, in the case of Palazzo Reale, they establish connections with the rooms they are populating and with the visitors passing by to contemplate them.
Vigo's pieces are journeys through another universe (she is definitely into sci-fi and the future as proved by the logo of her archive – the silhouette of Star Trek's Enterprise…), they are mental experiences that allow us to take a trip through time, space and personal thoughts.
"Nanda Vigo. Light project" is highly recommended to all creative minds passing through Milan and in particular to those visitors who will be in town for the local fashion week in the next few days and who may be on the lookout for a break from the hectic runways.
Image credits for this post
1. Portrait, 1964, Cronotopia, photograph by Nini and Ugo Mulas
2. Magazzini Fly, Milan, 1966
3. Ambiente Cronotopico, Eurodomus, Turin, 1968, photograph by Ugo Mulas
4. Nanda Vigo, "Diaframma", 1968, photograph by Emilio Tremolada
5. Nanda Vigo, Cronotopo, 1969 photograph by Emilio Tremolada
6. Nanda Vigo, "Global Chronotopic Experience", 2017, Spazio San Celso, Milan, photograph by Marco Poma
7. "Arch/arcology", 2018, Museo MAXXI, Rome
8. Portrait, 2006, photograph by Ruve Afanador
9. Trilogia, Light progressions
Homage to G. Ponti L. Fontana P. Manzoni 2
Nanda Vigo, Palazzo Reale, Milan, 2019
Photo Credit Marco Poma
Courtesy Archivio Nanda Vigo
10. Arch/arcology, 2
Nanda Vigo, Palazzo Reale, Milan, 2019
Photo Credit Marco Poma
Courtesy Archivio Nanda Vigo
11. Deep space
Nanda Vigo, Palazzo Reale, Milan, 2019
Photo Credit Marco Poma
Courtesy Archivio Nanda Vigo
12. Galactica 2 and Trigger of the space
Nanda Vigo, Palazzo Reale, Milan, 2019
Photo Credit Marco Poma
Courtesy Archivio Nanda Vigo
13. Neverended light and Galactica sky
Nanda Vigo, Palazzo Reale, Milan, 2019
Photo Credit Marco Poma
Courtesy Archivio Nanda Vigo
14. Genesis 2
Nanda Vigo, Palazzo Reale, Milan, 2019
Photo Credit Marco Poma
Courtesy Archivio Nanda Vigo
15. Genesis
Nanda Vigo, Palazzo Reale, Milan, 2019
Photo Credit Marco Poma
Courtesy Archivio Nanda Vigo
16. Nanda Vigo, Palazzo Reale, Milan, 2019
Photo Credit Marco Poma
Courtesy Archivio Nanda Vigo