Curved Intersurface, 1970, white acrylic on three superimposed canvases, 31 1/2 × 31 1/2 × 2 9/16 in.
©Foto Massimo Listri
Paolo Scheggi (Settignano 1940 – Roma 1971)
After studying art in Florence, he took a visual design course in London. His work in Milan from 1961 saw him engaging with neo-avantgarde spatialism. His mentor, Lucio Fontana, praised his Intersuperfici (Intersurfaces), consisting of three superimposed monochrome canvases with openings cut into them, at first irregular and organic in shape, and later circular and precise. These works form the starting point of a pluridisciplinary study that, over the course of ten years, spanned all artistic modes of expression. He took part in the Milan Triennale in 1964, and joined the New Tendencies movement in Zagreb the following year, exhibiting with the Zero and Nul groups. In 1966, he exhibited at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles in Paris, at Kunsthalle in Bern and at the Roland Gibson Art Foundation in New York, and was the youngest Italian artist to be invited to the Venice Biennale. In 1967, he took part in the Biennale de Paris and the Exposition Internationale des Beaux-Arts in Montreal. His work took on a performative dimension from 1968, exploring mythical-political modes of expression and collective rituals, and serving as a precursor to the enduring age of performance art. The final two years of his career saw him pursuing a new conceptual and radical direction, creating black or white ‘spaces’ punctuated by inscriptional capitals: Tomba della geometria (Tomb of Geometry) and Piramide della metafisica (Pyramid of Metaphysics) were exhibited at Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome in 1970, as part of the major show entitled Vitalità del negativo nell’arte italiana 1960-70 (Vitality of the Negative in Italian Art 1960-70). Historical retrospectives of his work include those held at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Bologna in 1976 and at Palazzo Vecchio in Florence in 1983. He took part in the Venice Biennale in 1966, 1972, 1976 and 1986. His works feature in major public collections, including Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome, Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Turin, Tate Collection in London, The Art Museum at SUNY Potsdam in New York, Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb and the Museum für Konkrete Kunst in Ingolstadt. Since 2013, the Associazione Archivio Paolo Scheggi, founded by the artist’s widow, Franca Scheggi Dall’Acqua, and his daughter Cosima, under the scientific direction by Ilaria Bignotti, represents the artist’s archive and protects and promotes the legacy of his work.
“White is tamed light: dynamics of the new contemplation.” These were the words of Brazilian poet Murilo Mendes in 1966 in front of the white monochromes of artists such as Paolo Scheggi and Lucio Fontana, gathered in the landmark exhibition White on White at Galleria dell’Obelisco in Rome. Regarded as one of the exponents of the line of Italian art that was shaped by the humanistic problem of the construction of space and by the relation between surface and depth, Scheggi made this Curved Intersurface in 1970, one year before his premature demise: thanks to the layering of the canvases, the work is punctuated by numerous perfect circular openings of different sizes, creating a perceptual momentum that transforms the experience of seeing and transports the viewer into a contemplative and metaphysical dimension. White is a fundamental element in Scheggi’s paintings and environmental art: with this color, he intended to make a radical break with academic tradition, following the path (or gash) opened by Lucio Fontana, and to produce, in the words of Germano Celant, “an aesthetic experience of the empty and the full: a discipline and an exercise based on the balance and the harmony of things, both abstract and concrete.” (Ilaria Bignotti)