Lecce, a small exhibition to trace the entire career of Grazia Varisco

From October 9, 2022 to January 8, 2023, the Biscozzi Rimbaud Foundation in Lecce is organizing an exhibition dedicated to Grazia Varisco(Milan, Italy, 1937) entitled Grazia Varisco. Perceptual Sensitivities, the third temporary exhibition held since the foundation’s inception, following The Artist of White in 2021, which featured Angelo Savelli, and The Other Sculpture with works by Salento sculptor Salvatore Sava (running until Sept. 25). Grazia Varisco, fresh from her participation in the Venice Biennale in the Central Pavilion and a recent anthological exhibition at the Palazzo Reale in Milan, presents in the spaces of the Lecce Foundation an exhibition of seventeen works that cover the entire span of her career, from the late 1950s to 2009, in a path in which the individual works constitute a unified body, while each one conserving its own originality.

They start with Tema e svolgimento (1957-1959), dating from his apprenticeship period at the Brera Academy, “simple and light,” writes curator Paolo Bolpagni in his catalog essay, "quasi à la manière de Paul Klee... a dropped roll of paper and the idea of drawing from such a chance event the cue for an aesthetic interpretation.“ The work already reveals Varisco’s perceptive sensitivity and her placing herself in constant observation and ”listening" to reality. In 1959-1960, the adventure of kineticism began with the famous Gruppo T, which was born in Milan with Varisco’s participation together with Giovanni Anceschi, Davide Boriani, Gianni Colombo and Gabriele Devecchi: their poetics is centered on the concept of miriorama, that is, on the idea of the variation of the image in the temporal sequence. Grazia Varisco’s magnetic tables were born, two examples of which are on display in the exhibition(Tavola magnetica a elementi quadrati of 1959 and Tavola magnetica trasparente “Filamenti liberi” of 1960), with elements attached to the support by magnets and therefore movable: simple objects, with regular and geometric shapes, or filamentous and areas. “For Grazia Varisco,” Bolpagni explains, “it is also an invitation to play, but the playful component, which is also present and important, does not exhaust the meaning of these works, which imply the active participation of the viewer and the multiplication of the possible configurations of the work itself, which loses its aura of definitive completeness.”

From the kinetic season, the last great European avant-garde (which had among its precursors the Futurists, Dadaists, Bauhausians and Constructivists, and of which historical exhibitions in Paris, Zagreb, Milan and New York are recalled) four works by Grazia Varisco are on display: Luminous Kinetic Object (1962), Variable + Quadrionda 130, Black Checkerboard (1964), +Rossonero- (1968) and Optical-Kinetic Object (1968-1969), the first two equipped with an electric motor and thus a movement inherent in the work itself. Here Varisco relies on the concept of fragmentation of light, realized in different ways: “an image,” writes Bolpagni, "generated by configurations that appear and disappear alternately, produced by the interference between rotating disks in which are carved textures that allow the light aroused by the electric source to filter through; or Frangible Reticles and Mercurials, constructed from industrial glass with regular reliefs and a lenticular surface, which change, as the position of the ’observer, the perception of what is contained in the box (colored geometric patterns or steel studs ’fluidized’ by the effect of refraction, so as to trigger a continuous shifting of the point of view, a situation of instability typical of the happening of reality)."

With the experience of Gruppo T over, Grazia Varisco continued her own path independently, followed by attentive critics such as Ballo, Belloli and Dorfles, making her first solo exhibition in 1966. In the 1970s the artist experimented with the free manipulation of paper and cardboard and the programmatic openness to the perturbing action of chance, always keeping the analysis of perceptual mechanisms at the center. Successful series such as the Extrapages and Extralibri were born: four works such as Meridiana 2 (1974), Extralibro (1975), Spazio potenziale (1976) and Extrapagina “Spartito musicale” (1977) are featured in the exhibition.

“Potential Spaces,” Bolpagni continues, “marks another important moment: Varisco here amuses herself by opening, breaking down and recomposing the iron frames of her works, in a maieutic investigation that also implies a leaning toward three-dimensionality already seen in the Meridiana, where the projecting metal strips create the image together with the shadow projected by them, in a perceptual mechanism that is always changing and unstable.”

In the second half of the 1980s, Varisco created the Fraktur cycle, with the observation of angles of connection between two or three orthogonal planes and a study of thresholds and disarticulations. On display are Implications B (1986), Yellow Interlock (1987) and Fraktur - Iron 1 (1997). And then, from the 2000s, Communicating Squares (2008) and Red Thread (2009). The exhibition closes with Silenzi (2006), an articulation of planes and voids produced by the superimposition of simple frames: another conceptual leap to interpret the world of a visionary and highly creative artist.

The Biscozzi | Rimbaud Foundation, established in 2018 by the will of Luigi Biscozzi (1934-2018) and his wife Dominique Rimbaud and open to the public since 2021, constitutes a center of excellence for contemporary art in Puglia. The peculiarity of the Foundation, in addition to the permanent collection that includes the most important names in the visual arts of the 20th century - de Pisis, Martini, Prampolini, Albers, Magnelli, Veronesi, Melotti, Burri, Dorazio, Birolli, Tancredi, Scanavino, Consagra, Azuma, Dadamaino, Bonalumi, Savelli, Schifano and many others,-is to characterize itself as a dynamic and open space that interacts with the territory and its cultural institutions. The Foundation aims to attract and stimulate the attention of a wider, intergenerational public to the enjoyment of contemporary art, conceiving its environments as true laboratories of learning and training.

Exhibition opening: Tuesday to Sunday from 4 to 7 p.m.; the last Sunday of each month from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 4 to 7 p.m. Admission ticket: 5 euros (also includes a visit to the Foundation’s permanent exhibition); 3 euros for a visit to the exhibition only. Reduced ticket: 3 euros (also including a visit to the Foundation’s permanent exhibition) for groups of more than 15, children under 18, school groups (primary and secondary), students from universities, art academies and conservatories provided with ID, teachers; for everyone, except for the scheduled free admission on the last Sunday of each month. Free ticket for children up to age 6, disabled (and accompanying person), one accompanying person per group, ICOM members, military and law enforcement with badge, tour guides, journalists with badge Information: www.fondazionebiscozzirimbaud.it

Pictured: Grazia Varisco, Optic-Kinetic Object (1968-1969; wood, Q.250 industrial glass, steel studs, 42 x 82.7 cm)

Lecce, a small exhibition to trace the entire career of Grazia Varisco

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