Nunzio Avaton

cm 200 x 700 x 160

Between the late 1970s and early 1980s, Nunzio was one of the protagonists of the so-called San Lorenzo School or New Roman School, an experience he shared with the artists Marco Tirelli, Gianni Dessi, Bruno Ceccobelli, Giuseppe Gallo and Piero Pizzi Cannella. The group was born out of the common need to return to traditional artistic practices and a rediscovered link with tradition, the market and the art system, after the conceptual currents, on the one hand, and the Transavanguardia, on the other, had expressed a crisis in this regard. Within the group, Nunzio entrusted more than anyone his creative process to the sculptural practice, focusing from the very beginning on “poor” materials such as plaster and wood, a primary substance that the artist molds and modifies by using fire. From the second half of the 1980s until his most recent production, burnt wood has remained one of the defining characteristics of Nunzio’s sculptures. "Avaton", consisting of hundreds of rough wooden boards, painted on one side and burned on the other, stacked and put together to form a monumental semicircular wall, summarizes the main aspects of Nunzio’s poetics: artistic practice as an alchemical process of the transformation of the material and the work as a result of a synthesis of the arts, painting, sculpture and architecture. Despite the accentuated sculptural component, in fact, "Avaton" can be seen as both a work of pictorial derivation, thanks to its “mosaic effect” provided by the ends of the painted boards, as well as architectonic. In fact, it “gravitates” in space, letting itself cross the viewer’s gaze, generating points of view that are always different. The compositional aspect of the work also recalls the masonry architectures of Ancient Rome, exalting the genius loci, maintaining the strong link with the past and with tradition that is the basis of the work of Nunzio and other artists of the New Roman School.

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D. Auregli, F. Passerella (eds.), Nunzio, exhibition catalogue (Bologna, Galleria d’Arte Moderna – Villa delle Rose), Bologna 1995. L. Laureati (ed.), Nunzio. Avaton, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Galleria dell’Oca), Rome 2007.

Foto Patrizia Tocci

Purchased from Galleria dell'Oca, Rome

Installation