Agostino Bonalumi biography

Agostino Bonalumi was an Italian painter, considered one of the most significant figures in abstract art of the 20th century.

He was born on July 10, 1935, in Vimercate, in the province of Monza. The second of four children, preceded by his older sister Rosa and followed by his two younger brothers, Teodoro and Pier Enrico. From a very young age, Agostino Bonalumi helped his father, a pastry chef, to support the family while also attending compulsory school.
Once he completed his studies, Agostino Bonalumi began to show interest in art, describing it himself as a way to understand the world. When he wasn't working, he painted and continually sought to exhibit his works, until 1957, when he held his first solo exhibition at the Galleria Totti in Milan.
In the following two years, while frequenting the renowned Brera district in Milan, the artist meets Enrico Baj, founder, along with Sergio Dangelo, of the so-called Movimento Arte Nucleare, born in 1950. It was Baj who introduced him to Enrico Castellani and Piero Manzoni, with whom Agostino Bonalumi founded the art magazine Azimuth in '59. The magazine was published in only two issues, the first in 1959 and the second in the following 1960.
In 1959, the collaboration between the three artists ends due to personal reasons. During this period, the painter begins to emerge with his own artistic individuality. It is at the end of the same year that the extroflected canvas appears for the first time. The extroflections are the expression of an art that is not only to be looked at but creates an illusion of movement with its plasticity, and also seems to want to be touched, leading the observer to the discovery of three-dimensionality and thus the complexity of the world. The play of light and shadow that painters used to confer depth here transcends illusion to become concrete and undeniable. An art that transcends appearance and all its theories to reveal itself for what it truly is: a combination of visual sensations that, from the figurative plane, invade the spectator's space, becoming co-participants in their own reality.
In 1961, the painter, who had become a promising figure in Italian art thanks to his participation in numerous international exhibitions, married Giuliana Oliva, whom he met at the workplace he could not yet leave. That same year, supported by his wife, he decided to dedicate himself exclusively to art, and in '64 he signed his first contract with Arturo Schwarz, exhibiting at the opening of his gallery the following year.
In 1967, during the exhibition "Lo spazio dell’immagine", Bonalumi presented his first environment called Blu abitabile. An emblem of the unique and original nature of the thought of an artist almost philosopher, this creation lies at the intersection of sculpture and architecture, with no possibility of separating these two worlds. Built on a circular base, the immediate impression is that of art becoming, as the title suggests, an environment. It thus becomes livable. And it does so in a way that seems to embrace the observer, enveloping them in its monochromatic note. The wall is dotted with protrusions that, following one another from bottom to top, create an optical illusion effect and almost a tactile perception, also enhanced by the lenticular floor.
In his private life, Agostino Bonalumi seeks to fill the gaps in his educational path, which ended at middle school, by studying philosophy and showing particular interest in phenomenology.
From the early '70s to the late '80s, the artist created a new series of works defined as "a griglia" that would continue until 1989.
By 1990, having completed the cycle of grid works, Bonalumi reinterprets the concept of extroflection based on a steel structure that almost seems to come to life.
In 2002, he was also awarded the "Presidente della Repubblica" prize by the Accademia di San Luca in Rome.
In the following years, he continued his artistic activity, eventually producing his last works using the steel rod technique.
Sick for a long time, Agostino Bonalumi died, following a collapse, on September 18, 2013.