Francesco Lo Savio

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Francesco Lo Savio (born February 28, 1935 in Rome , Italy ; † September 21, 1963 in Marseille , France ) was an Italian pre- minimalist painter and sculptor .

life and work

Francesco Lo Savio studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome (diploma 1955) and then architecture . He was heavily influenced by Walter Gropius , the Bauhaus and De Stijl and Piet Mondrian . In 1958 he began to work as an industrial designer .

In his art, Lo Savio dealt with the dynamic properties of light in space, similar to how ZERO makes artists and a forerunner of minimalist artists . Lo Savio monochrome paintings were created in 1959 and 1960 on the basis of studies of chromatic transparency. The somewhat later filter series worked with layers of opaque and semi-transparent paper and played with circles and squares.

Germano Celant sees Lo Savio's painting with the Logic Color Painters he named Ad Reinhardt , Barnett Newman , Josef Albers , Ellsworth Kelly Max Bill and Richard Lohse .

Works of this kind were shown in November 1960 in the group exhibition 5 Pittori - Roma 1960 in Gian Tomaso Liverani's Galleria La Salita in Rome. The other artists were Franco Angeli , Tano Festa , Mario Schifano and Giuseppe Uncini . In January 1960 he had his first solo exhibition in the Galleria d'Arte Selecta in Rome; under the title Spazio - Luce .

In the same year he began with his metals , matt black painted metal sheets, which he called metallo nero opaco uniforme . They were shaped in different ways and painted matte black to modulate light. They were shown in a solo exhibition in the La Salita gallery in early 1961 .

In Germany, Udo Kultermann presented him in two group exhibitions at Morsbroich Castle in Leverkusen, Monochrome Painting (1960) and Ad Reinhardt, New York - Francesco LoSavio, Rome - Jef Verheyen , Antwerp (1961). Lo Savio was in contact with the ZERO group and in 1961 exhibited with Yves Klein , Heinz Mack , Otto Piene and Günther Uecker as a unique group 0 + 0 in Rome in the La Salita gallery .

In 1962 Lo Spazio published his book Spazio - Luce . In the same year, shown by the Galleria La Salita, Articolazioni totali , white concrete cubes (1 meter × 1 meter × 1 meter) with an open front and back containing black lacquered curved metal sheets were created.

Lo Spazio also applied his studies of light and space to ideas for urban planning, where, like Le Corbusier, he developed a modular system based on the structure of the human body.

Francesco Lo Savio committed suicide in his summer apartment in Marseille in September 1963.

Works by Lo Savio were included in the exhibition concept of the 4th documenta 1968 in Kassel .

Individual evidence

  1. G. Celant: Lichtmetamorphosen from 1959 to 1963, Francesco Lo Savio , catalog Bielefeld, 1986, pp. 9-13. Here p. 9.
  2. yves klein, francesco losavio, heinz mack, otto piene, günther uecker , Galleria La Salita, Rome, June / July 1961
  3. ^ F. Lo Savio: Spazio - Luce: evoluzione di un'idea; volume primo . De Luca, Rome 1962. The manuscript of the second volume, which dealt with architecture, is considered lost.

Literature and Sources

  • Exhibition catalog for the IV. Documenta: IV. Documenta. International exhibition ; Catalog: Volume 1: (Painting and Sculpture); Volume 2: (Graphics / Objects); Kassel 1968.
  • Kimpel, Harald / Stengel, Karin: documenta IV 1968 International Exhibition - A Photographic Reconstruction (series of publications from the documenta archive); Bremen 2007, ISBN 978-3-86108-524-9 .
  • Francesco Lo Savio: Space - Light; edited by Germano Celant, Erich Franz etc. [With contributions by Giulio Carlo Argan, G. Celant, E. Franz, Udo Kultermann, Gerhard Storck, Emilio Villa]. Kunsthalle Bielefeld, 1986. With a few texts by the artist, a catalog, biography and a directory of primary and secondary literature and the exhibitions of his work. For the retrospective of the artist in the Kunsthalle Bielefeld (February 9 to March 30, 1986) and in the Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo (April 26 to June 8, 1986).

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