Guido Strazza
Santa Fiora, Grosseto, 1922
In 2006 the Museo Civico Umberto Mastroianni in Marino (Rome) dedicated to him an anthological exhibition including a small number of works, executed from the early 1960s, all emblematic of the significance of the research of one of the finest interpreters of Italian abstractionism in the second half of the twentieth century.
A painter and printmaker, his meeting with Tommaso Marinetti marked the beginning of his artistic training. He began exhibiting at aeropainting exhibitions organized by Marinetti himself and at the Venice Biennale, 1942. After graduating in engineering in Rome, he abandoned his profession in 1948 to devote himself entirely to painting. He stayed a few years in Peru, Chile and Brazil, where he painted and exhibited (São Paulo Biennials 1951-'53). In Peru he is among the promoters, along with other architects, of Agrupación Espacio, a project to renovate the city of Callao. He is also involved in setting up the Larco-Herrera collection of pre-Columbian works. In 1954 he returned to Italy and settled in Venice. Here he met and frequented Tancredi, Vedova and Bacci. Sign tales developed in long scroll paintings are from this period.
He moved to Milan and began a working relationship with gallery owner Lorenzelli. He abandoned oil painting for a less glossy, faster-drying material and greater sensitivity to etched marks, which he obtained by mixing pigments with vinyl resins and linseed oil. The cycles of paintings themed Balzi rossi (Galleria dell'Ariete, Milan, 1958) and Paesaggio olandese (Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1960) testify to Strazza's studies of the metamorphosis of forms.
Returning permanently to Rome, he attended the workshops of the Calcografia Nazionale for a few years (1964-'67), where he experimentally deepened the language of engraving, starting with the critical relationship between sign and color. He begins by using Hayter's variable viscosity technique, in which Patella is his guide; his interest is focused on the variability of images pulled from a single matrix and their consequent conception as a moment in a process. In 1968 he exhibited at the XXXIV Venice Biennial (personal room) the results of these researches, centered on the iridescent sign-light relationship (moving screen images) and the light-geometry relationship, which found full expression in the cycle of paintings and lithographs Ricercare (Galleria Il Collezionista, Rome, 1976). He gradually abandoned color in engraving, concentrating on black and white. Piero Sadun proposed him in 1971 for the chair of Engraving at the Academy of Fine Arts in L'Aquila. In 1972, Galleria Michelangelo organized a major solo show for him, collecting works from the early 1960s.
Years later (1974-'76) he was again at Calcografia called to direct a group research on sign, the results of which he didactically elaborated and published in the book Il gesto e il segno (1979). Analytical rigor gives way to gestuality understood not in the existential sense of the Informal but as a systematic and necessary interpenetration between order and contradiction to order, between project and what, along the way, happens.
This concept has its own path: it starts with the cycle of paintings and engravings Trama quadrangolare (Galleria Morone 6, Milan, 1979) passing through the cycle Segni di Roma (Galleria Editalia, Rome, 1980) where designing is intertwined with recognizing to arrive at an increasingly accentuated interaction between geometry and color in the cycle Cosmati (Galleria Giulia, Rome, 1982 and Venice Biennale, 1983, personal room). In more recent work, in an increasingly accentuated chromaticism, the image tends always to constitute itself as a repeated forming, momentary state of light and matter in the continuous redefinition of what, in many ways, we use to think and call reality.
In addition to Chalcography and L'Aquila Academy, Strazza has taught at Wesleyan University (CT, USA) and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome of which he was also Director. In 1988 he was awarded the Feltrinelli Prize for Graphics by the Accademia dei Lincei.
He has participated in the most important international exhibitions of painting and graphics (in addition to those already mentioned, the Biennales of Ljubljana, Krakow, Heidelberg, Tokyo, etc.); in 1990 the Calcografia Nazionale in Rome curated the anthological exhibition Strazza. Graphics 1953-1990, dedicated to his work as an engraver.
In 1991 he exhibited the Auras (Forni Tendenze Gallery) in Bologna. In the 1990s he participated in numerous group exhibitions, such as Percorsi ininterrotti dell'arte. Rome 1990 (Rome, Palazzo Rondanini alla Rotonda, 1991), The Exemplary Sign. Premesse a nuove tecnologie dell'arte (Rome, Academy of Arts and New Technologies, 1993), Figure della pittura. Arte in Italia 1956-68 (Conegliano Veneto, Palazzo Sarcinelli, 1995), Segno e segno (Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense; 1996), Matera e i suoi dintorni psicologici (Milan, Castello Sforzesco, 1996), Carlo Belli e Roma (Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, 1998); Strazza, Opere 1941-1999 (Conegliano Veneto, Palazzo Sarcinelli, 1999). In 2001 he is invited to participate in the Novecento exhibition at the Scuderie Papali del Quirinale. He receives in Campidoglio the Cultori di Roma 2002 award.
In 2006 the Museo Civico Umberto Mastroianni in Marino (Rome) dedicated to him an anthological exhibition including a small number of works, executed from the early 1960s, all emblematic of the significance of the research of one of the finest interpreters of Italian abstractionism in the second half of the twentieth century.
In February 2009 the Pericle Fazzini Museum in Assisi mounted an anthological exhibition curated by Giuseppe Appella: the show consisted of a selection of works dated 1952-2008. In the same year, as part of "Art Paris 2009," another solo exhibition was hosted at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Museums where his works are kept:
Cologne, Wallraf, Richartz Museum
Rome, National Gallery of Modern Art
Conegliano Veneto, Palazzo Sarcinelli
Matera, Musma
Pisa, Museo della Grafica
Santiago, Chile, Museum of Modern Art
Lima, Museum of Culture
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum
Bibliography:
Strazza, Exhibition catalog, Milan, Galleria Lorenzelli, 1962; Metro 4/5, et alia, Milan, Stab. Poligrafico Colombi spa, 1962; Il collezionista d'arte moderna, Turin, Giulio Bolaffi Editore, 1963; A.M. Comanducci, Dizionario illustrato dei Pittori, Disegnatori e Incisori Italiani Moderni e Contemporanei, Milan, Patuzzi Editore, 1974; L'informale in Italia, edited by R. Barilli and F. Solmi, (Exhibition dedicated to Francesco Arcangeli, Bologna, June-September 1983), Milan, Mazzotta, 1983; Strazza, works 1960-2006, Museo Civico Umberto Mastroianni, Marino, Rome, 10/21-07/12/2006
He moved to Milan and began a working relationship with gallery owner Lorenzelli. He abandoned oil painting for a less glossy, faster-drying material and greater sensitivity to etched marks, which he obtained by mixing pigments with vinyl resins and linseed oil. The cycles of paintings themed Balzi rossi (Galleria dell'Ariete, Milan, 1958) and Paesaggio olandese (Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1960) testify to Strazza's studies of the metamorphosis of forms.
Returning permanently to Rome, he attended the workshops of the Calcografia Nazionale for a few years (1964-'67), where he experimentally deepened the language of engraving, starting with the critical relationship between sign and color. He begins by using Hayter's variable viscosity technique, in which Patella is his guide; his interest is focused on the variability of images pulled from a single matrix and their consequent conception as a moment in a process. In 1968 he exhibited at the XXXIV Venice Biennial (personal room) the results of these researches, centered on the iridescent sign-light relationship (moving screen images) and the light-geometry relationship, which found full expression in the cycle of paintings and lithographs Ricercare (Galleria Il Collezionista, Rome, 1976). He gradually abandoned color in engraving, concentrating on black and white. Piero Sadun proposed him in 1971 for the chair of Engraving at the Academy of Fine Arts in L'Aquila. In 1972, Galleria Michelangelo organized a major solo show for him, collecting works from the early 1960s.
Years later (1974-'76) he was again at Calcografia called to direct a group research on sign, the results of which he didactically elaborated and published in the book Il gesto e il segno (1979). Analytical rigor gives way to gestuality understood not in the existential sense of the Informal but as a systematic and necessary interpenetration between order and contradiction to order, between project and what, along the way, happens.
This concept has its own path: it starts with the cycle of paintings and engravings Trama quadrangolare (Galleria Morone 6, Milan, 1979) passing through the cycle Segni di Roma (Galleria Editalia, Rome, 1980) where designing is intertwined with recognizing to arrive at an increasingly accentuated interaction between geometry and color in the cycle Cosmati (Galleria Giulia, Rome, 1982 and Venice Biennale, 1983, personal room). In more recent work, in an increasingly accentuated chromaticism, the image tends always to constitute itself as a repeated forming, momentary state of light and matter in the continuous redefinition of what, in many ways, we use to think and call reality.
In addition to Chalcography and L'Aquila Academy, Strazza has taught at Wesleyan University (CT, USA) and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome of which he was also Director. In 1988 he was awarded the Feltrinelli Prize for Graphics by the Accademia dei Lincei.
He has participated in the most important international exhibitions of painting and graphics (in addition to those already mentioned, the Biennales of Ljubljana, Krakow, Heidelberg, Tokyo, etc.); in 1990 the Calcografia Nazionale in Rome curated the anthological exhibition Strazza. Graphics 1953-1990, dedicated to his work as an engraver.
In 1991 he exhibited the Auras (Forni Tendenze Gallery) in Bologna. In the 1990s he participated in numerous group exhibitions, such as Percorsi ininterrotti dell'arte. Rome 1990 (Rome, Palazzo Rondanini alla Rotonda, 1991), The Exemplary Sign. Premesse a nuove tecnologie dell'arte (Rome, Academy of Arts and New Technologies, 1993), Figure della pittura. Arte in Italia 1956-68 (Conegliano Veneto, Palazzo Sarcinelli, 1995), Segno e segno (Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense; 1996), Matera e i suoi dintorni psicologici (Milan, Castello Sforzesco, 1996), Carlo Belli e Roma (Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, 1998); Strazza, Opere 1941-1999 (Conegliano Veneto, Palazzo Sarcinelli, 1999). In 2001 he is invited to participate in the Novecento exhibition at the Scuderie Papali del Quirinale. He receives in Campidoglio the Cultori di Roma 2002 award.
In 2006 the Museo Civico Umberto Mastroianni in Marino (Rome) dedicated to him an anthological exhibition including a small number of works, executed from the early 1960s, all emblematic of the significance of the research of one of the finest interpreters of Italian abstractionism in the second half of the twentieth century.
In February 2009 the Pericle Fazzini Museum in Assisi mounted an anthological exhibition curated by Giuseppe Appella: the show consisted of a selection of works dated 1952-2008. In the same year, as part of "Art Paris 2009," another solo exhibition was hosted at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Museums where his works are kept:
Cologne, Wallraf, Richartz Museum
Rome, National Gallery of Modern Art
Conegliano Veneto, Palazzo Sarcinelli
Matera, Musma
Pisa, Museo della Grafica
Santiago, Chile, Museum of Modern Art
Lima, Museum of Culture
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum
Bibliography:
Strazza, Exhibition catalog, Milan, Galleria Lorenzelli, 1962; Metro 4/5, et alia, Milan, Stab. Poligrafico Colombi spa, 1962; Il collezionista d'arte moderna, Turin, Giulio Bolaffi Editore, 1963; A.M. Comanducci, Dizionario illustrato dei Pittori, Disegnatori e Incisori Italiani Moderni e Contemporanei, Milan, Patuzzi Editore, 1974; L'informale in Italia, edited by R. Barilli and F. Solmi, (Exhibition dedicated to Francesco Arcangeli, Bologna, June-September 1983), Milan, Mazzotta, 1983; Strazza, works 1960-2006, Museo Civico Umberto Mastroianni, Marino, Rome, 10/21-07/12/2006
