L'URTO

From 1942 Vedova was a leading figure in the main artistic movements in Italy characterising the artistic and cultural debate in the period following World War II: Corrente, Oltre Guernica, Fronte Nuovo delle Arti, Gruppo degli Otto. L’urto is part of the series Black Geometries, produced between 1946 and 1950, and represents his passage to abstract art and a more energetic mark, the fruit of the elaboration of early Futurism and Picasso's Cubism. As in other works from this same series, the title metaphorically expresses the historical and existential condition perceived as tension and conflict, and synthesises the propulsion and energy of dynamic geometric forms, organised on oblique lines that interweave and collide on the canvas. These thrusts are emphasised by the work's chromatic reduction to black and white, with a powerful symbolic significance. (GF)