About this Work
About the Artist
Italian
b. 1919, Venice, Italy
d. 2006, Venice, Italy Emilio Vedova was known for being a revolutionary artist, whose abstract expressionism fused politics with wild, sensuous painting. From 1938-1943 he was a member of the Milanese anti-Fascist artists’ association Corrente and from 1943-1945 he participated in the resistance movement. He was a founding member of the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti (New art front, 1946–50), in Venice. He described his paintings of this period as Geometrie nere (Black geometries).Vedova’s first U.S. solo show was held at the Catherine Viviano Gallery, New York, in 1951. He won a Guggenheim International Award in 1956 and executed his first lithographs in 1958. In 1959 he exhibited his large L-shaped canvases, a cycle of work called Collision of Situations (Scontro di situazioni), in an environment created by Carlo Scarpa for Vitalità nell’arte (Vitality in art), which opened at the Palazzo Grassi, Venice, and traveled to the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Vedova was awarded the Grand Prize for painting at the 1960 Venice Biennale. He worked at the Deutsche Akademischer Austausch Dienst, Berlin (1963–65); Internationale Sommerakademie, Salzburg, Austria (1965–69, 1988); and Accademia di belle arti, Venice (1975–86). In 1965 and 1983 he traveled in the United States, where he lectured extensively. For the Italian Pavilion at Expo 67, Montreal, he created a light collage using glass plates to project mobile images across a large asymmetric space. After the late 1970s, he experimented with a variety of techniques and formats such as the mobile works on steel rails, monotypes, double-sided circular panels, and large-scale glass engraving. In 1995 he began a new series of multifaceted and manipulable painted objects called Disco-Plurimo. In 2005 he created a new group of monotypes, Spazi/Opposti, which was exhibited at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, the following year.In the last ten years of his life, Vedova’s contributions to art were recognized with numerous solo exhibitions as well as distinguished prizes, including the title of Cavaliere di Gran Croce della Repubblica Italiana (1996) and the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale (1997). Vedova continued to actively experiment in painting and printmaking until he died on October 25, 2006, in Venice.
b. 1919, Venice, Italy
d. 2006, Venice, Italy Emilio Vedova was known for being a revolutionary artist, whose abstract expressionism fused politics with wild, sensuous painting. From 1938-1943 he was a member of the Milanese anti-Fascist artists’ association Corrente and from 1943-1945 he participated in the resistance movement. He was a founding member of the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti (New art front, 1946–50), in Venice. He described his paintings of this period as Geometrie nere (Black geometries).Vedova’s first U.S. solo show was held at the Catherine Viviano Gallery, New York, in 1951. He won a Guggenheim International Award in 1956 and executed his first lithographs in 1958. In 1959 he exhibited his large L-shaped canvases, a cycle of work called Collision of Situations (Scontro di situazioni), in an environment created by Carlo Scarpa for Vitalità nell’arte (Vitality in art), which opened at the Palazzo Grassi, Venice, and traveled to the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Vedova was awarded the Grand Prize for painting at the 1960 Venice Biennale. He worked at the Deutsche Akademischer Austausch Dienst, Berlin (1963–65); Internationale Sommerakademie, Salzburg, Austria (1965–69, 1988); and Accademia di belle arti, Venice (1975–86). In 1965 and 1983 he traveled in the United States, where he lectured extensively. For the Italian Pavilion at Expo 67, Montreal, he created a light collage using glass plates to project mobile images across a large asymmetric space. After the late 1970s, he experimented with a variety of techniques and formats such as the mobile works on steel rails, monotypes, double-sided circular panels, and large-scale glass engraving. In 1995 he began a new series of multifaceted and manipulable painted objects called Disco-Plurimo. In 2005 he created a new group of monotypes, Spazi/Opposti, which was exhibited at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, the following year.In the last ten years of his life, Vedova’s contributions to art were recognized with numerous solo exhibitions as well as distinguished prizes, including the title of Cavaliere di Gran Croce della Repubblica Italiana (1996) and the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale (1997). Vedova continued to actively experiment in painting and printmaking until he died on October 25, 2006, in Venice.
