Bianco e Nero

Emilio Vedova is an artist well aware of the aesthetic change him and his generation embodied. Essentially self-taught through humble and sporadic evening classes. During The Second World War, Vedova channelled his beliefs in his art. In 1943, he joined the anti-fascist group Corrente, the members of which were receptive to the revolutionary ambition of the Venetian’s work. From this point onwards, most of Vedova’s affiliations accompany an artistic stance. He, for example, co-signed the Oltre Guernica in 1946, to promote expressive abstraction. A year later, he founded Fronte Nuovo delle Arti. In 1956 he continued to push boundaries by joining Gruppo degli Otto and exhibited with them at the Venice Biennale. This show is usually associated with the birth of the influential Arte Informale movement. Bianco e nero embodies the Vedova’s recourse to abstraction as a means to communicate his political leanings and aspirations is evident. The composition is conflicted, angular, sharp and – as the title quite simply lays out – contrasted. The conveyed is one of point of rupture, of a necessary change to prevent the continuous build-up of this irreparable tension.