AGOSTINO BONALUMI - Biography
Born in Vimercate, Milan, in 1935, having abandoned his technical and mechanical drawing studies, he dedicated himself to painting as a self-taught person, holding his first personal exhibition in 1956 at the Galleria Totti in Milan. Attending Enrico Baj's studio he met Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani with whom, in 1958, he exhibited in Rome, Lausanne and finally in Milan. The following year he founded the magazine "Azimuth" with Castellani and attended Lucio Fontana's studio, starting a research focused on space that led him to create his first extroflections: works that the artist defines as object-paintings, obtained thanks to frames and structures which, placed on the back of the canvas, cause its tension and deformation. During the 1960s, his research evolved towards the creation of environment-works, in which the viewer actively participated in the space: the peaks of this research are Blu Habitable (1967); Grande Ambiente black and white (1968) and Ambiente painting from yellow to white and from white to yellow (1979). He participates in the Venice Biennale in 1966, returns in 1970 with a personal room and again in 1986. Bonalumi also deals with scenography, realizing in 1970, for the Roman Theater of Verona, the sets and costumes for the ballet Partita by Susanna Egri and in 1972, for the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, the sets and costumes for the Rot ballet. In 2002 he was awarded the President of the Republic Award and on this occasion the National Academy of S. Luca dedicates a retrospective to him at the Palazzo Carpegna in Rome. In the same year he took part in the “Themes and variations” exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. In 2003 an exhibition was set up at the Civic Gallery of Modern Art in Gallarate and, on the occasion of the semester of the Italian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, he took part in the "Futuro Italiano" exhibition set up in the halls of the European Parliament in Brussels. Bonalumi died in Desio in 2013.
