Agostino Bonalumi. Catalogo ragionato

The two-volume general catalogue of the work of Agostino Bonalumi (1935-2013), compiled by the artist's son Fabrizio Bonalumi and Marco Meneguzzo, is an indispensable tool for information on the artist both in cultural terms and with more specific regard to the contemporary art market.

While the first volume provides a monographic study and examines the cultural context within which he worked for over half a century, the second constitutes the complete catalogue of some two thousand works from his debut to his death. The publication offers scholarly guidance for those wishing to understand the course of his work and provides details of his oeuvre through the efforts of the Archivio Agostino Bonalumi, which for years has tracked down and catalogued all his works and now makes the results available to collectors.

Bonalumi was born in Vimercate (Milan) in 1935. After technical studies, he embarked on an artistic career and exhibited for the first time in 1956. In 1958, together with Castellani and Manzoni, he constituted the initial core of what was soon to be the Azimuth group. The year 1959 saw his invention of extroversion, the technique he was to develop constantly in terms of stylistic variety with great success also internationally (e.g. with the Zero group). At least three major periods can, in any case, be identified: from the beginning to 1971, with extroversions of various shapes; from 1971 to 1988/1999, when his extroversions on canvas took the form of parallel linear strips; and 1989-2013, when he went through a sort of second experimental stage starting with a freer approach and then returning to geometry. Attention should also be drawn to site-specific works, for which Bonalumi had a special predilection. These started in 1967 with Habitable Blue for the exhibition The Space of the Image in Foligno and continued in 1968 with Big Black for a solo show at the Museum am Ostwall in Dortmund.