6 Carla Lonzi, “Giulio Paolini”, in Collage, n. 7, May 1967, pp. 44-46, then restated and slightly modified in Autoritratto [1969], Et al. Publishing, Milan 2010, p. 12. 7 Briony Fer, “Color-in-pieces: the Italian NeoAvantgarde”, in Part Object Part Sculpture, catalogue of the exhibition curated by Helen Molesworth, Wexner Center for the Arts, The Ohio State University, The Pennsylvania State University Press 2005, pp. 50-61, quote p. 51. See also Elizabeth Mangini, “This is not a Painting. Space Exploration and Postwar Italian Art”, in Target Practice: Painting Under Attack 1949-78, catalogue of the exhibition edited by Michael Darling, Seattle Art Museum 2009, pp. 89-101; Elementi spaziali. Bonalumi, Castellani, Dadamaino, Scheggi, catalogue of the exhibition edited by Elena Forin, Galleria Tega, Milano, Silvana Publishing, 2011, pp. 12-61. 8 Vincenzo Agnetti, Enrico Castellani: pittore, Achille Mauri Publishing, Milan 1968. The German Connection. Kuhnert, 1965 - 2015
Why not empty this container instead? Why not free this surface? Why not try to discover the limitless meaning of total space, of pure and absolute light?” (“Libera Dimensione”, in Azimuth, n. 2, January 1960). _______How to empty the container, to use such a promising and tendentious image as to suggest a plethora of answers? Movement towards total space beyond painting, as Manzoni advocated, was not that easy, and it was not so even for Manzoni himself, as Giulio Paolini did not fail to point out to Carla Lonzi in 1967: “I think that in Manzoni there was enough of an implication of painting, so to speak, in the sense that maybe he was not aware yet that he was using the canvas, the frame, and the paintbrush specifically as a limit, as premeditated and established impoverishment. Therefore, he still acted naturally, in a framework of destruction of images and shapes without being aware of the rejection of over more modern techniques, let us say”. This was the path explicitly taken by Paolini, still practicing those gymnastics as Manzoni called them, or in the words of Paolini himself, “deliberately wanting to remain in the middle of these frames, of these cans of paint”6. Also, still _______Let’s look at the potential and the ambiguities not solved by extroflexion in more details. Often left unmentioned by Italian critics, they were not passed over in silence abroad: the works of Burri, Fontana and Manzoni are placed on walls as though they were paintings but behave like objects, as Briony Fer suggests: “their work fit neither high modernist ideals for painting nor the logic of the ready-made as it was internalized in Pop and Minimalism”7 (a reading that may explain the tardiness with which international critics became interested in these works). With brilliant prose far from the convoluted critiques of the time, Vincenzo Agnetti summarized various strategies of painting: “We also, still take a canvas and divide it geometrically, not geometrically with the contribution of color. _______A hypothetical geometry of ruptures and openings (Mondrian). We fill this canvas with linear imprints (Pollock). We fill it with holes and cuts (Fontana). Now we take a white canvas and fold it in white (-1 +1) (Manzoni). And once again a canvas, but this time not the color that other transparent canvases and some overlaid wires make fun of (Castellani 1958)”8. Like in the text by Gendel that was highly appreciated by Burri himself, Agnetti highlights the making of the painting, the multiple operations of transforming its surface. While these words would deserve extensive comments (for example, the holes and cuts that fill Fontana’s canvases rather than emptying them), what struck 45
Agostino Bonalumi Estroflessione bianca, 1969 shaped canvas detail
Extroflexion. Painting Extra Moenia or Painting outside its boundaries / Riccardo Venturi