The Transavanguardia, one of Italy’s most important postwar artistic movements, was part of an international revival of expressionist painting in the late 1970s and 1980s. The term, which literally means ‘beyond the avant-garde’, was coined by critic Achille Bonito Oliva in 1979. He wrote: “The trans-avant-garde rejects the idea of an artistic process aimed entirely at conceptual abstraction. It introduces the possibility of not considering the linear course of earlier art as final…”.

The movement reacted against the original avant-garde and against the omnipresent conceptual art by reintroducing emotion and poetical subjectivity in drawing, painting and sculpture. The Transavanguardia returned to styles of the past and quoted avidly from art history, classical mythology, popular culture and national symbolistic tradition.

In the beginning of the 80s Deweer Gallery was the first Belgian gallery to introduce the Italian Transavanguardia.

The gallery is proud to be able to respond to a renewed interest in this historical movement by presenting a retrospective show featuring works - all of them available – not only by leading Transavanguardia artists Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Giuseppe Gallo and Mimmo Paladino but also by Domenico Bianchi and Gianni Dessì, two prominent members of a group of younger artists working in Rome who were influenced by the movement’s subjectivity and spontaneity and who became great artistic personalities on their own.

Figures in the work of Domenico Bianchi (1955) have no iconographic or figurative origin. His drawings and paintings evoke associations with misty landscapes and ghostly visions. He often provides his compositions with rune-like characters and geometric arabesques. Bianchi tries to shape a universal, recognizable space, not unlike what is created through poetry or music.

Influenced by diverse thinkers such as Gregory Bateson, William Blake, Allen Ginsberg and Krishnamurti, Francesco Clemente (1952) has adopted a vast variety of mediums and materials, working with oil paint, watercolor, pastel, and printmaking. His work developed and continues to develop in a non-linear mode, not defined by style but rather by a registration of the fluctuations of his own person. As a result, his work is stylistically varied. It embraces not only diverse mediums but also diverse cultures. In the 1980s, Clemente lived in India and New York and worked with Indian craftsmen as well as painters like Basquiat and Warhol.

Enzo Cucchi (1949), considered one of the key figures within the Italian Transavanguardia, especially wishes to distance himself of any interpretation of the world that is cerebral, in order to set free a more irrational energy. He creates images and objects that aim to restore myth as an important guideline for humanity, tapping from old European and Italian cultural sources. Cucchi’s visual works are often created in interaction with poetical thought and writing. The poetical quality of his imagery is extraordinary.

Gianni Dessì (1955) started his artistic career in theater and scenography and, via a remarkable performance, ended up making visual art. His interest in space and expression remained crucial. In the nineties Dessi joined a group of artists called Nuova Scuola Romana di San Lorenzo and created heterogeneous work using a wide range of materials such as oil paint and encaustic (natural bees wax and dammar resin). A search for ways to strengthen the relationship of painting and sculpture with the space and for the fundamental expressive qualities of colors and shapes has been a major motivation throughout Dessi’s artistic development.

At the beginning of his artistic life Mimmo Paladino (1948) was primarily engaged in drawing, which has determined the style of his later work as a painter, sculptor and graphic artist. Along with Sandro Chia and Enzo Cucchi, Paladino was very crucial to the Tranavanguardia. He developed an allegorical, figurative imagery, influenced mainly by Christian art and classical mythology but also by Egyptian, tribal and modern art. His work is characterized by a deeply expressive style and a fascination for existential themes. Paladino was very proficient at several graphic techniques.

Click here for the exhibition file of the show.