Agostino Bonalumi

Born in Vimercate in 1935, after studying technical drawing, he

began to explore a possible overcoming of informal painting through

the use of “poor” materials such as cement, stain, straw. In 1958

together with Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani (with whom he

founded the magazine “Azimuth” the following year) he began a

research aimed at redefining the language of painting, refusing and

resetting all forms of representation. With extruded canvases,

Bonalumi has developed a personal style that changes the painted

surface based on light and perspective. Defined as “object-painting”

by the critic Gillo Dorfles, these pieces combine the languages of

painting and sculpture, suggesting a tactile experience. Faithful to a

concept that has gone through the various moments of his

research, in the last works Bonalumi implied a sign that still alluded

to the construction and created environments with peculiar

constructive and perceptive characteristics. Among the participation in international events: Rome Quadrennial (1999, 1986) and Venice

Biennial (1986, 1970). In 2003, on the occasion of a retrospective

dedicated to the artist at the Institut Mathildenhöe in Darmstadt, a

volume of over 300 pages was published to document his work

from the beginning, with texts by Gillo Dorfles, Marco Meneguzzo

and Klaus Wolbert. Agostino Bonalumi died in Desio in 2013.