Gruppo del Cenobio
Gruppo del Cenobio was a collective formed in Milan in 1962 by five young painters - Agostino Ferrari, Ugo La Pietra, Ettore Sordini, Angelo Verga and Arturo Vermi - together with the poet Alberto Lùcia. They took their name from the Galleria Il Cenobio, where they held a series of exhibitions that year, followed by shows at the Saletta del Premio del Fiorino in Florence, L'Indice in Milan and Galleria Cavallino in Venice. The group came together in rejection of the nihilistic, hypercritical attitudes then aimed at painting and of the invasion of American Pop Art, reaffirming the picture plane after Informel. Their common ground was the sign (segno): the autonomous, repeatable mark as the generative unit of painting - a position later summed up by the fiftieth-anniversary retrospective Nel segno del segno (Palazzo Stelline, Milan, 2013).
Defining characteristics
- The mark as subject: signs, strokes and graphemes repeated across the surface
- Deliberate, repeatable mark-making rather than Informel's spontaneous gesture
- Restricted or neutral grounds that let each sign read clearly
- Loose serial or rhythmic arrangements of the sign across the canvas
- Glyph-like forms poised between writing and drawing
Key figures
- Agostino Ferrari (b. 1938) — Milanese painter of the autonomous sign, founding member of the group
- Ugo La Pietra (b. 1938) — Artist and architect who carried the group's sign research into visual communication and urban space
Sources
- Gruppo del Cenobio - Wikipedia encyclopedia