ABSTRACT PHOTOGRAPHY

from the Avant-garde to the Digital Age
Curated by Roberta Valtorta and Arianna Bianchi

LINK: ABSTRACT PHOTOGRAPHY – DIGITAL EXHIBITION

The exhibition includes photographs by Olivo Barbieri, Pierre Cordier, Franco Fontana, Jean-Louis Garnell, Mario Giacomelli, Paolo Gioli, Franco Grignani, Roberto Masotti, Nino Migliori, Paolo Monti, Aaron Siskind, Luigi Veronesi and Silvio Wolf, dating from the 1930s to the first years of the new millennium, investigating how photography, the most ‘realistic’ of the arts, can deal with abstract forms. It was in the context of the collapse of the concept of ‘representation’ among the historical avant-garde, especially abstractionism and Constructivism, that photography began experimenting with abstract forms, finding expressive solutions that no longer use visible reality as a reference, but the ‘other’ realities of interiority and the imaginary. Later, in the ‘40s and ‘50s, Abstract Expressionism and other forms of abstraction provided fertile ground for further experimentation, as would Pop Art and Op Art in the following decade. Some artists used techniques outside the canon such as the photogram, the chemogram, cliche-verre, blurring and, more recently, digital manipulation. Others chose traditional photography to capture aspects of reality that already offer themselves to the eye as abstract forms, removed from their context.

Centro Internazionale Scavi Scaligeri, Verona, under the aegis of ArteVerona – Modern and Contemporary Art Fair 4 October 2008-11 January 2009
Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea 15 November 2009 – 2 May 2010