Emilio Scanavino
The Tactile Sign of the Void
October 4–November 11, 2016
Press preview: Monday, October 3, 4–6pm
Robilant+Voena
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Robilant+Voena are pleased to present Emilio Scanavino, The Tactile Sign of the Void on view at their London gallery from October 4 to November 11. This is the first retrospective of Emilio Scanavino in the United Kingdom in 65 years since his first solo exhibition held in London in 1951. Curated by Francesca Pola and organised in collaboration with the Archivio Scanavino, the show will celebrate the work of the artist and his decisive, creative decades of the 1950s through to the 1980s. This period saw his affirmation as one of the pioneers and protagonists of an innovative poetics of the “sign,” situating his practice between the Informel and Spazialismo movements and a new concept of the void.
Scanavino’s revolutionary work first developed in the years immediately following World War II. In a direct dialogue with an international and vibrant artistic context, his contemporaries included Sebastian Matta and Alberto Giacometti, Francis Bacon and Graham Sutherland, and artists of the CoBrA movement (Asger Jorn, Karel Appel and Corneille in particular). It was the time when Lucio Fontana and Alberto Burri were developing their radical experimentations with space and matter, overcoming the traditional notions of painting and sculpture into a new direct relationship with the world. Fontana himself was a very close friend of the artist, as is testified by Scanavino’s Necrologio per Fontana (An Obituary for Fontana), 1968, created on the occasion of his death and included in the exhibition.
Similarly to other artists of the period, such as Giuseppe Capogrossi, Tancredi, Wols, and Marc Tobey, Scanavino adopted the “sign” in his paintings. However, Scanavino’s technique is characterised by a distinctive human quality: the gesture is the focus, and the intention is the one of penetrating the meaning of reality. It is an investigation into the void intended as the space for the compression of the material energy of man and his relationship to the world.
Scanavino’s practice aimed at overcoming the traditional notion of abstraction as lyrical, surreal or constructive, whilst incorporating it into a new relationship of the image with reality. He achieved this by using the pictorial sign as a gesture of knowledge, as a way of appropriating the universe mediated by his interiority, by touching the void where energy connects men and things.
The exhibition will bring together pivotal examples of Scanavino’s work. The first work in the show is Matrimonio bianco (White Wedding), 1951, which he exhibited in London in a joint solo show with Sarah Jackson and which was attended by Henry Moore. This led to his participation in the crucial exhibition This is Tomorrow at the Whitechapel Gallery in London (1956). Another seminal work, All’origine (At the Origin), 1957, was presented in his solo room at the Venice Biennale in 1958; it is exhibited together with Omaggio al Maestro (An Homage to the Master), 1962. This three metre long masterpiece, which Scanavino explicitly linked to Leonardo da Vinci’s experimentation with colours, recreates the same chromatic scale described in his Trattato della pittura (Treatise on Painting).
La porta (The Door), 1977, six metres in length, is one of the largest pieces Scanavino ever created; it is symbolic of his investigation into geometry and architecture archetypes, characterising his exploration of the void as a threshold to the infinite. Nearby is Colonna vertebrale (Spinal Column), 1964, his largest sculpture. Both are exhibited here for the first time outside of Italy.
Furthermore, the show will exceptionally include three paintings which belonged to the Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo. On loan from Museo Tamayo in Mexico City, these will be back in Europe for the first time after decades: Primo, secondo e terzo momento della genesi (First, Second and Third Moment of Genesis), 1963, Il pieno ed il vuoto (The Full and the Empty), 1964, Alfabeto senza fine VII (Endless Alphabet VII), 1970.
This selection of about 35 works, including some unpublished and never before exhibited pieces from Italian private collections, will be the core of the exhibition. In demonstrating the outstanding wealth of Scanavino’s creative output, the show will reaffirm the role played by the artist in the international development of modern and contemporary art.
Press contact: Letizia Resta, letizia [at] robilantvoena.com