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Time is Out of Joint
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VASCO BENDINI. OMBRE PRIME
29/03/2022-19/06/2022
On the occasion of the centenary year of Vasco Bendini’s birth, the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea offers the chance to the public to rediscover the multiform production of the artist who never tired of pursuing multifaceted research, also through the usage of different techniques and materials: from newsprint to canvas, through to glass wool, cardboards, foam rubber, resins, burnt candles, neon and various plastics.
Bendini is a prominent member of the Informal artistic movement, and, even if for a very short period, has also shown to be very sensitive to the cultural climate and the modalities that would become distinctive of Arte Povera, of which, though, was never part. The exhibition VASCO BENDINI, OMBRE PRIME, curated by Bruno Corà, displays a selection of works ranging from the fifties trough to the noughties, which goes to testify how intense the activity of the painter was even in the later years of his long life.
Vasco Bendini (Bologna 1922-Rome 2015) is a leading figure in an artistic path that often sees him in the role of anticipator of techniques and languages. His is an itinerary which is discontinuous but that in this apparent lack of linearity shows in reality an inner consistency that reveals to both himself and the viewer the secret essence of the self and of the matter.
Between 1941 and 1942 Vasco Bendini attends the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna (Bologna’s Academy of Fine Arts) where he was a pupil of both Giorgio Morandi and Virgilio Guidi. Following their lesson, the artist makes the first steps in the direction of a style of painting that we could define as metaphysical. Starting as early as 1948 though, its figurative element will become more and more abstract, with the sharp incisiveness of a conscious act that, in its essentiality, wants to reach the universal supporting structure of the self. This is when the faces and heads that Arcangeli would call “veronicas”and Vasco Bendini would define Segni segreti, are born.
The artist reads texts on zen meditational practises, but also Chance and Necessity by Jacques Monod and From Being to Becoming by Ilya Prigogine, both Nobel prize winners, the former for Chemistry and the latter for Physiology and Medicine. He thus comes to the conclusion that matter is nothing else than an illusory trace of mobile compounds, made up of waves and particles. It is from this perspective that starting from the mid-fifties, we see the birth on canvas of figures that reveal themselves or fade into an uncertain light: the increasingly dematerialised floating bodies that we can admire in some works on display.
In the sixties and seventies, after the participation with a personal room in the XXXII and XXXVI Venice Biennale, respectively in 1964 and 1972, the artist tries to explore the vibrant obscurity of matter in order to catch the progressive revealing of light, through the use of various materials. The mid-sixties see the birth of the series Senso Operante, which is represented in the exhibition by the works Mille e una Notte (One thousand nights) (1968) and Una delle duemila parole (One of the two thousand words) (1968).
In the eighties and nineties Bendini returns to painting. These years see the production of large scale work, such as the big cards glued on canvas, hung to the walls like tapestries: Segni come sogni or Ipotesi d’attesa (1990). In the years 2000s he starts in Parma a happy season of informal painting better defined by the artist as Organic Realism: a true synthesis of the great pictorial experience accrued over the years and of the endless quest for a universal identity discerned in the organic arrangement of matter itself.
A catalogue featuring a critical essay by its curator Bruno Corà, as well as two contributions by the distinguished French scholar Catherine David and the Vice President of the Archivio Bendini Irene Santori, is currently being prepared to accompany the exhibition. In the publication are also included all the images of the works on display as well as some unpublished writings by Vasco Bendini. It will also contain a specially selected critical anthology and a bio-bibliography of the artist.
A documentary by Matteo Frittelli narrates the artistic path of Vasco Bendini, through the stories of critics, collectors, friends and an interview with the Master.
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