Agostino Bonalumi - Blu (2011)

Agostino Bonalumi (1935–2013) is one of the absolute protagonists of post-war Italian art, internationally recognized as a master of “estroflessione” — a language that revolutionized the relationship between painting, space, and sculpture. A friend and close collaborator of Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani, with whom he founded the magazine Azimuth in 1959, Bonalumi pursued a radical research path that transcended traditional two-dimensionality, transforming the canvas into a plastic object capable of interacting with light and with the surrounding space. His career is marked by exhibitions in major museums worldwide, from the Venice Biennale (1966, 1970, 1986) to retrospectives in prestigious venues such as Palazzo Te in Mantua and the Accademia di San Luca in Rome.

This monochrome blue canvas, created in the artist’s final years, represents the essence of his research. The surface is crossed by tensions generated by underlying structures that deform the pictorial plane, creating extroflexions and volumes that rise like plastic waves. The single color, applied with absolute rigor, enhances the play of shadows and reflections, transforming painting into sculpture and inviting the viewer to perceive its variations as the light changes. In this work, monochromy becomes a means to achieve total formal purity, in which matter and space coincide.