Vincenzo Agnetti

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Vincenzo Agnetti (born September 14, 1926 in Milan , Italy ; † September 1, 1981 ibid) was an Italian conceptual artist , photographer , art theorist and writer .

life and work

Vincenzo Agnetti studied at the Accademia di Brera in Milan. At the beginning of his artistic activity, he worked briefly as a painter with the Informel . From 1960 Agnetti began to work intensively as a writer and theorist of contemporary art, working with artists such as Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani and the Azimut gallery in Milan in the early 1960s.

Towards the end of the 1960s, Agnetti ended his theoretical reflections on art, its role and its language and shifted his activities to the actual production of art.

Agnetti's works are suggestions for an intellectual engagement with art, language, a tangible past and an as yet incomprehensible future. Often his work was based on a self-analysis with a comparison of image and word and an examination of the function of verbal and visual language. In 1972 he was a participant in Documenta 5 in Kassel in the Idea + Idea / Light department and was represented several times at the Venice Biennale .

He was one of the artists who worked on a "deconstruction" of artistic language and was compared in his work with John Baldessari or Joseph Kosuth from the USA or Daniel Buren and Victor Burgin in Europe . In 1973 he created his well-known photo series " Autotelefonata ", telephone conversation with yourself . The words of the conversation are written on the photos. Agnetti wanted to touch the media of communication as a matter of course. His early death at the age of only 55 prevented the completion of his life's work. He is considered the most important representative of Italian conceptual art .

Literature and Sources

  • Exhibition catalog: documenta 5. Survey of Reality - Imagery Today ; Catalog (as a file folder) Volume 1: (Material); Volume 2: (list of exhibits); Kassel 1972
  • documenta archive (ed.); Resubmission d5 - A survey of the archive on documenta 1972 ; Kassel / Ostfildern 2001, ISBN 3-7757-1121-X
  • Pohlen, Annelie: Against intellectual comfort - On the work of Vincenzo Agnetti ; in: Kunstforum International Volume 31; Mainz 1979, p. 178ff

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Agnetti, Vincenzo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian concept artist
DATE OF BIRTH September 14, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Milan , Italy
DATE OF DEATH September 1, 1981
Place of death Milan , Italy