Avantgarde Gallery is dedicated to showcasing the rich and varied legacy of the historical Avant-garde movement. While it maintains strong connections with post-war art from Central and Eastern Europe, its scope is global, incorporating a diverse roster of artists who have been active from the 1950s to today.
For viennacontemporary 2024, we are presenting Giovanni Pizzo (1934, Veroli—2022, Rome) and Radomir Damjanović Damnjan (born 1935, lived in Belgrade and, since 1974, in Milan).
Giovanni Pizzo was one of the active participants in the Italian Arte programmata movement, which is set as the origin of algorithmic and generative art and the forerunner of today’s digital art.
In 1962, Italian art historian Umberto Eco coined the term “programmed art” (arte programmata), emphasizing the synergy of art, science, and technology in post-war Italy. This movement spurred the formation of art groups that promoted collective creativity and art more accessible to a broader audience.
It is an art created by systematically elaborating strictly defined numerical/mathematical laws. Paintings ceased to be individual works of art; they became units in series due to the analytical process. As such, Pizzo created within a mathematically placed grid of lines, planned and documented in his numerous writings and sketches, using almost exclusively black and white. Giovanni Pizzo’s art is grounded in logical and mathematical foundations. His creations reflected a disciplined approach shaped by rigorous adherence to theoretical and scientific underpinnings. As Pizzo argues, these works are “channelling perception into aesthetic visual facts guided by the methodology of logical-mathematical type; i.e. logical syntax of symbolic characters.”
His wife, Lucia di Luciano (1933, Syracuse), is an artist with a similar conceptual framework. Di Luciano’s and Pizzo’s artistic practice also took place within two art groups: Gruppo 63 (1963) and Operativo R (1963 – 1968).
Today’s investigation of algorithmic processes, data visualisation and technology integration into immersive installations can be seen as extensions of the principles established by arte programmata. Therefore, it is also essential for today’s creators of the art that stands as a legacy of this movement to be aware of these roots and act within comparable aspirations of using technology in a new way.
Radomir Damnjanović Damnjan is an artist who has explored diverse artistic forms throughout his career (since the 1950s), radically and purposefully changing his cycles every decade. What has remained constant is his exploration of the concepts of appropriation and misinformation. Central to his artistic practice is a sustained inquiry into the fundamental aspects that challenge conventional boundaries within the domain of art and its various facets.
Damnjan’s canvas presented on this occasion comes from the artist’s long-standing exploration of painting as a medium. “Painting without painting”, as the Italian art historian Tomasso Trini defined it, strongly seeks to reaffirm art as such, from tradition leaving only the physical element of the painting. There is nothing pictorial, only traces, dots, and spots. The paintings are monotone, despite their chromatic variety and the lack of any matrices or order in the addition of brush strokes. The purpose is to execute an artwork without exploring other elements such as composition, light, and complementarity.
In his most recent Painting cycle (2020), Damnjan undertakes the conceptual procedure of appropriating the entire medium of sculpture, employing it to create paintings within its domain, offering a form characterised not by its physical existence but by the concept that underscores it. While observers might classify Damnjan’s creations as “sculptures”, his work is rigorously defined by a title that unequivocally marks it as a “painting” executed in the medium of sculpture. This proclamation is not a mere linguistic distinction but rather a conceptual reconfiguration that effectively transforms the medium into a strategic channel of artistic expression.
In the cycle, Damnjan’s work transcends through the act of dematerialisation, simultaneously existing in different modalities – physical, digital, sculptural, painterly and unique. The artwork’s physical form is defined by the hard, industrial metal as the base, with the subsequent application of high-shine, long-lasting synthetic pigments and fluorinated paint technology, impervious to UV rays, which ensures the preservation of his artworks over time. Every physical piece in this cycle is paired with an NFT (Non-Fungible Token) on the blockchain. Each artwork in the opus possesses a unique combination of form, colour and size. The artist intentionally strays from common colour palettes, opting for unconventional pastel hues (yellow, blue, green, and pink) and vibrant shades of blue, yellow, red and green.
Damnjan’s cycle does not simultaneously represent sculptural and painterly works; instead, it creates a new form of artistic expression that transcends conventional categorisations. This subtle but decisive difference reflects Damnjan’s unique perspective and methodology in artistic expression.
