Elastic Space
Gianni Colombo’s Elastic Space
By Jane Clark
Gianni Colombo studied painting and ceramics in Milan; but was also experimenting with unconventional materials, photography, and even cinema from the mid 1950s. He greatly admired the work of Lucio Fontana. In 1959 he exhibited at the Azimut gallery, just opened by Enrico Castellani (whose artworks you’ve already seen) and where he first met Zero founder Heinz Mack from Düsseldorf. That year also, he and a group of adventurous younger Italian artists founded their own Gruppo T collective, sharing interests in perception and the idea that viewers and participatory art objects were together engaged in a continuous interaction or feedback loop.1
Colombo was included in an important exhibition, Arte programmata. Arte cinetica. Opere moltiplicate. Opera aperta (Programmed art. Kinetic art. Multiplied works. Open works), which toured in Italy, then to Düsseldorf, London, and New York during 1962–64 with a catalogue text by Umberto Eco. He showed in the second Nul exhibition in Amsterdam in 1965, along with Mack, Piene, Uecker, Peeters, Megert, Luther, Fontana, Vigo, Castellani, Kusama and, posthumously, Klein; and was in 4.documenta at Kassel in 1968 with a number of the same artists. That same year, he was awarded the National Grand Prize of the 36th Venice Biennale for the work you see here, Spazio elastico, blurring the boundaries between art forms and demanding visitor participation.
Colombo served as professor at his alma mater, the Brera Academy in Milan, from 1968, and as Director from 1985. By the 1980s, his work was increasingly focussed on public art and architectural projects.
Elastic Space
Gianni Colombo’s Elastic Space
By Jane Clark
Gianni Colombo studied painting and ceramics in Milan; but was also experimenting with unconventional materials, photography, and even cinema from the mid 1950s. He greatly admired the work of Lucio Fontana. In 1959 he exhibited at the Azimut gallery, just opened by Enrico Castellani (whose artworks you’ve already seen) and where he first met Zero founder Heinz Mack from Düsseldorf. That year also, he and a group of adventurous younger Italian artists founded their own Gruppo T collective, sharing interests in perception and the idea that viewers and participatory art objects were together engaged in a continuous interaction or feedback loop.1
Colombo was included in an important exhibition, Arte programmata. Arte cinetica. Opere moltiplicate. Opera aperta (Programmed art. Kinetic art. Multiplied works. Open works), which toured in Italy, then to Düsseldorf, London, and New York during 1962–64 with a catalogue text by Umberto Eco. He showed in the second Nul exhibition in Amsterdam in 1965, along with Mack, Piene, Uecker, Peeters, Megert, Luther, Fontana, Vigo, Castellani, Kusama and, posthumously, Klein; and was in 4.documenta at Kassel in 1968 with a number of the same artists. That same year, he was awarded the National Grand Prize of the 36th Venice Biennale for the work you see here, Spazio elastico, blurring the boundaries between art forms and demanding visitor participation.
Colombo served as professor at his alma mater, the Brera Academy in Milan, from 1968, and as Director from 1985. By the 1980s, his work was increasingly focussed on public art and architectural projects.