ARTURO VERMI
WORKS 1960-1975
curated by Marcello Palminteri
21 MARCH - 18 MAY 2024
On display are twenty works that trace a large part of the artist's creative path, from the informal experiments of the late 1950s to the conquest of the sign, the characterising element of his works and those of the ‘Gruppo del Cenobio’, which Arturo Vermi founded in 1962 together with Agostino Ferrari and Ugo La Pietra, Ettore Sordini and Angelo Verga, in opposition both to nihilistic tendencies and conceptual excesses, and to the invasion of American pop art culture, moving in a semantic direction in a renewed loyalty to abstraction and painting, anticipating - without fear of contradiction - some of the later research. It is Arturo Vermi himself who recalls how the ‘work and research carried out by the Gruppo del Cenobio turned out to be important, and this is testified by the fact that other operators, even illustrious ones, ten years later carried out similar research and experiences, receiving considerable attention from the critics’.
Arturo Vermi (Bergamo, 1928 - Paderno d'Adda, 1988) defines his poetics in the extreme simplification of language that, above all, in the ‘Diaries’ is characterised by the evidence of an increasingly subtle, more or less dense or regular sign, transforming itself into a writing hypothesis, a grammar of feeling. Already in 1964, Guido Ballo pointed out how the repetition of strokes ‘may seem like a formula but, looking at it more closely, one realises that in substance Arturo Vermi's sign is always emotional, it is always linked, almost, to the changing moods: it is, in short, a sign of poetic value’.
The focus on research in the 1960s and 1970s placed Arturo Vermi among the protagonists of numerous exhibitions, including: ‘Linee della ricerca artistica in Italia, 1960-1980’, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (1981); ‘Il segno della pittura e della scultura’, Palazzo della Permanente, Milan (1983); ‘Pittura-Scrittura-Pittura’ (curated by Filiberto Menna), Erice, Rome, Suzzara (1987); ‘Milano et Mitologia. I poli della ricerca visiva 1958-1964’ (curated by Angela Vettese), Centro Culturale Bellora, Milan (1989); ’Nel segno del segno. Dopo L'Informale’ (curated by Luciano Caramel), Palazzo delle Stelline, Milan (2013); ’1963 e dintorni. New signs, new forms, new images’ (curated by Francesco Tedeschi), Gallerie d'Italia, Milan; “Nati nel ”30. Milano e la generazione di Piero Manzoni’ (curated by Elena Pontiggia and Cristina Casero), Palazzo della Permanente, Milan (2014); “Italia Moderna 1945-1975” (curated by Marco Meneguzzo), Palazzo Buontalenti, Pistoia Musei, Pistoia (2019); ’Gruppo del Cenobio. Fontana, Manzoni and the Avant-Garde', Brun Fine Art, London (2019).
His works are in important public and private collections, including: Fondazione VAF Stiftung (Frankfurt am Main), Fondazione Biscozzi | Rimbaud ETS (Lecce), Gallerie d'Italia di Banca Intesa (Milan). The catalogue raisonné of the artist published by Electa is edited by Luciano Caramel.
