Do not trust your eye: Alberto Biasi & the Optical Revolution

Alberto Biasi was born in Padua on the 2nd of June, 1937. He lost his mother during the war and went to live with his grandmother in a small village in the country outside Padua, where she ran a tavern. He studied architecture and technical drawing in Venice, where he was awarded a scholarship by Paolo Venini. These years marked the beginning of a passion for art with close study of the key 20th-century movements: Neoplasticism, Futurism and Dada.

He started teaching technical drawing and art history in 1958 and was assigned a permanent post as teacher of graphic arts applied to advertising, which he held from 1969 to 1988.

In 1959 he founded the artistic movement called “Group N”. The artists belonging to the group used to refer to themselves as “experimental-illustrators”, guided by the idea that rationalism and tachisme have died, that informality and expressionism are just useless subjectivities. Alberto Biasi became the guiding spirit of the group and the most influential representative of kinetic art in Italy, together with Getulio Alviani, Franco Costalonga, Toni Costa and Bruno Munari. Kinetic art aimed to extend the viewer's perspective of the artwork and incorporating multidimensional movement.

Biasi’s contacts very soon extended to national and internation level, and he exhibited his works in the 1960s with Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani. Fully involved in the exciting turmoil of those innovative years, he took part in the foundation of the Arte Programmata movement in 1962 together with the rest of the Group N.

Biasi based his art on the interaction between the viewer and the work. The movement, in the sense of virtual motion, led the artist to address the problems of kinetics and the associated investigation of visual perception and the individual reaction to luminous stimuli. The activity of this period is marked by “Trame” (Patterns), an initial study regarding the relationship between the movement and the light on paper surfaces similar to beehives.

Alberto Biasi - "Trama", 1959

Alongside "Trame", he produced "Rilievi ottico-dinamici" (Optical-Dynamic Reliefs): laminar structures which created a visual event that depended on the movement of the spectator, who thus becomes an “actor” jointly involved in the work. Other series that made their appearance in this period were "Forme dinamiche" (Dynamic Forms), obtained throungh the torsion of thin sheets od material laid out in rigorously calculated geometric arrangements on backgrounds of different colours.

Alberto Biasi - "Dinamica", 1980

Alberto Biasi - "Dinamica", 1975

"Fotoriflessioni"(Photoreflections) in real motion, and perceptually instable "Ambienti" (Environments), ever-changing atmospheres of light and liquid in motion.

Soon after the Group N broke up, Biasi continued on a solo basis developing themes that have been his “happy obsession” ever since. His art went through new phases of study and experimentation.

Deeper investigation of the impact of natural light led to the "Politipi" (Polytypes), a new series of works of hypnotic power. "Politipi" were then enriched in the 1990s with an element previuosly somewhat overlooked by Alberto Biasi: the act of painting. "Assemblaggi" (Assemblages), often produced as diptychs and triptychs, have developed in recent years.

Alberto Biasi is still creating today and some of his most important works are now exhibited in the best museums all over the world: New York, Tokyo, San Francisco, Venice, Buenos Aires, Prague and many more.

Alberto Biasi - "Politipo: Contrazione / Espansione", 1980

Alberto Biasi's works availble for sale here.

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