An exhibition in Siena dedicated to Sergio Vacchi, eclectic master who was informal and figurative

Until November 1, in Siena, it will be possible to visit a selection of works by one of the greatest masters of Italian informal art (but with a path that is nevertheless eclectic), Sergio Vacchi (Castenaso, 1925 - Siena, 2016), on display during the exhibition Oltre la profezia. Sergio Vacchi 1952-2006.

The exhibition, unfortunately, coincided almost exactly with the period of restriction due to the pandemic. For this reason, after an extension of the exhibition until July 5, the City of Siena, in agreement with the Sergio Vacchi Foundation, decided to adapt a room to display part of that exhibition.

This selection of large canvases still shows the milestones of Vacchi’s artistic life, which experienced broad and brilliant periods of fame between the 1950s and 1960s. Above all, they emphasize the artist’s combinatory and citationist skills, who frequents 20th-century culture with a nonchalance typical of a character who is only comfortable conversing with Pablo Picasso, Marcel Proust, Mikhail Bulgakov, Greta Garbo and Giorgio De Chirico.

Born in Castenaso (Bologna) in 1925, Sergio Vacchi, without following regular studies, initially approached painting influenced by post-Cubism and Picasso. After a brief period in which he tried to recover, as he himself says, the lesson of Cézanne, painting woods, landscapes and scenes of Emilian life, in the late 1950s he approached, for a few years, the informal. The stylistic turning point came in 1959 when he moved to Rome, where his painting, although still informal, increasingly approached the figurativeness that is proper to his work. His masters became the great European artists such as Marx Ernst, Otto Dix, Bacon, and De Chirico, and his painting was strongly influenced by the expressionism born in the old continent but characterized by a highly original compositional and descriptive ability, and by large and very large format painting, according to a personal and suggestive conception of the world around him.

For all information you can visit the official website of Santa Maria della Scala.

Pictured: Sergio Vacchi, The Tribe of Greta Garbo. Debate around beauty (1998; enamel on canvas, 218 x 200 cm, Private collection)

An exhibition in Siena dedicated to Sergio Vacchi, eclectic master who was informal and figurative

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