Genoa, at Villa Croce the abstractionism of Tomas Rajlich in dialogue with the greats of the second half of the 20th century

From April 22 to August 22, 2021, the Villa Croce Museum of Contemporary Art in Genoa devotes an extensive retrospective to a significant international interpreter ofabstractionism, the Czech naturalized Dutch artist Tomas Rajlich (Jankov, 1940), who for the occasion dialogues with a number of key works in the museum collection by major artists of the second half of the twentieth century (ranging from post-World War II abstractionism to the perceptual and preconceptual research of the 1960s, to Optical art and New Painting from the 1970s and 1980s). The exhibition, curated by Cesare Biasini Selvaggi and accompanied by a catalog published by Silvana Editoriale with contributions by Flaminio Gualdoni and Martin Dostál, presents through more than eighty works a never-before-seen overview of the artistic path and vitality expressed by aniconic painting.

The exhibition, entitled MAKE IT NEW! Tomas Rajlich and Abstract Art in Italy, intends to focus on the developments of abstractionism: after the great abstract season of the 1930s, at the height of modernism, in the 1960s and 1970s, artists developed its language in the light of new trends (minimalism, conceptual art, the aesthetics of reduction). “This phase,” the curator points out, “represented not only a necessity, but also a period to whose legacy (still vital today) contemporary art seamlessly returns. Not only because of a need for historical-critical reconnaissance, but because of the surprising rediscovery of its effectiveness, its qualities, its conceptual brilliance and its abstract expressiveness. A veritable mine of cues and stimuli to draw on in order to conduct current and vibrant research even today. And here we are not far from the title of the exhibition MAKE IT NEW!, that is, a focus with an original approach on the inexhaustible innovative charge of aniconic painting, which has ploughed through the 20th century to the present day.”

The exhibition

The exhibition itinerary of Tomas Rajlich’s works, documenting more than half a century of research, begins with his beginnings in sculpture in the late 1960s and concludes with his most recent works, with their variations on the intensity, luminosity and texture of painting itself, through sensitive textures of matter-color. A succession of works from room to room, in comparison and dialogue with a selection of precious works (specially arranged) by Italian masters of abstractionism, mostly from the collection of the Villa Croce Museum of Contemporary Art: Getulio Alviani, Rodolfo Aricò, Agostino Bonalumi, Enzo Cacciola, Antonio Calderara, Nicola Carrino, Gianni Colombo, Pietro Consagra, Dadamaino, Piero Dorazio, Lucio Fontana, Marco Gastini, Giorgio Griffa, Riccardo Guarneri, Paolo Icaro, Osvaldo Licini, Piero Manzoni, Fausto Melotti, Bruno Munari, Martino Oberto, Claudio Olivieri, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Mauro Reggiani, Antonio Scaccabarozzi, Paolo Scheggi, Turi Simeti, Atanasio Soldati, Giuseppe Uncini, Nanni Valentini, Claudio Verna, Gianfranco Zappettini.

The focus on Italian aniconic research was decided by Rajlich himself, in relation to the exhibition spaces of Villa Croce and those artists who, since the 1950s, have worked more radically on abstraction and the minimalist use of color. Thus it will happen to the public to come across, among others, works such as Achrome (1958) by Piero Manzoni, Cementarmato (1960) by Giuseppe Uncini, Uovo nero orizzontale (1961) by Lucio Fontana, Bianco (1967) by Agostino Bonalumi, Tema II and 7 variazioni (1969-70) by Fausto Melotti.

The exhibition is produced by the City of Genoa and realized in collaboration with ABC-ARTE, a contemporary art gallery in Genoa.

Who is Tomas Rajlich

Tomas Rajlich, born in Jankov, Czech Republic, in 1940, studied at the School of Decorative Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. In 1967 he founded the group Klub Konkretistu, which was in the wake of the international neo-avant-gardes embodied by Azimut in Italy, ZERO in Germany and Nul in the Netherlands. In 1968 his work experienced its first moment of international visibility through participation in the Sculpture Tchécoslovaque exhibition at the Rodin Museum in Paris. Exiled from Czechoslovakia in 1969 following the Soviet invasion, he moved to Holland, where he became a lecturer at the Vrije Academie in The Hague. Rajlich’s interest in constructing monochrome works on geometrically regular grids was immediately welcomed in the climate of Dutch conceptualism. In 1974 he held solo shows at Yvon Lambert in Paris, at Art & Project in Amsterdam and at Françoise Lambert in Milan, for many years his flagship galleries. In 1975 he was among the protagonists, with Brice Marden, Robert Ryman, Gerhard Richter and others, of the exhibition Fundamentele schilderkunst / Fundamental painting at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, a milestone in the international establishment of analytical painting.

In the following years Rajlich is invited to show in exhibitions such as Elementaire Vormen (traveling exhibition, 1975), Fractures du Monochrome aujourd’hui en Europe (Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1978) and Bilder ohne Bilder(Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn, 1978). Rajlich’s canvases show a growing interest in the “fundamental” in painting, unlike his American minimalist contemporaries. His early works are characterized by an industrial look and modular quality (the grid is key) while Rajlich’s mature works show a more complex reasoning about the essential idea that painting is an entity reflecting on itself. His more recent monochromes explore the combination of the impersonal, the gestural, and the creative force of light. They are variations on the intensity, brightness and facture of painting, while remaining clear factual painting.

In 1993 his first retrospective exhibition was organized in Brescia, at Palazzo Martinengo. His adoptive nation, Holland, in 1994 presented Rajlich dl’Ouborg Award for his artistic contribution: on this occasion, the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague opened a second retrospective. Ten years later, in 2005, on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday, the museum hosted a retrospective of his works on paper. In the Czech Republic, the Dum umÄ?ní mÄ?sta Brna organized an anthological exhibition in 1998, while in 2008 the National Gallery in Prague opened a retrospective with 27 large canvases, followed again by solo shows at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague in 2016, in 2017 at the Museum Kampa in Prague, and in 2018 at the Museum Boijmans-Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.

From 1999 to 2002 Rajlich was artist-in-residence at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, which keeps his works in its collection, which are also present at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, the Musée d’Art et d’Industrie in Saint Ã?tienne, the Musée Cantini in Marseille, the Museum Boijmans-Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery in Prague, the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation in Amsterdam, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the S.M.A.K. in Ghent, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Stedelijk Museum in Schiedam, the Stedelijk Museum De Lakhal in Leiden, and the Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof in Delft.

Pictured: Tomas Rajlich, Untitled (1970; acrylic on panel, seven parts of 60 x 60 cm each)

Genoa, at Villa Croce the abstractionism of Tomas Rajlich in dialogue with the greats of the second half of the 20th century

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