EMILIO SCANAVINO - Biography
Scanavino was born of Sebastiano, theosophist and and Maria Felicina Sterla, a fervent Catholic; the family atmosphere will be decisive for the inner conflict of the young Emilio. In 1938 he enrolled at the Nicolò Barabino Art School where he attended the courses of Mario Calonghi, fundamental for the first works of landscape and humble themes. In 1942, after having exhibited for the first time in Genoa, he enrolled in the Faculty of Architecture in Milan but his studies were interrupted due to the war. After the war he married Giorgina Graglia and worked as a technical designer at the municipal offices of Genoa. In this period he was among the most active in relaunching the Ligurian city in artistic terms; his language looks to European expressionism. In 1947 he travels to Paris, which will be illuminating for him for a very personal postcubism that he puts on the canvas since 1948. In 1950 he is at the Venice Biennale and his participation is already noted by critics in positive terms. In 1951 a personal exhibition was set up for him at the Apollinaire Gallery in London; he met Fontana, Baj, Dova and Crippa as well as various exponents of the Cobra group (Jorn, Appel, Corneille). In London, Bacon's painting impressed him. In 1953 he gravitated around the group of spatialists without ever fully entering them; in 1957, however, the friendship with Enrico Crispolti dates back to underlining the formal derivations of Scanaviano: Wols, Mathieu and Bacon in the background. The following year he moved to Milan with his family and came into contact with, in addition to the gallery owner Cardazzo, the critic Gillo Dorfles and Franco Russoli. But the Ligurian land calls him back, and in 1962 he buys a house in Calice Ligure, which becomes his atelier. In the 1970s, after a brief Roman interlude and a now national success thanks to the work Homage to Latin America, his painting underwent a powerful reflection in geometric terms and the sign became more summarizing. Thus the production of Scanavino becomes extremely titillating, made of needle-like marks, scratched, in a sort of spider's web. In summary, as he himself calls a work from 1968, a caged ball of yarn. After a major exhibition organized between 1984 and 1985 at the Chateau de Tours, he died in Milan in 1986.
