The late Agostino Bonalumi is definitely among the artists who may provide fashion designers with interesting inspirations. Readers of this site may find some connections between him and Paolo Scheggi.
A master of abstract art and a friend of Piero Manzoni, Enrico Castellani and Lucio Fontana, Bonalumi was born in 1935. Inspired by Fontana's studies of space, throughout the '50s he developed a unique style that prompted him to consider the canvas in the same way an architect would consider a building – as a form that becomes shape, and not as a white space that should be filled with colours.
While his first works included objects - such as shirts, underwear and metallic tubes - applied or glued to the canvas, in the '60s he started working with monochromatic surfaces trying to create a new visual code by producing a series of works that he considered as Picture-Objects. These artworks incorporated indeed structures and frames, that, placed at the back of the canvases, caused them to stretch and deform.
From 1965 he started breaking the symmetrical rigidity of some of his earlier pieces in favour of free forms, unbalancing the canvas by allowing his objects to three-dimensionally protrude from the flat surfaces.
Bonalumi added more sinuous forms and shapes when he started using oil cire nylon fabric instead of canvas and, at a later stage, steel wire.
Bonalumi participated in the Venice Biennale in 1966, 1970 and 1986; in 1980 the Palazzo Te in Mantova mounted a major retrospective of his work.
His most important artworks remain "Blu abitabile" (1967), "Grande ambiente bianco e nero" (1968), and "Ambiente pittura dal giallo al bianco e dal bianco al giallo" (1979).
Bonalumi has also got a connection with costume and set design: in 1970 he designed both the sets and costumes for Susanna Egri’s ballet "Partita", staged at the Teatro Romano of Verona, and, in 1972, the scenes and costumes for the ballet "Rot" with music by Italian avant-garde composer Domenico Guaccero, held at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome.
I'm embedding in this post the video "Agostino Bonalumi: All the Shape of Space 1958- 1976" that also features an interview with him. Some of Bonalumi's artworks will be on display at the Miart fair in Milan at the end of March.
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