Emilio Vedova - vendere e comprare opere
9 August 1919, Venice (Italy) - 25 October 2006, Venice (Italy)
Emilio Vedova was one of the leading exponents of Italian Art Informel of the 1950s and early 1960s.
A factory worker and assistant to a photographer and a conservator, he studied art at an evening school at the Carmini.
In the 1940s, Vedova joined the anti-Fascist Corrente group of artists and writers, which also included Renato Guttuso, Umberto Vittorini, Ennio Morlotti, and Renato Birolli. In 1946, he and Morlotti published the manifesto ‘Oltre Guernica’. That same year he was a co-founder of the Fronte Nuove delle Arti, which after the experience of Fascism strove for a comprehensive renewal of Italian art and also exhibited at the 1948 Venice Biennale. In 1952 he became a member of the Gruppo degli Otto.
During the 1950s, Vedova embraced abstract art. In the early 1950s, his geometric phase was followed by a gestural, spontaneous, and informal painting style. Vedova sought to overcome the limits of painting and of the two-dimensionality of a picture. In the 1960s he produced the so-called ‘Plurimo’ compositions, fold-out spatial structures covered with paint.
Vedova lived in Venice, Florence, and Rome. In 1955, 1959, 1964, and 1982, Vedova participated in the documenta in Kassel. He was awarded the Grand Prix of the Venice Biennale in 1960. The Museo Correr in Venice and the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen in Munich devoted major retrospectives to the artist in 1984 and 1986 respectively.
In 2017, Dorotheum succeeded in realising a world record prize for the artist by selling his exceptional work ‘Tensione’ (1959) from the heyday of Art Informel for €792,503.