Erica Ravenna

Vincenzo Agnetti

Vincenzo Agnetti was an Italian artist, writer and poet, exponent of Italian Conceptual Art.

Vincenzo Agnetti

Vincenzo Agnetti (Milano, 1926 – Milano, 1981) was an Italian artist, writer and poet, exponent of Italian Conceptual Art.

Biography and Work

Vincenzo Agnetti is an artist, writer, poet, protagonist of Italian Conceptual Art. Graduated from the Brera Academy, he made his debut towards the end of the 1950s, combining his activity as a critic, essayist, and theorist with informal painting.

In 1957, Vincenzo Agnetti collaborated with “Azimuth” and with the magazine of the same name. From 1960 he radicalized the conceptual sphere of his work, moving away from painting and identifying art with absence and with a radical analytical practice aimed at the pure examination of concepts. In 1967, he will have his first personal exhibition at the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara, where he exhibits Principia, a work based on the relativity of meanings in language. The following year he will present the famous Macchina Drogata, an Olivetti Divisumma 14 calculator whose numbers were replaced by letters of the alphabet, so that the words became the result of mathematical operations.

Vincenzo Agnetti's work on the analysis of the object, in relation to its physical and mental image, as well as his work on the languages of communication, will be, even in later years, of fundamental importance.

Exhibitions

Vincenzo Agnetti has participated in important exhibitions, including: numerous editions of the Venice Biennale (1974, 1976, 1978, 1980); Documenta 5, (1972); the Rome Quadriennale (1972); the S. Paolo Biennale (1973); Vincenzo Agnetti. Retrospective (1967-1980), Mart di Rovereto (2008); Vincenzo Agnetti. L'operAzione Concettuale, Centro Italiano Arte Contemporanea, Foligno (2012); A proposito di Vincenzo Agnetti, Museo D'Arte Contemporanea Villa Croce, Genoa (2013); Vincenzo Agnetti. Opere da Collezioni Private, Matteo Lampertico Arte Antica e Moderna, Milan (2014); Testimonianza, Galleria Il Ponte, Florence (2015); Vincenzo Agnetti, Palazzo Serbelloni, Milan (2016); Vincenzo Agnetti - La lettera perduta, Archivio Agnetti, Milan (2016); Giorgio Morandi/Vincenzo Agnetti, Differenza e ripetizione, Palazzo De Sanctis, Teramo (2016); Agnetti. A hundred years from now, Palazzo Reale, Milan (2017); Vincenzo Agnetti. Oltre il linguaggio, Osart Gallery, Milan (2017); Unfinished culture #2, Fondazione Brodbeck, Catania (2017); Equivalence - Meditation, Archivio Vincenzo Agnetti, Milan (2017); Vincenzo Agnetti: Territories, Lévy Gorvy, London/New York (2017); Solo. Vincenzo Agnetti, Museo del Novecento, Florence (2019); Vincenzo Agnetti. NEG: playing the pauses, Padiglione de l'Esprit Nouveau, Bologna (2019); Vincenzo Agnetti, GAM, Turin (2022); Tempo e Memoria, Galleria Cardi, Milan/London (2023); ‘Practically nothing to sell’, MAMbo, Bologna (2024); Vincenzo Agnetti and Tommaso Binga: A Machine is a Machine, Galleria Erica Ravenna, Rome (2024).