Achille Bonito Oliva

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Achille Bonito Oliva
Achille Bonito Oliva - 2007.jpg
Born1939
Caggiano, province of Salerno, Italy
NationalityItalian
Occupation(s) Art critic, art historian
Known forCoining the term "Transavantgarde"

Achille Bonito Oliva (born 1939) is an Italian art critic and historian of contemporary art. Since 1968 he has taught history of contemporary art at La Sapienza, the university of Rome. He has written extensively on contemporary art and contemporary artists. He originated the term Transavanguardia to describe the new direction taken in the late 1970s by artists such as Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Nicola De Maria, and Mimmo Paladino. He has organised or curated numerous contemporary art events and exhibitions; in 1993 he was artistic director of the Biennale di Venezia.

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Life and career

Bonito Oliva was born in 1939 in Caggiano, in the province of Salerno, in Campania in southern Italy. He studied law, and then took a degree in letters. He took part in events connected with the avant-garde Gruppo 63 literary movement of the 1960s. [1] From 1968 he taught history of contemporary art at La Sapienza, the university of Rome. [1]

He became active as an art critic, as a writer on history of art – with work on Mannerism, the historic Avant-Garde movements, and the Neo-Avantgarde – and as an organiser and curator of contemporary art events and exhibitions. [1]

In 1979, in an article in Flash Art , he coined the term Transavanguardia to describe the work of artists such as Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Nicola De Maria and Mimmo Paladino, who – in a manner comparable to that of the Neo-Expressionists and the Neue Wilden – discarded the abstract and conceptual approach of the Neo-Avantgarde and instead returned to figurative painting using the traditional techniques and materials, and at times also the forms and motifs, of the past. [2] [1] Bonito Oliva curated an exhibition of their work at Biennale di Venezia in 1980. [3] He later broadened his definition of the movement to include artists such as Jeff Koons and Julian Schnabel, bringing it closer to the international concept of Postmodernism. [4]

He was the artistic director of the Biennale di Venezia of 1993, and has organised or curated numerous contemporary art events and exhibitions. [1]

Books

Bonito Oliva has written many books, including monographs on artists such as Marina Abramović, Francis Bacon, Georg Baselitz, Joseph Beuys, Alighiero Boetti, James Lee Byars, Giorgio de Chirico, Braco Dimitrijević, Marcel Duchamp, Giuseppe Ducrot, Alex Katz, Georgia O'Keeffe, Frida Kahlo, Paul Klee, Nam June Paik, Joan Miró, Pino Pascali, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Mario Schifano, Nancy Spero, Andy Warhol, Wolf Vostell, [5] and Robert Wilson.[ citation needed ]

As author

As editor

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Bonito Oliva, Achille (in Italian). Enciclopedie on line. Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Accessed September 2017.
  2. ↑ Achille Bonito Oliva (1979) The Italian Trans-Avantgarde. Flash Art. (92–93), translation by Michael Moore. Archived 23 February 2019.
  3. ↑ Transavanguardia (in Italian). Enciclopedie on line. Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Accessed January 2021.
  4. ↑ Ian Chilvers and John Glaves-Smith (2015). Transavantgarde. In: A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art, third edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN   9780191792229.
  5. ↑ Gewalttätigkeit als objet trouvé. Retrospektive Wolf Vostell 1958–1974. Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, Berlin, 1974.
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