Mercurial + 7R Diagonal, 1970, steel and red-colored elements, industrial glass support and wooden frame, 18 1/2 × 18 1/2 in.
©Foto Massimo Listri
Grazia Varisco (Milan 1937)
She studied under Achille Funi and Guido Ballo at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. In 1960 she began her artistic career as an exponent of Gruppo T, taking part in Miriorama events, in the main exhibitions of Programmed and Kinetic Art and in the Nouvelle Tendance movement. In 1961, she also began her professional activity as a graphic designer for the development office of the multinational retailer La Rinascente, for the magazine Abitare, for Kartell and for the Milanese joint municipal plan, collaborating with some of the greatest architects and designers of the day. Two extended stays in the United States, in 1969 and 1973, proved to be a major step in her training. From the mid-1960s onward she continued experimenting with and exhibiting (sometimes independently) her art. She took part in important national exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale in 1964 and 1986 and the Rome Quadriennale in 1965, 1973 and 1999, at MART in Rovereto in 2005 and GNAM in Rome in 2005 and 2012. International exhibitions include those at the Los Angeles County Museum and the Miami Art Museum in 2004 and at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt in 2007. Her solo shows at institutional venues include those at Rotonda della Besana with Gianni Colombo in 2006, Museo della Permanente in 2012 and the Milan Triennale in 2017, as well as the exhibition at Palazzo Reale in Milan in 2021. Since 1979, she has also been teaching, for instance at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts from 1981 to 2007. In 2007, she was awarded a title from the Accademia di San Luca and the National Prize of the President of the Republic for sculpture, and in 2018 the Feltrinelli Prize for visual arts by the Accademia dei Lincei. Her works are exhibited in many museums, including GNAM, MoMA in New York, Centre Pompidou in Paris, MAMbo in Bologna, MART, the MAE Collection at the Farnesina, Museo del Novecento, Fondazione Prada and Gallerie d’Italia in Milan.
In line with the visual-kinetic experiments of Gruppo T (which declared: “We consider reality a continuous becoming of phenomena that we perceive in their variation”), the artist espouses a Heraclitean vision of reality as a perpetual flow of energy, representing it through unconventional forms of expression. Focusing on spatio-temporal relations, she plays with the illusory nature of the image, as in Mercurial + 7R Diagonal, which expresses the concepts of mobility and transformation and rejects the objectivity of representation, as it changes over time and is fundamentally dependent on the observer. In this way, it emphasizes the subjectivity of perception and makes the viewer the “co-creator” of the artwork. Varisco achieves the illusory optical-kinetic variation of the image by using industrial glass panes with regularly printed reliefs and lenticular surfaces. This material refracts and modifies the perception of the geometric pattern of steel studs according to the viewer’s changing position. When examined while moving, the steel studs cannot be controlled by sight: they seem to turn fluid and glide into the picture, becoming intangible, like silvery drops of mercury on a blank page. This deformation revives the myth of the volatile and metamorphic pagan god, Mercury: here, he becomes a messenger between the artist and her audience. On the one hand, the viewer’s movement turns the image’s unpredictable state of flux into a more playful affair; on the other, the work solicits the viewer’s involvement with kinetic stimuli that play on sensitivity and perception, perfectly embodying the artist’s vision. (Renata Cristina Mazzantini)