Milan, an exhibition for Emilio Scanavino's photographs from the 1960s.

Opened last year on the occasion of the centenary of the artist’s birth, theScanavino Archive returns to welcome the public to its spaces with the exhibition Emilio Scanavino. Light and Matter, dedicated to the photographic production of Emilio Scanavino (Genoa, 1922 - Milan, 1986). The opening of the exhibition will take place during Milano MuseoCity, with three days of extraordinary opening, Friday, March 3, Saturday, March 4 and Sunday, March 5, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. The exhibition will also remain on view from March 6 to April 23, 2023, with free admission and visits by appointment (by writing to info@archivioscanavino.it).

Emilio Scanavino. Light and Matter presents a selection of photographic shots by Emilio Scanavino (1922-1986) taken in the 1960s: images characterized by close framing, portraying details, traces, isolated elements on boundless and undefined backgrounds, showing an alphabetization of subjects that are replicated several times, with different shots.

A Genoese-born painter and sculptor, Scanavino is considered one of the leading figures of the informal generation and the Spatialist movement that emerged in Italy at the end of World War II.

Scanavino’s artistic research seeks to define a new alphabet, a new language composed of graphic and plastic signs, physiological and tangible, organic and abstract. With this exhibition it will be possible to discover how, with the camera, the artist “captured life,” in emotions, stories and revelations produced by light.

Emilio Scanavino was born in Genoa in 1922, where after art high school he immediately devoted himself to painting, inaugurating his first solo exhibition in 1942 with expressionist works. After a figurative beginning, Scanavino’s painting became increasingly close to the characteristics of postcubism, with a gradual synthesizing of forms until their dissolution. After sojourns in Milan, Paris and London, in 1950 he worked with Tullio Mazzotti at his Manifattura ceramica in Albisola together with Lucio Fontana, Sebastian Matta, Guillame Corneille, Asger Jorn, Wilfredo Lam, Gianni Dova, Roberto Crippa, and Enrico Baj. In the same year, he exhibited at the XXV Venice Biennale and received ex-aequo the First Prize at the V Genoese Regional Exhibition. In the following years he approached the Milanese group of Spatialists, exhibiting Fontana’s first Spatial Environment at the Naviglio Gallery in Venice. In 1954 he exhibited again at the Venice Biennial, where he participated again in 1958, winning the Prampolini Prize, in 1960, with a solo room, and in 1966, the year in which he also won the Pininfarina Prize. He continued his international exhibition activities in the following years, participating in several exhibitions in London, Paris, Milan, Tokyo, Mexico City, etc.

In 1971, on the occasion of the invitation for the 11th Biennial of São Paulo, Brazil, together with the sculptor Alik Cavaliere for Biennial of São Paulo, Brazil, he created the large work dedicated to the martyrs for freedom, but it was not exhibited due to the intervention of the consular authorities who censured it for its subject matter “of a political nature and therefore extra-artistic.” Today the work is on display at the Museo della Permanente in Milan. In 1973 the Kunsthalle in Darmstadt presented an extensive anthological exhibition of his work, which, was shown again in Venice at Palazzo Grassi and then in Milan at Palazzo Reale in 1974. In 1975 he participated in the 10th Quadriennale in Rome and the following year began his collaboration in Milan with Giorgio Marconi. He alternates his activity between Italy and Paris, which he is forced to leave for health reasons in the late 1970s. He lived and worked between Milan and Calice Ligure until his death in 1986.

For information you can visit theScanavino Archive website.

Milan, an exhibition for Emilio Scanavino's photographs from the 1960s.

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