06 Aug The Civica Raccolta del Disegno di Salò and the Archivio Scaccabarozzi present Exhibition Title: ANTONIO SCACCABAROZZI. CARTA CANTA by Ilaria Bignotti and Anna Lisa Ghirardi

PRESS RELEASE

Salò’s Civic Drawing Collection and the Scaccabarozzi Archive

present

Exhibition title: ANTONIO SCACCABAROZZI. CARTA CANTA

curated by Ilaria Bignotti and Anna Lisa Ghirardi

18 July – 12 September 2021

Salò (BS), Musa, Civic Collection of the Drawing of Salò

Via Brunati 9

Opening hours: Friday-Saturday- Sunday 10.00 to 18.00

Info: tel. Musa 0365/20553 (opening hours)

info@museodisalo.it

civicaraccoltadisegnosalo@gmail.com

Friday, July 16, at 11:30 am, will be held online the press conference of the exhibition.

You can participate, by accessing this link:

https://meet.google.com/jup-yjem-kbb

You are kindly requested to log in on time and to keep the microphones deactivated once allowed by the Press Conference organization.

Sunday, July 18 at the Musa di Salò inaugurates the exhibition of the Civic Collection of Drawing of Salò and the Archive Antonio Scaccabarozzi

Antonio Scaccabarozzi. Carta sings by Ilaria Bignotti and Anna Lisa Ghirardi

Free admission on reservation: info@museodisalo.it

Visit to the free exhibition by reservation (from 13.00 to 17.30)

At 18.00 there will be the presentation of the exhibition in the cloister of the Muse

(in case of bad weather in the hall of the Provveditori of the Town Hall

Salò, Lungolago Zanardelli 55)

The exhibition Antonio Scaccabarozzi.Carta Canta is an important retrospective organized by the Civica Raccolta del Disegno in close collaboration with the Archive that represents it.

Civic Collection of the Drawing of Salò

Musa, Via Brunati 9, Salò

Fondazione Opera Pia Carità Laicale

and Istituto Lodroniano Salò

With the collaboration civicaraccoltadeldisegno

Thanks to many unpublished works, the exhibition aims to honor the research of an extraordinary artist, protagonist of Italian art of the sixties and seventies and experimenter of languages and pictorial materials between the eighties and the new millennium.Antonio Scaccabarozzi was a guest of the Salodiana gallery Centro d’arte Santelmo for two solo shows: one in 1972 and the other in 1991.This retrospective is then placed exactly thirty years later, as a sort of necessary appointment in the lake town. A selection of works leads us from the seventies to the early two thousand years: Typing, Typing, Die-cutting, Prevalence, Distance-Measurement-Weight, Free Quantities and Velature in a path representative of the intense research carried out in over thirty years;In a case, like a treasure chest of memories, there are also some drawings -accompanied by poetic thoughts- of the late fifties.The public will discover that its investigation is born primarily from the gaze on things, from the way in which, even before using the means of artistic making, in new continuous experimentations and verifications, Scaccabarozzi knows how to look around himself. It is a garden, a landscape, a wall covered with ivy, the filter between the inside and the outside, a Greek temple,… Everything he looked at was made of details, colors, spaces, but also angles, relationships, connections and contrasts, harmonies and tensions, aspects that -through synthesis- he knew how to transfer into the work.His language, which also engulfed programmed and concrete art, has reached a particular lyrical minimalism, in which the application of method and rigor has not determined a predictable outcome, leaving ample room for the unexpected. Carta canta therefore appears as a title pertinent to this exhibition of paper works, fragile and light, reminiscent of palpable sensations and whispered evocations, faithful to the concept of poetry of making.

BIOGRAPHY (1936-2008)

Antonio Scaccabarozzi was born in 1936 in Merate (Lecco). In Milan since 1951, he followed the evening courses of the Scuola Superiore d’Arte Applicata of Castello Sforzesco, in the Painting section. Involved in the Milanese cultural environment of those years, he frequented the district of Brera where he met artists such as Carlo Carrà, Piero Manzoni and Lucio Fontana. Graduated in 1959, he moved to Paris where he worked as a scene painter and deepened the artistic languages of the time and the historical avant-garde. The works of those years are clearly influenced, with references to Hans Arp and Fernand Léger.After Paris are stays in London, and two long trips to Holland and Spain. Since the mid-sixties, the work of Scaccabarozzi reworks the concrete instances, programmed and new abstraction, defining its visual language as Static Balance-Dynamic, with clear reference to Neoplasticism and European Kinetism.Back in Italy, in Milan, he moved for a short time in the Botteghe district of Sesto San Giovanni, and here he compares with personalities such as Castellani, Bonalumi, Vermi, De Filippi, Fabro, this is Nagasawa.Since the late ’60s Scaccabarozzi has been programmatically defining a work plan based on a rigorous method, Over the years it has been intended to translate into cycles of works where the tension between the pursuit of the rule and its necessary overcoming gives unexpected results and novelty compared to the European scenario. In the early seventies, the Fustellati, formed by a succession of cylindrical elements, obtained by working with a die and practicing on the neutral support emerging or hollow modular elements, of different and gradual size and extension.In the linguistic climate The North-European artist thus finds an ideal place and an instance of research. In the early seventies, the elaboration of a new cycle of works, called Prevalences: the neutral support is animated by points, at first monochrome, then coloured, arranged on the canvas or table in an order that results from an exact mathematical calculation.Starting from 1983, the artist began a new phase, starting conceptually from the idea that to spread a quantity of color is already to make painting, and thus freeing himself from calculations and from any obvious and obligatory form of pre-established scheme. Free Quantities are born, which then lead Scaccabarozzi to experiment and choose a new material: the polyethylene sheet.If Free Quantities are the body of painting, the Essentials – so the artist names this cycle of works that begins with the new decade of ’90 – become its framework. The first anthological exhibitions are dedicated to his research: from the aforementioned Retro-spektive 1965-1993, to the Galerie Hoffmann in Friedburg, to the one at Villa Zanders in Bergisch Gladbach in 1994.At the end of the 90s, Scaccabarozzi returned to what had been the support of his Free Quantities: polyethylene.Gradually polyethylene sheets become floating colour membranes in space, suspended from the wall and ceiling thanks to the nylon thread. Since 2002, Ekleipsis have been developed, consisting of two plastic sheets of different colours.In 2003, Scaccabarozzi arrives at the Bank: it is, in this case, of another variation on the theme of polyethylene, because here the reflection is between leaf-size more exposed/ in evidence and the hidden one. Around 2005 the artist feels the need to return to painting: he spreads thin veils of oil color, on a base-color spread on canvas or cardboard canvas, so as to establish a film that absorbs and otherwise spreads the incident light: are the Velature.An accident drastically interrupted the life of Antonio Scaccabarozzi in August 2008. Her legacy is fully assumed by Anastasia Rouchota, wife and universal heir of the artist who in 2010 founded the Antonio Scaccabarozzi Archive Association, whose main activity is to study, deepen and promote research and the work of the artist, considered in its entirety of expression; to this end, the Association carries on the scientific and reasoned archiving of its entire work; encourages and supports the younger generations of scholars; actively collaborates with national and international research bodies.Particular attention is paid to the value of the archive intended not only as a means of cataloguing the artist’s work, but also as an engine of relationships, exchanges and collaborations with other artists’ archives.
The Antonio Scaccabarozzi Archive was born two years after the death of the artist, in 2010, from the need to historicize the artist and lead to a serious and constant enhancement of his work.The main activity of the Antonio Scaccabarozzi Archive Association is to study, deepen and promote the research and work of the artist Antonio Scaccabarozzi (1936-2008), considered in its entirety of expression;To this end, he continues the scientific and reasoned archiving of his entire work through a database specifically created and aimed at making public the entire work cataloged by the artist Antonio Scaccabarozzi. Following the ideals of the thought of Scaccabarozzi, the Association promotes research around the work of the artist, encouraging the younger generations of scholars and actively collaborating with national and international research institutions.Among the recent activities: the creation of a path of fruition of the artist’s work for blind and visually impaired people, developed with the Institute of the Blind in Milan and the realization of workshops conducted with students of the Accademia di Belle Arti Albertina in Turin, in order to raise awareness among young people on the main themes of Scaccabarozzi’s research, themes of universal and social value such as: the vision and complexity of the relationship between perception and knowledge; ecology and the reuse of plastic materials; the sensitivity to space and the environment; the idea of a democratic art capable of addressing everyone.The Association also promotes study days, talks and round tables that, starting from these issues, sensitize the public and involve the world of science and culture.Particular attention is also paid to the value of the archive intended not only as a means of cataloguing the artist’s work, but also as an engine of relations, exchanges and collaborations with other artists’ archives.The Civic Drawing Collection was born in 1983 from the idea of Giuseppe Mongiello, then councillor for culture, artist Attilio Forgioli and art critic Flaminio Gualdoni, with the initial contribution of some private supporters.The first nucleus of the collection is in fact the donation of the works acquired by the supporters, progressively increased by donations of artists and purchases. In the 80s and 90s the Collection, in addition to the periodic exhibitions of acquisitions, has made solo exhibitions of artists and promoted conferences on Italian contemporary art.In the following years a significant selection of the works of the Collection was exhibited at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Gazzoldo degli Ippoliti (Mn), at the Museum of Modern Art Gallery Klatovy (Czech Republic), with which a cultural exchange took place, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lissone (Mi), the Museum of Permanent Art in Milan, the Casa degli artisti in Tenno (Tn), the Civic Art Gallery in Civitanova Marche (Mc) and Palazzo Martinengo in Brescia. The institution, which has reached a permanent character, also following the agreement for its management, signed with the Province of Brescia in 1989, has a deposit, an archive and an exhibition section at the Musa.Its task is to build a public collection of works mainly on paper and promote the study and fruition. The collection today consists of about 800 works by artists of the twentieth century, with particular interest in Italian art from the second post-war period to today. The Steering Committee is composed of members appointed by the Municipality and the Province of Brescia, in addition to the Mayor of Salò, who presides over it, and a conservative-curator.

Steering Committee Civica Raccolta del Disegno di Salò

Giampiero Cipani,

Mayor of Salò and President of the Civic Drawing Collection

Giovanni Cigognetti

Vincenzo Denti

Attilio Forgioli

Pino Mongiello

Roberto Toffoli

Lucia Zorzella

Curator and Conservative

Anna Lisa Ghirardi