b. Italy 1935

d. Italy 2013

Agostino Bonalumi was an Italian painter, draughtsman and sculpture which explored the plasticity of the canvas in his object paintings, contributing to the emergence of irregularly shaped canvases in the postwar period, being a leading figure of the Italian avant-garde. Inspired by Lucio Fontana’s sliced canvases, the artist developed what he called “extroflexions” which suggested a force pushing out from beneath. Bonalumi expanded his materials to include metals, enlarging the scale of his work and ultimately creating installations. His work is represented in public collections including Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin; Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome; Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; Museu Colecção Berardo, Lisbon; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. It has been the subject of numerous international exhibitions, including retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, Fort Lauderdale (1981), Institut Matildenhohe, Darmstadt (2003), Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2011).

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