Antonio Calderara

After his first few years of life spent in the province of Milan he and his family moved into the city of Milan in 1915 in order to be close to his father who had just been called to arms. He undertook his first painting in that same year. It was an oil painting featuring the church of Vacciago, a village on the eastern shore of Lake Orta, a holiday resort where his grandparents lived. It was also in Vacciago, that the first exhibition of his works was held, in the Hotel Maulini in 1923. In the exhibition he showed landscapes and portraits that exuded a rare maturity for a twenty-year old artist. These first few works proved his knowledge of and ability to tackle those artistic expressions that were being reflected upon the weighty traditions of Lombard Romanticism, the epicentre of which was actually Milan where he lived and studied engineering at the Polytechnic. He attended Milan’s Polytechnic until 1925 when he decided, with no small amount of determination, to dedicate himself to painting, “overcoming my mother’s resistance” (she was worried about the uncertainty such a choice would entail for his life). His meticulous aptitude for engineering soon emerged in his first paintings in which his subjects are for the most part city views characterised by the powerful presence of industrial architecture, “efficient architecture”, which enabled him to compose his compositions by means of clean and tidy shapes that were borne of a study of light and shade. Against his own wishes he had to commence military service in Rome in 1926 although this period was interrupted on several occasions due to the health problems that were to accompany him throughout his life. Upon his return to Milan, in 1927, he at last started his career as a painter in a studio that he created out of his father’s home in the centre of the city. At this point, too, he embarked upon his sequence of exhibitions and in May 1929 he showed works at the exhibition, Il Naviglio di Milano, at the Palazzo della Permanente. On this particular occasion, where for the first time his paintings were “aligned with the paintings of other artists”, he exhibited his painting, via Vallone e via Olocati. In the meantime, due to some financial difficulties, his family moved back to Vacciago, while he, still yearning for freedom, decided to stay on in Milan and put up with an array of difficulties and personal sacrifices.

The first few years of the 1930’s were a period of novelty and change from more than one point of view. In 1932, he met Carmela, the woman who would become his wife and the mother of his daughter, Gabriella. In 1933 and 1934, two exhibitions were dedicated to him at the Galleria Vita Nuova and the Galleria Bolaffi in Milan (where, with his painting of Lake Orta, he was awarded the Saverio Fumagalli Prize for Landscapes). He then decided to move back to Vacciago. In the following years, he lived in different places on and around the lake and he worked in the beginning with a businessman who provided him with money in return for paintings. He was soon able to freely manage his working life and earn enough money to live by taking part in collective exhibitions in the area. In 1936, his father died suddenly and Antonio was helped with great care and generosity by his brother who he lived with in the family home in Vacciago. Antonio remembered these years as if imbued with a sought-after solitude in which he strove to fully understand the deepest significance that he was searching for in his painting. At this point, there began for him a certain destiny common to important painters who decide to stay in the provinces (by necessity or by choice), far from more official circles and far from the collectors and the public. Calderara was, as a matter of fact, substantially far-removed from those groups of artists that he had known and had frequented in Milan such as the Chiaristi artists like De Amicis, De Rocchi and Lilloni, the Novecento Group, or the Concrete Art painters who were beginning to be exhibited at the Galleria Il Milione. He was a stranger to all this in his own particular way, though. More so in his relationships than in any real intention since he set about his own very personal manner rather than more “official” research or labelled as such. He was able to find expression in a language that achieved the same sort of significance and dealt with “new problems with calm humility”, determinedly self-taught. His work in the 1930’s was for the most part characterised by the quest for the material and the volume of a composition whereas at the start of the new decade his profiles became lighter and his work was concentrated more on light, a light from above that thins out forms, mindful of that eternal midday that he had learnt from the masters of the 15th century – art that was in harmony with the works of many artists from his period who, differently from him, preferred mythological subjects rather than a more direct look at reality. His formats also changed and became smaller whilst his subjects stayed the same as he had formally chosen: real subjects like the landscape of the lake, still life and figures. Far from the attention-seeking movements in Milan, back in Vacciago Calderara found a privileged spokesman who was able to comprehend his work. Raffaello Giolli was an intellectual protagonist of critical renewal centred upon the most updated and contemporary currents in Europe. After having been banished for his anti-Fascist political opinions, he settled on Lake Orta in 1941 in a family house. As with all great masters of Italian painting, the monograph that Giolli dedicated to his friend, on the occasion of a solo exhibition at the Salimbeni Art Gallery in Domodossola in 1944, was entitled “Antonio da Vacciago” and reflected, almost poetically, upon Calderara’s future works that would “continually shorten his field of view” achieving that whiteness “that had obsessed the painter here with his justifications for snowfalls”. In these paintings, “each and every colour was bound to converge and thence be destroyed”. 1944 was however also marked by a terrible loss for the artist, the death of his young daughter. Painting was the only cure that was able to fill the void caused by the desperation of those dreadful years. Right up to 1957 Gabriella’s image would continue to be revived in paintings of his wife as a young woman. 1944 also marked the beginning of his special relationship with the Galleria Del Grattacielo in Legnano which would grow stronger and stronger over the years. In this gallery Calderara took part in a collective exhibition with Luisa de Romans and Bruno Motta, curated by Beniamino Joppolo. In 1945, he returned to live in Milan with his wife where, in 1947, a solo exhibition was inaugurated at the Galleria della Spiga, curated by Somarè. This exhibition would be followed by countless solo and collective exhibitions in different institutions throughout the city and beyond. This was the beginning of a highly successful period for the artist. Monographs by Giorgio Nicodemi (1947) and Beniamino Joppolo (1948) were published and in March 1948 Calderara took part in the Rassegna Nazionale di Arti Figurative Art Exhibition in Rome. After a few months, two of his oils paintings (La mamma cuce and Figura) were exhibited at the XXIV Biennale in Venice that was also exhibiting two drawings and an oil painting by Mondrian that year. Mondrian would years later bring about in Calderara “an opening out towards a stricter form of meditation” in order to understand “a further aspect of reality”.

In 1950, a heart attack would force him into a period of inactivity whilst the in the month of March the Italian Cultural Institute of Lisbon inaugurated a solo exhibition by him. In 1953, right in the middle of a period of exhibitions being held throughout Italy and abroad, another loss struck the family, the death of his brother. Comfort arrived once again from painting and the discovery of a compelling affinity with the work of Mondrian from, in his words, 1954 onwards. Fortuitous destiny aided this involvement of his with the Dutch painter when he met him once again at the XXVIII Biennale in Venice. Mondrian had a large retrospective exhibition which pre-empted the two later large exhibitions to be held in Rome and Milan. In Venice, Calderara exhibited three drawings (Mia figlia “My daughter”, Mia madre “My mother” and Il corsetto “The corset”). Drawing would increasingly become more important for him especially following a first prize from the critics that came with the publication of a monograph in 1955 entirely dedicated to his works in pencil and curated by Agnoldomenico Pica. A second monograph would follow by the same author published by Edizioni del Milione in 1958. These “pencil works”, as the critic defined them, could be included in his artistic investigation into the subject of light which he had also been progressively undertaking with a whole host of new results in his painting. Through his very fine landscapes and his veiled colours, his art focused more and more upon the surface of the painting with a gradual abandon of perspective construction, creating a notion of space only within his tones. His unsuccessful alignment with the poetry of “material disorder”, informal or tachiste, was remedied by the sudden and striking encounter with the rigour of Mondrian which, however, did not induce Calderara to immediately abandon figure painting but instead it encouraged him to reflect upon the projection of light of the material. In reference to the latter he declared that this was the case “in paintings that are at the very edge of figurative, those superbly clear paintings, in which any sort of representation takes place on one level, I mean on one level in the sense that the third perspective dimension is of no further interest to me”. A thorough re-thing was occurring in the artist’s mind concerning his work. This rethinking was gradually eliminating the natural law thinks in order to reach that “cut-off point” beyond which something is bound to happen. His figurative ideas underwent a highly original linguistic transformation albeit still coherent with his fundamental artistic pre-requisites. In this apparent rupture there still existed a deep-running continuity and the effects of his long period of work merged within it. This could also be said for the unifying subject of light (“a wholly new fifth dimension, as it was called by Fagiolo in “Rapporto 60”) which was taking up more room thus becoming, from the inside, a primary source compared to the natural law of things, abolished in the titles of the works that from the 1960’s onwards became: Misure di quadrato, Spazi-luce, and Tensioni verticali. This change led him to reset his language of expression in order to favour monochromes and aniconisms, the protagonists of an uninterrupted sequence of exhibitions that designated the artist as being able to interpret that “new beginning” that characterised the whole European artistic scene. Thanks to the mediation of his artist friend, Almir Mavignier, his new works, now international in outlook, found fertile ground in Germanic countries. In the Spring of 1960, Calderara was present in Saulgau at the exhibition entitled, Konkrete Malerei and in June in Zurich he exhibited at the Konkrete Kunst. 50 Jahre Entwicklung – organised by Max Bill in order to bring together the most important historic exponents of geometric Abstract art. Shortly after these two events in Ulm he inaugurated a solo exhibition at the Studio f. where he exhibited oil paintings and watercolours, a technique that suited him since it was a means of expression that was “more subtle than oil” which, especially in the 1970’s, enabled him to complete his extreme “need to go beyond light”, as he wrote in a letter in 1974 to Carlo Belloli. In Italy, Calderara complained of a widespread incomprehension with regard to his work and in his autobiography he recalled these years as being a period of the harshest humiliations. We should, however, bring to mind several significant episodes, even in Italy, when his works were welcomed right from the beginning with a certain audacity. His first solo exhibition organised by the new Gruppo N in Padua was dedicated in December 1960 to Calderara and the wording on the invitation to the exhibition was written by Carlo Belloli. From this point onwards, the artist attracted interesting critical praise that grew stronger as the 1960’s progressed. Apollonio, Argan, Dorfles, Fagiolo, Kaisserlian, Murilo Mendes, L. V. Masini, Valsecchi, Giulia Veronesi, Zavattini, Umberto Eco all wrote of him. The latter dedicated to him a selection of Pythagorean writings in an edition published by Scheiwiller in 1963 entitles “Misura di luce” with a score by the composer Bruno Canino. The artists, Hsiao Chin and Jesùs Rafael Soto were also to write of Calderara at that time. The presence of his works in important exhibitions in private and public institutions, both in Italy and abroad, multiplied out of all measure: Anno 62 at the Galerie ‘t Venster in Rotterdam (1962); Panorama van de nieuwe tendenzen in Amsterdam (1963); XV Avezzano Award. Strutture di Visione (1964); IX Rome Quadriennale (1965); Bianco + Bianco at the Galleria L’Obelisco (1966) followed by the exhibition Weiss auf Weiss curated by Udo Kultermann at the Kunsthalle in Berne, documenta 4 in Kassel (1968) as well as exhibitions outside Europe at the Kentucky Art Gallery, at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, at the Expo 1967 in Montreal, and last but not least, his solo exhibitions at the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro (1965), at the Stedelijk Museum in Schiedam (1968) and at the Kunstmuseum in Lucerne (1969). In a period that was so studded with countless exhibitions centred so much on the subjects of space, of time, of movement and of light, his work in this latter field enabled him to enter into experimental circles of the very highest order such as the Signals London Gallery, run by Paul Keeler and the artist, David Medalla, for the Sounding Two collective, in the Summer of 1965 and his solo exhibition in the following summer that was promoted by the afore-mentioned gallery as a sort of further in-depth analysis and entitles Towards the Invisible. In this highly prolific context the artist also became a promoter of culture. In Milan, on August 21st 1961, he founded “Gruppo Punto” alongside Dadamaino, Nanda Vigo, Kengiro Azuma, Hsiao Chin and Li Yuan-Chia. A free meeting of artists characterised by a common research objective whose guidelines (also written in the catalogue of the first exhibition at the Galleria Cadario in Milan in 1962) were: “Understanding the condition of the finite in the infinite is sensing within the reality of thought the truth of being: in the purity of the idea, the reason for operating”. From 1961 to 1966, the Group exhibited in several important locations even on an international level such as the Palacio de la Virreina in Barcelona and the Museo d’Arte in Madrid (1962), the National Taiwan Arts Hall in Taipei (1963) and the Galerie Suzanne Bollag in Zurich (1965). Among the original nucleus of members, Calderara was one of the most active and took part in almost all the exhibitions from 1962 to 1966, the year during which he exhibited independently in Naples with another group called Gruppo 1 (with Carrino, Frascà and Uncini) from Rome. This exhibition was presented by Achille Bonito Oliva and Filiberto Menna (followed by a publication by Argan), underlining how his very independence represented both an openness towards and an identification with common realities.

From the end of the decade, after the consolidation of a specific artistic language, his excessive rhythm of progress became even more extreme and experimental when the artist explored new arenas of transverse expression. However, this new direction was still very intimately connected to his constant artistic research. In 1968, he met the electronic composer, Enore Zaffiri, in Milan. They both took part in the exhibition entitled “Arte Concettuale” at the Galleria Milano and they collaborated on several works in order to identify a close “conversation” or relationship between the musical score and the image, often translated into serigraphy, thus interpreting through these two artistic means a common starting ground as in Progetto Q81 in 1973. On the crest of these latter studies of music and visual poetry, Calderara took part in all the stages of the travelling exhibition entitled “Konzeptionelle Kunst” (from 1967 to 1975). In 1970, the artist, Vincenzo Agnetti, dedicated an essay to him in the series entitled “Ricerca Contemporanea” edited by Scheiwiller, a dialogue with the concrete poetry of the artists, Gomringer, Wezel and Gappmayr; specific publications that would produce in the artist’s latter years the extreme series by the name of Epigrammi: “An alphabet that can’t be read, a conversation without words”. Despite suffering from a third heart attack in 1970, his relations with Europe’s most important exhibition centres intensified. Solo exhibitions were organised by the Anne Marie Verne Gallery in Zurich (1969, 1971 and 1973), the Kozmopolitan Gallery of New York (1970), the Denise René Gallery in Paris (1971), the Kunstmuseum in Dusseldorf (1973), the Marlborough Gallery in Rome (1973), the Fundacìon Jesus Soto in Ciudad Bolivar (1974), the Galerie Gilles Gheerbrant in Montreal (1976) and, finally, official recognition came with the travelling exhibition that started at the Kunstverein in Fribourg in 1976 and arrived at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in the Spring of 1977. Throughout his life a desire to create a foundation to house over three hundred works grew inside him. These works had been collected by international artist friends who, better than any word spoken, highlight the significant level of relationships he had achieved over the crucial years of his career. Europe had arrived in Vacciago, where Antonio Calderara died on June 27th 1978, a few months before the official opening of the Foundation.