EMILIO VEDOVA
(Venice, 1919 - 2006)
Emilio Vedova was born in Venice on August 9, 1919. Self-taught as an artist, he attended for a short period the evening decoration classes at the Carmini school. He joined the group Corrente in 1942, working with Renato Birolli, Renato Guttuso, Ennio Morlotti, and Umberto Vittorini. In 1943 Vedova participated in the Resistance movement against the Nazi occupation of Italy during World War II. In 1946 he signed the Manifesto del Realismo di pittori e scultori (Oltre Guernica) in Milan and was a founding member of the Nuova Seccessione Italiana in Venice, afterwards Fronte Nuovo delle Arti. In this period, he began his Geometrie nere series, black and white paintings influenced by Cubism. Vedova’s first solo show in the United States was held at the Catherine Viviano Gallery in New York in 1951. In the same year he was awarded the prize for young painters at the first São Paulo Bienal. In 1952 he joins the Gruppo degli Otto founded by Lionello Venturi. Vedova was invited at the first Documenta in Kassel in 1955 and won the Guggenheim International Award in 1956. He was awarded the Grand Prize for Painting at the Venice Biennale in 1960. In the same year he created moving light sets and costumes for Luigi Nono’s opera Intolleranza ‘60. This led to the first Plurimi between 1961 and 1963: freestanding, hinged, and painted sculpture/paintings made of wood and metal. From 1963 to 1965, Vedova worked in Berlin, at the Deutsche Akademischer Austausch Dienst, and created his best known Plurimo, the Absurdes Berliner Tagebuch ‘64, presented at Kassel on occasion of Documenta III. From 1965 to 1969 (and in 1988), he succeeded Oskar Kokoschka as Director of the Internationale Sommerakademie in Salzburg. In 1965 and 1983 he traveled in the United States, where he lectured extensively. For the Italian Pavilion at Expo ’67 in Montreal, he created a light-collage using glass plates to project mobile images across a large asymmetric space. Vedova taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, from 1975 to 1986. Since the late 1970s, he has experimented a variety of new techniques and formats such as the Plurimi-Binari (mobile works on steel rails), monotypes, double-sided circular panels (Dischi), and large-scale glass engraving. In 1995 he began a new series of multifaceted and manipulable painted objects called Disco-Plurimo. Vedova died in Venice on October 25, 2006.
Among his most important solo and group exhibition, we can mention: Vedova (Catherine Viviano Gallery - New York, 1951); Emilio Vedova (Galerie Günther Franke - München, 1956) Vitalità nell’Arte (Palazzo Grassi – Venezia, 08 – 09/1959, itinerant: Städtische Kunsthalle - Recklinghausen, 11 – 12/1959; Stadelijk Museum - Amsterdam, 12/1959 - 01/1960) Litografie (Museo di Amburgo – Hamburg, 1960); Emilio Vedova - Plurimi (Galerie Günther Franke - München, 1964); “Presenze” di Vedova (Rèsidenz Salzburg - Salzburg 1959-1968) Emilio Vedova (Galleria Lo Spazio- Roma, 1973); Vedova (Ivan Dougherty Gallery – Sydney, 1980); Vedova. Anni Sessanta - Ottanta (Stedelijk Van Abeemuseum - Eindhoven, 1982); Emilio Vedova 1935-1984 (Museo Correr - Ala Napoleonica e Magazzino del Sale - Venezia, Curated by Germano Celant); Emilio Vedova (Castello di Rivoli - Museo d’Arte Contemporanea – Rivoli, 1999); Vedova Monotypes (Peggy Guggenheim Collection – Venezia, 2007).
