Vincenzo Balena Biography
Vincenzo Balena was born in Milan in 1942 and began his artistic career in the 1960s in the vein of existential realism, dedicating himself to the study of animal morphology. He studied graphic arts and began working as a lithographer. It was this activity, which involved manual coloring of the plates and required pictographic skill, that led him to deepen his studies. At the same time he decided to attend the five-year course at the Scuola Superiore d'Arte del Castello Sforzesco in Milan, where he was initially a student of Carlo Russo for drawing and subsequently of Bertazzoni for frescoes. In 1965 he won first prize in fresco with top marks. From 1968 onwards he dedicated himself exclusively to painting and sculpture in his studio located in a farmhouse in via Schievano, in the Barona area of Milan. He met the sculptor Mario Molteni, who encouraged him to participate in his first exhibitions. Balena's relationship with the public began with his participation in the VIII National Biennial of Contemporary Sacred Art and the XXI Suzzara Prize. He studies the morphology of the roots and trunks of the olive tree, that is, of the natural forms which, connecting to the Apulian origins of his father, highlight both the constitutive "suffering" of living forms and a painful personal detachment, the one experienced in the lacerating contradictions of outskirts of an industrial city on the eve of the great protest. These studies on nature, conducted through the skilled exercise of drawing, initially resulted in pictorial works. Participates in the Painting and Drawing Award of the Centro Rione di Unità Democratica of Milan, obtaining the fifth prize. In 1973 he held his first solo exhibition at the Montrasio Gallery in Monza from 15 to 30 September, where he exhibited oils and bronzes created in the last three years. Marco Rosci presented the exhibition in the catalogue, succinctly evoking the historical-cultural climate, especially Milanese, in which Balena's research takes place, research that moves from the critical observation of the crisis of social realism. With the results of Lam, Matta, Gorky, Sutherland and Bacon behind him, Balena continues, according to the scholar, his personal path of exploration of matter and form through which he arrives at "objectification and denunciation - metaphorically investigating the lenticular scientific investigation of the natural organic form - of the violence of man against man". In the same year Balena also participated in the National S. Gaudenzio d'Oro City of Novara Award. In the early 1980s, inspired by the work of Pasolini, to whom he dedicated a series of paintings and sculptures, Balena came into contact with poets and writers such as A. Porta, G. Raboni and R. Sanesi. In particular, Raboni follows with interest his subsequent investigation into the human figure, which results in sculptures in wax, bronze, wood and embossed aluminium, exhibited in prestigious venues (such as the Casa del Giorgione in Castelfranco V., Galleria Sagittaria in Pordenone, and , reported by Maurizio Cucchi, at the 54th Venice Biennale) and in international contexts (Dusseldorf, Prague, New York), while his most recent works, freed from explicit figurative references, explore the unprecedented expressive resources of technological waste, prostheses of human mind saved from oblivion induced by the rapid evolution of electronics.
