Pushing the boundaries of traditional painting on canvas into new dimensions, the neo-avant-garde artist Paolo Scheggi was a key protagonist of the Italian Spatialist movement. Born in Settignano near Florence in 1940, Scheggi studied in London and then moved to Milan in 1961. He quickly joined the vibrant young group of artists who, inspired by the work of Lucio Fontana, were reshaping the traditions that had underpinned so much of Italian painting over the previous centuries. Over the course of the next decade, Scheggi engaged with an array of disciplines, from architecture, fashion, and poetry to urban and theatrical performance. Yet his enduring artistic legacy depends upon his pioneering investigations into the relationship between the surface and depth of the visual field. In 1962, Scheggi developed his signature and now famous Intersuperfici—monochromatic surfaces, from canvas to coloured cardboard, Plexiglas, and aluminium, each perforated with biomorphic or geometric openings and layered one on top of the other.
Despite the brevity of his career, Scheggi gained significant international recognition. In 1965, Scheggi had his first international exhibition, and within a short time was involved in projects and shows in a number of countries. He was invited to exhibit at the 1966 Venice Biennale, where he shared a room with Agostino Bonalumi and showed a selection of his Intersuperfici. Though his work had much in common with his Italian contemporaries, it also paralleled trends practiced by the Zero Group artists in Düsseldorf, and by the exponents of Op and Kinetic Art.
Dating from 1965, a key moment in the artist’s career, Intersuperficie Curva dal Rosso is a dramatic work on a grand scale. Here, Scheggi has moved beyond the curved forms that previously characterised his work, employing instead what would become his signature geometric pattern of circular holes, creating a sense of spatial regularity. The repeated curves of the round openings, contrasted with the sharpness of the diagonal pattern created by the second canvas, emphasise the sculptural space Scheggi sought to create within his paintings. The wide border surrounding the grid of apertures acts as a visual pause, giving the work a notable balance between the dynamism of the openings and the stillness of the framing canvas. Executed in a vivid red, the painting is a masterwork of balance, tension and materiality, exemplary of Scheggi’s small oeuvre.
The art historian Eugenio Battisti, along with the critic Germano Celant, was very enthusiastic about Scheggi’s work. Battisti went on to acquire another Intersuperficie Curva dal Rosso, which he presented as a gift to the Galleria d’Arte Moderna of Turin – a work with a similar conception to the present painting.
Scheggi died very young, at the age of only thirty. Nevertheless, his superimposed surfaces not only captivated audiences in 1960s Milan and further afield, but with them he staked a claim upon the aesthetic ground zero to which artists of his generation aspired.
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