Marina Apollonio. Gradazione 16N, 1966. Holler Collection

Venice,

She was not part of the “Exhibition by 31 Women” show, which Peggy Guggenheim offered in 1943 in her New York gallery Art of This Century, and which the MAPFRE Foundation now commemorates in Madrid, but one of the women artists whose patron and American collector was the Italian Marina Apollonio (Trieste, 1940), author of compositions clearly linked to optical and kinetic art and based on the use of mathematical systems.

The Venetian Peggy Guggenheim Collezione has brought together a hundred of her most representative works, dating back to the sixties, which in “Beyond the Circle”, a project curated by Marianna Gelussi, seeks to make known to a wide public the rigor of her visual investigations. ; the immersive and experimental nature of his paintings, sculptures, drawings and installations; and the validity of his studies with the possibilities of dynamic black and white. The presentation of this tribute at the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni is timely, not only because Venice is the city where Apollonio grew up and resides, and where he took his first creative steps, but also because it underlines the importance of his ties with the Guggenheim: it was in 1968 when, after visiting an exhibition of his at the Galleria Paolo Barozzi, this talent discoverer commissioned the work Rilievo no. 505now part of the funds of this center.

The anthology, open until March of next year, also represents another link in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection’s exhibitions dedicated to Italian post-war artists that it sponsored (Edmondo Bacci, Tancredi Parmeggiani) and has loans from a good number from museums in that country, Swiss and German.

Daughter of Umbro Apollonio, art critic and director of the Historical Archive of the Venice Biennale between 1949 and 1972, Marina has lived in Venice since her childhood, when in 1948 she moved here with her family and was able to grow up surrounded by artists and intellectuals. She likes to say that she was soon infected by the “virus of art” and began her investigations into the issue of perception around 1962, starting from the most objective language possible, that of geometry, and particularly focusing on the circle, in tune with the Italian movement called Programmatic art.

His first individual would take place in his hometown, at the Centro Arte Viva Feltrinelli in 1966, and by then Apollonio explained that his terrain was that of exploring the phenomenological possibilities related to basic forms and structures, which in his opinion contained inherently total abstraction, necessarily mathematically based. His compositions did not have then, nor would they have later, anything rambling, but derive from completely precise procedures: starting from primary figures, such as the circle, he analyzes structural possibilities as a way to activate them, trying to achieve forceful results with minimal means.

In the beginning she followed that path alone, without ascribing to trends or groups, and against her father’s wishes; It would be the painter and sculptor Getulio Alviani, with whom he shared a generation, who first encouraged him to show his work, seeing himself supported the following year by a Golden Chiodo award in Palermo and by his participation in the third edition of the Biennale. Nova Tendencija from Zagreb, an appointment then without statutes and based solely on elective affinities in which she would meet Dadamaino, who since then was her faithful friend (Parra & Romero recently hosted the latter’s work in Madrid).

Marina Apollonio. Gradazione 16N, 1966. Holler Collection
Marina Apollonio. Gradazione 11. Verde giallo su rosso, 1971. Private collection, Verona

Since then Apollonio would travel throughout Europe and his individual and collective exhibitions multiplied inside and outside Italy, in some cases in the company of authors clearly linked to the optical and kinetic currents; was particularly close to Group Nbased in Padua, which included Alberto Biasi, Ennio Chiggio, Toni Costa, Massironi and Landi, and also frequented the Gruppo T Milanese (composed of Anceschi, Boriani, Colombo, Devecchi or Varisco), without forgetting his constant closeness to Dadamaino, Alviani and creators close to Azimut/h, such as Manzoni or Castellani; to the group Zero from Düsseldorf, as Nanda Vigo; or to the by then consolidated Bruno Munari and Enzo Mari. With them he shared his desire to create following his own utopian vision, to subvert the real without moving away from the mathematical. It sought to transcend informalist postulates and develop a universal and objective language appropriate both for its present moment and for a reality to come.

Towards the mid-seventies, while he continued to exhibit regularly and open himself to new techniques such as those of textile supports, the profound historical and social changes that implied the gradual decline of optical art necessarily had an impact on his work. Her next good moment, in terms of critical fortune, would not come until the 2000s, when a vindication of these trends occurred: in 2007, Max Hollein, still director of the Metropolitan in New York, counted on her for a major exhibition. dedicated to Op Art that she curated at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, and two years ago she was part of the collective “The Milk of Dreams” at the Venetian Biennale, along with the aforementioned Dadamaino and Nanda Vigo and Lucia Di Luciano, Laura Grisi and Grazia Varisco.

Marina Apollonio. Rilievo 703, 1964-1970. Collection of the artist, Padua

Again in that city we now have the opportunity to verify his challenges to the limits of the surface and the frames, his willingness to open new dimensions beyond the two of his most frequent supports and the elegance and accuracy that determined his processes: he intended to give life to geometry in the face of those who denied it more possibilities than those already achieved because it was cold or sterile, he returned again and again to the circle to make it one possibility among infinite others and, at the same time, he wanted to achieve through these forms potential representations of the totality, of the universe and of the line.

The metallic structures from his series are part of this anthology. Dimaniche circolariin which he worked in the sixties and seventies, opening himself to the surrounding movement; other sculptures based on the multiplication of circular shapes; the elegant pictorial ensemble Gradationwhich also pivots around concentric circles; either Rilievi with chromatic diffusiona project in which circles carved in relief on monochrome plastic surfaces seem to be activated by the movement of the viewer.

They contrast with the bright tones and small formats of Expansions and with a selection of his early drawings, an example of the harmony and coherence that would determine his career. The tour culminates with two specific projects for the occasion: the environment I will enter the opera and the musical installation Endingsthe latter developed together with the composer Guglielmo Bottin.

“Marina Apollonio: Beyond the Circle”

COLLEZIONE PEGGY GUGGENHEIM

Palazzo Venier dei Leoni

Dorsoduro 701

Venice

From October 12, 2024 to March 3, 2025

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