GIANNI COLOMBO

There is always a blind spot in the work of an artist who resists being classified and subsumed into their known and recognised oeuvre. Something that, despite being undeniable, remains overlooked. It is like a secret room that remains hidden and invisible despite being exposed to view. Much like the letter in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Purloined Letter”, which remains undetected precisely because it is hidden in plain sight. Such is the case with Gianni Colombo’s ceramic production: a radical beginning that set the course for all his subsequent work, yet has never received adequate critical attention.

Although, since 1995, scarcely an exhibition or publication on Gianni Colombo has appeared without including three or four significant examples of his ceramic work, this production seems to have been regarded as a separate chapter, never fully integrated into the broader investigation of his oeuvre. While it is true that terracotta would never again feature in his work, just as polychromy would give way to white monochromes and evocative titles to technical designations, it is equally true that Colombo’s choice of ceramics marked a departure from both painting and sculpture, while also offering Colombo an initial encounter with a material that was plastic, elastic and fluid. It is no coincidence that aspects of ceramic modelling would continue to emerge in the tactility, corporeality and performativity that characterise his subsequent work.

Colombo began experimenting with clay in the 1950s, at a time when post-war Italian ceramic culture was reaching its peak. These were the years in which clay emerged as a leading medium of artistic expression, embodying the creative and avant-garde impetus of the immediate post-war period. In 1954, the Incontro Internazionale della Ceramica (International Meeting of Ceramics) took place in Albisola, bringing together a decidedly heterogeneous group of international artists, heirs to Surrealism, in the name of new forms of experimentation with ceramics. They included members of the recently disbanded CoBrA group (Asger Jorn, Karel Appel and Corneille), artists associated with the Nuclear Art Movement (Enrico Baj and Sergio Dangelo), Spatialism (Lucio Fontana), Surrealism (from which Roberto Matta had been expelled in 1948), and the Informel movement (Emilio Scanavino). Shortly afterwards, Joe Colombo, Gianni’s brother, designed the display for the works by these artists, all active in Albisola, presented at the 10th Milan Triennale.

All of Colombo’s earliest exhibitions, between 1955 and 1959, took place within the framework of the Concorsi Nazionali della Ceramica in Faenza or various editions of the Mostra Nazionale della Ceramica of the Premio Gubbio. However, 1958 also saw a kind of incunabulum of what would later become Gruppo T, with an exhibition in Bellinzona, followed by one in Lugano, in which Colombo exhibited numerous ceramic works alongside Gabriele Devecchi, Davide Boriani and Carlo Berta. Precisely because of their search for a dialogue with the historical avant-garde, Colombo’s ceramics at this point seem to depart from the traditional and manual references usually associated with the medium. Their divergence from contemporary ceramic production made them the object of critical scrutiny. In fact, recalling a certain period of Fontana’s work, Colombo’s ceramics take the form of mutable dials or overlapping toothed discs that can be rotated around their own axis. Contemporary with his kinetic works, if not actually anticipating them, these pieces can be manipulated by viewers, who are thus able to take part in the transformation of the work. Works such as Superficie variabile (1959), in which terracotta bricks are assembled in a sort of abacus, and Colonna Intermutabile (1960) clearly point towards the celebrated Strutturazioni Pulsanti in polystyrene and the rotating honeycomb structures in Plexiglas, Strutturazioni Acentriche (1962). These later works represented an undisputed milestone in the kinetic art of the 1960s.

In this sense, Vocale con accento does more than bring a neglected chapter to light: it invites us to reconsider Gianni Colombo’s entire artistic trajectory through a material that anticipates some of his most fundamental insights. In Colombo’s ceramic work, form is never entirely complete or fixed once and for all; rather, it lends itself to manipulation, opens itself up to variation and draws the viewer into a direct and participatory experience.

The exhibition is in collaboration with Archivio Gianni Colombo and with the curatorial assistance from Alberto Navilli, and is accompanied by a catalogue published by Dario Cimorelli Editore, which examines Colombo’s entire ceramic production through contributions by Marcella Beccaria, Lisa Hockemeyer and Marco Scotini, alongside previously unpublished material and archival photographs.