Ciclo S. 8

Painted in 1960 the year in which the artist won the prestigious Gran Premio per la Pittura at the 30th Venice Biennale, Emilio Vedova’s Ciclo S. 8 bursts with the vibrant colour and visceral energy that brought the artist to the forefront of the Art Informel movement. Vedova, a self-taught painter born in Venice, and although he devoted his whole life to non-representational painting, his canvases evoke the radiant light of the Venetian Old Masters. With its torrents and smears of paint, Ciclo S. 8 exemplifies the grandeur of Vedova’s mature style. Black swirls jostle and ferment, only to be consumed by yellow and red torrents of paint. A ground of gleaming white balances the graphic dynamism of the artist’s mark-making, which recalls the vitality of Willem de Kooning. The clarity of Vedova’s vision cuts through this frenetic application of paint. In Milan in 1946, the artist had co-signed the Oltre Guernica, a manifesto announcing Socialist painters’ commitment to abstraction as a radical gesture. Executed over a decade later, the raw, unbridled presence of Ciclo S. 8 demonstrates the artist’s unwavering pledge, bringing the medium to explosive new heights of creative intensity.