Agostino Bonalumi (Vimercate 1935-Desio 2013)

The artist entered the Milanese artistic milieu at a very young age; around the Brera district he met Enrico Baj, Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani. The meeting with Manzoni and Castellani turned into a partnership between the three young artists. This collaboration was abruptly interrupted on the eve of the publication of the first issue of Azimuth magazine, and from then on Bonalumi no longer belonged to a group or formation. In those years he began a research focused on space, which led him to make his first extroflexions. These were obtained thanks to frames and structures that, placed on the back of the canvas, caused its tension and deformation. In the 1960s his research evolved toward the creation of works-ambient, in which the viewer actively participates in the space, as in “Habitable Blue” of 1967, followed by another series of environments culminating in the large space for his solo room at the 1970 Venice Biennale. From the early 1970s he began a new cycle of “grid” works, which he would continue until 1989. After exhausting this cycle, he elaborates between the 1990s and 2000s a freer model based on a steel rod structure that allows almost gestural extroversions. With this technique he also creates his last cycle of works, based on the concept of module and a more geometric rhythm than the previous one.