(1935 – 2013), Italy

Agostino Bonalumi Biography

Agostino Bonalumi was at the forefront of the exceptional wave of Italian artists who followed in the footsteps of Lucio Fontana in the late 1950s and 1960s. Inspired by Fontana's spatial experiments with the canvas, Bonalumi had begun working with Enrico Castellani and Piero Manzoni as early as 1958.

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By the mid-1960s, Bonalumi's reputation was reaching new heights both internationally and at home, with strong links to Germany's Zero artists and critics in Italy already beginning to recognise his importance; in 1966, the artist was invited to take part at the Venice Biennale for the first time. Bonalumi's signature works are called Estroflessioni, in which monochrome canvases were stretched and deformed from behind to create abstract forms.

Pushing the picture plane into three dimensions, Bonalumi's paintings became sculptures, or, what the critic Gillo Dorfles called pitture-oggetti (painting-objects). Alongside Fontana with his knife, Burri with his blowtorch, and Castellani, who hammered nails into the reverse of his pictorial surfaces, Bonalumi was part of a fundamental redefinition of painting: the pictorial plane had become what American art historian Harold Rosenberg called "an arena in which to act."

Text courtesy Robilant+Voena.

Agostino Bonalumi
featured artworks

Untitled by Agostino Bonalumi contemporary artwork painting
Agostino Bonalumi Untitled, 1960 Oil on canvas
59 x 69.5 cm
Richard Saltoun Gallery Request Price & Availability
Bronzo (Bronze) by Agostino Bonalumi contemporary artwork sculpture
Agostino Bonalumi Bronzo (Bronze), 1969–2007 Bronzo (Bronze)
26 x 49 x 25 cm
Robilant+Voena Request Price & Availability
Nero (Black) by Agostino Bonalumi contemporary artwork painting
Agostino Bonalumi Nero (Black), 1969 Vinyl tempera on shaped canvas
121 x 145 cm
Robilant+Voena Request Price & Availability
Rosso (Red) by Agostino Bonalumi contemporary artwork painting
Agostino Bonalumi Rosso (Red), 1967 Shaped ciré
120 x 240 x 25 cm
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Rosso (Red) by Agostino Bonalumi contemporary artwork painting
Agostino Bonalumi Rosso (Red), 1965 Shaped canvas and vinyl tempera
110.5 x 100 cm
Robilant+Voena Request Price & Availability
Rosso by Agostino Bonalumi contemporary artwork sculpture
Agostino Bonalumi Rosso, 1968 Shaped ciré
100 x 80 cm
Robilant+Voena Request Price & Availability

Agostino Bonalumi
recent exhibitions

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Represented by these
Ocula Member Galleries

Cardi Gallery contemporary art gallery in Milan, Italy
Cardi Gallery London, Milan
Robilant+Voena contemporary art gallery in London, United Kingdom
Robilant+Voena London, New York, Paris, Milan
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