Livio Bernasconi Biography
Livio Bernasconi (1932 - ) completed his artistic training at the Brera Academy in Milan (1954–58) and made his debut with realist painting that was well received in Switzerland and abroad: in 1956 he held his first solo exhibition in a Zurich gallery, which was followed by exhibitions in London, Locarno, at the Kunstmuseum in Winterthur and in Basel. In 1964 he was invited to teach a course at the Faculty of Architecture of Washington University in St. Louis. Between the 60s and 80s he exhibited in various countries and dedicated himself to various pictorial interventions in private and public architecture. He interrupted his artistic activity between 1969 and 1974, engaging in the study of art history. Subsequently, from 1971 to 1997, he was entrusted with the teaching role at the Artistic Industries School Center in Lugano (1971–1997). Lives and works in Carona. Through a gradual abandonment of figurative styles, abstract painting develops from its neorealist roots (gasometers, silos, fishermen, interiors). An important turning point in his creative career occurred during his stay in the United States (1966 to 1965), which inspired him to create an abstract painting with a geometric mold which he later developed and perfected. The experience of the United States strips the surface of the image and the gesture of any external meaning. Abstract landscapes often have large monochromatic backdrops on geometric fields; an immediate pictorial gesture and the dripping technique are signs of assimilation of the lessons of Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline, Clifford Still. At this point Bernasconi begins a long and varied pictorial research focused on form and colour, where the sign remains self-referential, the pictorial writing precise and depersonalised (acrylic paintings on canvas). In the Flash series (1966–68) the interest focuses on the serial articulation of univocal signs or on the extension of chromatic fields and undulating movements.
