(Venice 1919–2006)
Per una protesta No. 6 - Dal ciclo della protesta, 1953, on the reverse signed, dated and inscribed Vedova 1953 Italia, oil on canvas, 140 x 190 cm, framed

Provenance:
Vedova Family, Venice
Galerie Günther Franke, Munich
Langen Collection, since February 1956 - acquired from the above

Exhibited:
São Paulo – II.a Biennale del Museo d’arte Moderna di São Paulo 1953–1954 (2 exhibition labels on the stretcher)
Venice - Galleria del Cavallino, Vedova (1954)
Munich - Galerie Günther Franke, Emilio Vedova (1955- 1956), no. 25 (gallery label on the stretcher)
Kassel - documenta II (1959) (exhibition label on the stretcher)
Venice - XXXI Biennale Internationale d’Arte di Venezia (1962), no. 908 (exhibition label on the stretcher)
London - Arts Council of Great Britain, Contemporary Italian Art, no. 91 (exhibition label on the stretcher)

Literature:
Germano Celant, Vedova 1935–1984, Milan 1984, no. 88 (ill.) V.& M. Langen, Sammlung Victor & Marianne Langen, Kunst des 20ten Jahrhunderts, vol. I, Ascona 1986, p. 346 (ill.)

From the 1940s onwards, artists expressed their liberation from any pressures and horrors by making their work more abstract. Action Painting and Abstract Expressionism saw American artists become the frontrunners of this new artistic direction, followed by the European proponents of Informalism from 1947 onwards. The movements of abstract art, which were subtly different from each other, then developed globally from 1950 onwards, under a wide range of conditions. All artists formulated a greater claim to truthfulness and authenticity, and they often expressed themselves on large-scale canvases, thereby bringing an immediacy and physical directness to their painting, the likes of which had not been seen before. Each artist developed their own style, based on their biography. The renunciation of principles of visual composition and realistic patterns was important to them all. The tactile and physical properties of colour and pictorial support enabled painters to express materiality and appropriate it for their work. Artists insisted on their own vigorously rendered gestural act, and used extremely physical painting to call on their own personality alone. The hand paints by itself – the artists of Informalism allowed the events and experiences of the War, the resistance and incarceration to flow onto their canvases from their unconsciousness. Emilio Vedova started to teach himself painting in the 1930s and worked for a photographer and restorer. From the start, he focused on the contrast between light and shade, as well as space and surface, as a non-linear method of forming space. Emilio Vedova’s artistic oeuvre originates from the “Venetian trigger”, his deep fascination with the architecture and nature in and around his home city of Venice. “I had to extract the independent elements from this historical substance, and their changing perspectives. Proportions as geometry – but as a different kind of geometry than Plato used. Proportions are not just ratios, not just systems to organise and structure a building or its façade: rather, they are an emotional element, a structure of expression that appeals directly to people and has an impact on them. This is as alive today as ever.” Emilio Vedova in: Bemerkungen auf Gängen, durch Gassen und über Plätze Venedigs, Wedewer p. 252 The gestural disintegration of real spaces into an expressive work of brushstrokes was started by Emilio Vedova as soon as the late 1930s. His paintings did not only reveal his deep-seated connection to Venice: they also showed what he had seen and experienced during the resistance. His experiences flow into his works as a directly gestural manifestation of this. In 1942 he joined Corrente, a group of artists who spoke out against fascist art. He was an anti-fascist in the resistance movement from 1944 to 1945, and signed the Beyond Guernica manifesto in Milan in 1946. Emilio Vedova founded the Nuova Secessione Artistica Italiana in Venice in 1946 in conjunction with artists such as Renato Guttuso, Bruno Cassinari and Renato Birolli. The Fronte Nuovo delle Arti was created in Milan after a merger with other artists, and existed until 1952. Emilio Vedova made his debut at Venice’s Biennale in 1948 and an entire room was devoted to his work as early as 1952. In the early 1950s, Emilio Vedova created Scontro di situazioni, Ciclo della Protesta and Cicli della Natura, his most famous cycles of work. The series Dal ciclo della protesta, to which the work Per una protesta No. 6 belongs, depicts Vedova clearly breaking away from the “black geometry” of the late 1940s. The increasing dominance of shapelessness and the few remaining echoes of geometric arrangement reveal that Vedova’s painting has clear points of intersection with gestural Informalism. The individual works of the Dal ciclo della protesta series each show unusual, stand-alone variants of a certain personal mental state with the title being an integral part of the works. The different colour forms of the background contrast with the black brushstrokes, some of which are still geometric, whilst others are positioned in a disorganised, gestural grid structure. “The overlapping, interpenetrating contrasts of the black and white break up perspectives, evoke moving images of space, a space that is apocalyptically crumbling behind bars. The surface becomes the place in which a dramatically expressive spatial structure appears. As with colour, space also becomes an independent player.” Haftmann, Vedova 1960, Wedewer p. 258

“Scribbling, scratching, acting on canvas, finally painting, seem to me such human activities, immediate, spontaneous and simple, like singing, dancing or playing, like an animal running, stamping the ground or shaking itself. A growing plant, the pulse of blood, everything that is germinating, growth, élan vital, living force, resistance, pain or joy may find their peculiar incarnation, their mark, in a line that may be soft or flexible, curved and proud, firm or strong, in a shrieking, joyful or sinister coloured blot.”
Hans Hartung. Autoritratto. Fondazione Torino Musei. Turin, 1999

Provenance:
Vedova Family, Venice
Galerie Günther Franke, Munich
Langen Collection, since February 1956 - acquired from the above

Exhibited:
São Paulo – II.a Biennale del Museo d’arte Moderna di São Paulo 1953–1954 (2 exhibition labels on the stretcher)
Venice - Galleria del Cavallino, Vedova (1954)
Munich - Galerie Günther Franke, Emilio Vedova (1955- 1956), no. 25 (gallery label on the stretcher)
Kassel - documenta II (1959) (exhibition label on the stretcher)
Venice - XXXI Biennale Internationale d’Arte di Venezia (1962), no. 908 (exhibition label on the stretcher)
London - Arts Council of Great Britain, Contemporary Italian Art, no. 91 (exhibition label on the stretcher)

Literature:
Germano Celant, Vedova 1935–1984, Milan 1984, no. 88 (ill.) V.& M. Langen, Sammlung Victor & Marianne Langen, Kunst des 20ten Jahrhunderts, vol. I, Ascona 1986, p. 346 (ill.)

From the 1940s onwards, artists expressed their liberation from any pressures and horrors by making their work more abstract. Action Painting and Abstract Expressionism saw American artists become the frontrunners of this new artistic direction, followed by the European proponents of Informalism from 1947 onwards. The movements of abstract art, which were subtly different from each other, then developed globally from 1950 onwards, under a wide range of conditions. All artists formulated a greater claim to truthfulness and authenticity, and they often expressed themselves on large-scale canvases, thereby bringing an immediacy and physical directness to their painting, the likes of which had not been seen before. Each artist developed their own style, based on their biography. The renunciation of principles of visual composition and realistic patterns was important to them all. The tactile and physical properties of colour and pictorial support enabled painters to express materiality and appropriate it for their work. Artists insisted on their own vigorously rendered gestural act, and used extremely physical painting to call on their own personality alone. The hand paints by itself – the artists of Informalism allowed the events and experiences of the War, the resistance and incarceration to flow onto their canvases from their unconsciousness. Emilio Vedova started to teach himself painting in the 1930s and worked for a photographer and restorer. From the start, he focused on the contrast between light and shade, as well as space and surface, as a non-linear method of forming space. Emilio Vedova’s artistic oeuvre originates from the “Venetian trigger”, his deep fascination with the architecture and nature in and around his home city of Venice. “I had to extract the independent elements from this historical substance, and their changing perspectives. Proportions as geometry – but as a different kind of geometry than Plato used. Proportions are not just ratios, not just systems to organise and structure a building or its façade: rather, they are an emotional element, a structure of expression that appeals directly to people and has an impact on them. This is as alive today as ever.” Emilio Vedova in: Bemerkungen auf Gängen, durch Gassen und über Plätze Venedigs, Wedewer p. 252 The gestural disintegration of real spaces into an expressive work of brushstrokes was started by Emilio Vedova as soon as the late 1930s. His paintings did not only reveal his deep-seated connection to Venice: they also showed what he had seen and experienced during the resistance. His experiences flow into his works as a directly gestural manifestation of this. In 1942 he joined Corrente, a group of artists who spoke out against fascist art. He was an anti-fascist in the resistance movement from 1944 to 1945, and signed the Beyond Guernica manifesto in Milan in 1946. Emilio Vedova founded the Nuova Secessione Artistica Italiana in Venice in 1946 in conjunction with artists such as Renato Guttuso, Bruno Cassinari and Renato Birollo. The Fronte Nuovo delle Arti was created in Milan after a merger with other artists, and existed until 1952. Emilio Vedova made his debut at Venice’s Biennale in 1948 and an entire room was devoted to his work as early as 1952. In the early 1950s, Emilio Vedova created Scontro di situazioni, Ciclo della Protesta and Cicli della Natura, his most famous cycles of work. The series Dal ciclo della protesta, to which the work Per una protesta No. 6 belongs, depicts Vedova clearly breaking away from the “black geometry” of the late 1940s. The increasing dominance of shapelessness and the few remaining echoes of geometric arrangement reveal that Vedova’s painting has clear points of intersection with gestural Informalism. The individual works of the Dal ciclo della protesta series each show unusual, stand-alone variants of a certain personal mental state with the title being an integral part of the works. The different colour forms of the background contrast with the black brushstrokes, some of which are still geometric, whilst others are positioned in a disorganised, gestural grid structure. “The overlapping, interpenetrating contrasts of the black and white break up perspectives, evoke moving images of space, a space that is apocalyptically crumbling behind bars. The surface becomes the place in which a dramatically expressive spatial structure appears. As with colour, space also becomes an independent player.” Haftmann, Vedova 1960, Wedewer p. 258

“Scribbling, scratching, acting on canvas, finally painting, seem to me such human activities, immediate, spontaneous and simple, like singing, dancing or playing, like an animal running, stamping the ground or shaking itself. A growing plant, the pulse of blood, everything that is germinating, growth, élan vital, living force, resistance, pain or joy may find their peculiar incarnation, their mark, in a line that may be soft or flexible, curved and proud, firm or strong, in a shrieking, joyful or sinister coloured blot.”
Hans Hartung. Autoritratto. Fondazione Torino Musei. Turin, 1999