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The Arts Intel Report

Edmondo Bacci: Energy and Light

Edmondo Bacci, Avvenimento #27, 1954.

Apr 1 – Sept 18, 2023
Dorsoduro, 701-704, 30123 Venezia VE, Italy

“I meet him almost daily in the Calle near my home or at the Traghetto,” Peggy Guggenheim wrote of the painter Edmondo Bacci. “I never get to know him any better. . . . But his paintings, that is another matter. I know them. They are children of today. They are dynamic. They are the atomic bomb on canvas.” A Venetian native, Bacci was most active during the 1950s, when he was a proponent of Spatialism, a movement that explored the relationship between light, movement, art, and technology. His best known series, “Avvenimenti,” is extraordinary. Bacci’s canvases feature ruptured spatial plans, circular brushstrokes, and a dizzying command of color theory. Just a bridge away from Bacci’s former home, 80 works from that fruitful decade are on view. —Elena Clavarino

Photo: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York