INFORMAL STYLE AND LARGE SCALE
Sergio Vacchi was one of the most celebrated Italian artists throughout the 1950s and 1960s and a master of the Informal movement. He was born on 1st April 1925 in Castenaso, in the area of Bologna.
His father, Giuseppe Vacchi, of peasant stock, came into wealth after the war thanks to the dowry of his wife, Maria Luisa Barchetti, who was daughter of landowners.
From childhood, Sergio Vacchi was sent to Bologna to study and there he attended primary school at Collegio San Luigi, run by the Barnabite Fathers. He went on to attend both secondary school and the classical grammar school at the same institution.
At the age of 19, he enrolled at the Faculty of Law, but after sitting two exams he left university to devote himself to painting. He therefore approached painting as a self-taught artist, without following the standard curriculum of art schools or academies.
In 1946, he rented a studio in Via Borgonuovo in Bologna. During these early years, he was influenced by the artistic scene in Bologna, which was dominated by two great figures: Roberto Longhi and Giorgio Morandi. His use of large-scale canvases can be interpreted as a rejection of the conventional middle class format of Morandi’s paintings.
THE INFLUENCES OF ONE OF THE MOST ORIGINAL ARTISTS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
In 1946, he began studying at the Faculty of Arts to attend lectures given by the historian Roberto Longhi. During those years, he met Francesco Arcangeli, a student of Longhi’s, who became his friend, patron and confidant.
Later, captivated by Van Gogh’s paintings, he was strongly influenced by Picasso’s Guernica and post-Cubism, developing a passion for the fusion of formal experimentation and social commitment.
Between 1952 and 1955, he moved away from Picasso’s influence in favour of naturalism and the teachings of Cézanne, devoting himself to a solitary dialogue with nature and natural light, painting landscapes of the Po Valley.
His artistic exploration led him towards the poetics of Informalism and a violent, instinctive style of painting that characterised his works between 1956 and 1962.
From 1958, he began to make a name for himself with the exhibition of contemporary Italian painting held in Copenhagen, followed by an exhibition at the Contemporaries Gallery in New York, which brought him international recognition.
Unable to be pigeonholed into any single artistic movement, Sergio Vacchi moved from the Informal to figurative art, eventually arriving at a symbolic style with an aptitude for large-scale works.
ROME AND THE GREAT COLLECTORS
In 1959, he moved to Rome and began to attend and get to know the Roman intellectual scene, where he befriended numerous Italian artists who were based in the capital during the 1960s, becoming part of that varied and stimulating world which had led him to want to move from Bologna.
This was an important period for Sergio Vacchi: there was great interest and enthusiasm for his highly personal approach to art; he was appreciated and held in high regard not only within the close circle of critics and gallery owners, but he also began to attract major collectors, including Carlo Ponti and Sofia Loren, who purchased no fewer than 110 of his paintings during the 1960s.
THE PAINTING CYCLES
From 1962 to 1968, Vacchi devoted himself to three major cycles: The Council, The Death of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, and Galileo Galilei semper.
He moved away from Informal art to focus on social subjects, in particular a reflection on clerical, historical and scientific power.
From 1968, despite various critics, Vacchi moved away from the subject of power and devoted himself for five years to the Cycle of the Planet, which culminated in 1973 with the immense canvas Finisterre. In his works, Vacchi takes refuge in dreams, in surreal and fantastical visions, populated by men, women and animals, but also by strange, contorted bodies entangled in a deserted and abandoned landscape; one example is The garden of the Planet at Mazzetti’s.
His pictorial imagination continued to evolve in another cycle, that of Dews (Piscine lustrali), which began in 1974. These are canvases full of sensual and erotic content, in which three phallic columns appear as constant features, shrouded in a gloomy and desolate atmosphere. The characters depicted live in these hazy, smoky spaces, where the vapours rising from the now polluted and infected pools are reminiscent of Dante’s underworld.
SERGIO VACCHI FOUNDATION
In 1997, Vacchi moved once again: he left Rome to live in Tuscany, near Siena. It was here, at the Castle in Grotti, that Sergio Vacchi Foundation was established with the aim of organising multidisciplinary activities: exhibitions, conferences, theatre performances and concerts.
He lived at the Castle in Grotti until the end of his life. In 2007, he stopped painting because of Parkinson’s disease. The artist passed away on 15th January 2016.
