ENNIO FINZI ©

ENNIO FINZI

Ennio Finzi was born in Venice in 1931 and became interested in painting and music at a very young age. After temporarily attending courses at the Art Institute in Venice, he was attracted by the fascinating discovery of the structural upheaval of Cubism, which allowed him to transcend the real datum of representation. With the 1948 Biennale, the Historical Archives of Contemporary Arts reopened in Venice and this gave him the opportunity to dedicate himself to the study of the masters of the historical avant-gardes. He met Atanasio Soldati, whose art was to influence his early works characterised by bright colours and rigorous formal balances, the 'inventions' in which rhythm, colour, light and timbre took on the role of elements that were to be the constant throughout his research. Like Soldati, both Virgilio Guidi (for the ideological force of creative thought) and Emilio Vedova (for gestural power) exerted a great influence on him. It is music, however, that is the primary source of inspiration: the discovery of dodecaphonic music and the principle of "dissonance" is reflected in his painting through colour, which Finzi disengages from any relationship of tone and uses only as timbre, with boundless creative options: from that moment until the end of the 1950s, his work will focus on gesture, light and timbre, but above all on what will characterise his work for all the years to come: the sound-colour relationship, a colour "to be heard" rather than seen. Towards the end of the 1950s, Finzi approached gestalt theories on the phenomenology of perception and the principles of optical art, consequently his work evolved and his research on optical suggestion characterised his art until 1978. In 1980, painting made an overbearing return with new works marked by the alternation of colour and non-colour, light and darkness competing for the surface of the work. Black is posed as the light of darkness, of emptiness, of silence and leads him to probe the most secret resonances of being. Finzi's career is of the highest level: he began exhibiting in 1949 at the Bevilacqua La Masa foundation in Venice where he held his first solo exhibition in 1956. He participated, by invitation, in 1959 and 2000 at the Quadriennale in Rome and in 1986 at the XLII Venice Art Biennale. In addition to the anthological exhibition in 1980 at the Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice, the exhibition at the Modern and Contemporary Art Gallery in Palazzo Forti (Verona) and the one at the Modern Art Gallery Palazzo dei Diamanti (Ferrara) are worth mentioning. During 2002, a large retrospective exhibition was held in Rome and Spoleto entitled: Ennio Finzi, Venezia e le avanguardie del dopoguerra. The last major solo exhibition was held in 2005 in Urbino in the rooms of the Palazzo Ducale. During 2006 and 2007, together with the works of Gino Morandis, he exhibited in Prague, at the Fondazione Manes, and in Naples in the rooms of the Palazzo Reale. He has taught at the Accademia di Venezia. He lives and works in Venice-Mestre.