Ennio Finzi - The Game of Eyes

When the Spatialist movement was founded with the drafting of the Manifesto Blanco in 1946, Ennio Finzi was fifteen years old, and therefore could not officially join that group of artists. However, much of Finzi's research followed the aesthetic theories developed by Lucio Fontana and other Spatialist artists, resulting in a coherent and original body of work. Spatialism presents itself primarily as a question of how artworks are perceived. The movement's aim is to definitively transcend the surface of the canvas for a perceptual experience that definitively engages Space. Hence, the use of electronic technical devices, used for their ability to radiate energy, or the use of gestural techniques, such as holes or slashes, to break through the surface of the work and invade it with the accidentality of reality. In Ennio Finzi's interpretation, however, the interaction between artwork and Space occurs essentially through music. For this artist, the perception of color involves not only sight, but also hearing, because color has a sound. For this reason, much of Finzi's work is an exploration of the rhythm provided by color, with dystonic effects also linked to Shoemberg's atonal music or jazz improvisation.

In this work, Ennio Finzi employs various artistic media in his rhythmic exploration of color. First and foremost, the essentially playful nature of this work is established, which, starting with its title, is defined as a game. Thus, Finzi chooses artistic media that bring us back to this playful dimension (cardboard, pastels, collage), almost as if seeking a childlike purity suited to the perceptual paths the artist wishes to trace in this work. Indeed, the rhythmic/chromatic interplay is grafted onto the collage of colored cards, which, in keeping with the Spatialist aesthetic, introduce the third dimension and an invasion of real space in their concreteness. But the interaction with space is definitively identified by the painter, who visibly traces the perceptual stimulations radiated by the musical symphony offered by the colors. It is a tangle of trajectories and intersections that directly stimulates the viewer to participate in the perceptual game proposed by the artist, drawing them into his own space. In this sketch, Finzi relies on a frenetic gesture that also reaffirms his connection to the currents of Abstract Expressionism. From an aesthetic standpoint, the work has a powerful impact precisely because of Ennio Finzi's innate ability to balance harmonies and dissonances within the overall structure of the work. A further distinctive feature of this work is the fact that on the back appears a draft, a proof, of what was intended to be the final result. It is an extraordinary testimony to this artist's working process.

Ennio Finzi was born in Venice in 1931. He began exhibiting in 1949 at the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation in Venice, where he held his first solo exhibition in 1956. He participated, by invitation, in the Rome Quadrennial in 1959 and 2000 and in the 42nd Venice Biennale in 1986. Worthy of note, in addition to the 1980 retrospective at the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation in Venice, are exhibitions at the Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Palazzo Forti (Verona) and at the Galleria d'Arte Moderna Palazzo dei Diamanti (Ferrara). In 2002, a major retrospective entitled Ennio Finzi, Venice and the Postwar Avant-gardes was held in Rome and Spoleto. His last major solo exhibition was held in 2005 in Urbino in the rooms of the Palazzo Ducale. In 2006 and 2007, together with the works of Gino Morandis, he exhibited in Prague, at the Manes Foundation, and in Naples in the rooms of the Palazzo Reale. He has taught at the Academy of Venice, the city where he lives and works.

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