Dadamaino: Works 1958-2000

The A arte Invernizzi gallery  presents an exhibition of Dadamaino (Milan 1930 – 2004) which covers the various phases of the artist’s research.

In the first room on the gallery’s upper floor we find works that belong to the series entitled “Volumi”, carried out starting from 1958 and developed in diverse typologies in relation to the number of the holes she made on the canvas. This initial phase evolved into the series entitled “Volumi a moduli sfasati” of 1960 – here exhibited in the floor’s second room – in which a compact succession of regular perforations carried out on sheets of superimposed plastic animate the surfaces in dissimilar transparencies.
In the remaining rooms of the same floor we find the works entitled “Oggetto ottico dinamico” of 1961 in which the geometrical forms, composed of aluminium placed on a black panel in such a way as to form variable “chessboards”, define a heterogeneous succession of geometrical forms depending on the position and the movements of the observer; “La ricerca del colore” of 1966-1968 which makes the visitor take part in a direct and physical relation with the tonal varying of the colours; “Cromorilievo” of 1974 in which the rhythmical arrangement of the monochrome geometrical elements give the illusion of a projecting trompe-l’oeil movement; and finally “L’inconscio razionale” of 1977 in which the interweaving of horizontal and vertical lines marked the abandoning of analytical and rationalistic criteria in favour of an irrational and unconscious characterisation.
Exhibited on the lower floor of the gallery there are works – previously exhibited in her personal room at the Venice Biennial of 1980 – that belong to the cycle entitled “Alfabeto della mente”, “Lettere 1, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15”, in which signs-letters drawn with Indian ink are elaborated in vertical, horizontal and diagonal signs which in the space of the surface create dissimilar pauses and concatenations. This expression by means of a new form of writing resulted from a personal experience which, in Dadamaino’s own words, led the artist to obsessively draw out a silent sign in the sand that was similar to an “H” as an interior reaction to the 1976 Tall el Zaatar massacre.
The need to transmit intrinsic and rooted meanings of thought later led the artist to elaborate a freer sign which was arranged in the space by its amalgamation in groupings and pauses, progressively concentrating itself on existential aspects as can be seen in the exhibited works that belong to the series entitled “Interludi” of 1981. In successive works of the “Costellazioni” cycle, such as “Ennetto” of 1986 and “Costellazioni (Quartetto)” of 1987, Dadamaino honed her research and created an identification of the line as pure energy that is let loose and regarding which one is unable to single out a beginning and an end.
The exhibition closes with the work entitled “Sein und Zeit” of 1997 whose traces/signs become even more minute and constant, delineated by the artist on the transparent polyester surface, making them become the means for expressing the relationship between the infinitely small of the drawn out gesture and the infinitely large of time, in this way making them embody the ambivalence of the universal meanings of existence.