Manfredo Massironi Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

Manfredo Massironi (Padua, 8 June 1937 – Padua, 30 November 2011) was an Italian artist and architect. After his master's degree, he also graduated from the art institute and subsequently attended the university institute of architecture in Venice, moving on to the newly created industrial design course. Read the full biography

Manfredo Massironi Biography

Manfredo Massironi (Padua, 8 June 1937 – Padua, 30 November 2011) was an Italian artist and architect. After his master's degree, he also graduated from the art institute and subsequently attended the university institute of architecture in Venice, moving on to the newly created industrial design course. In 1959 he was among the founders of the "Ennea" group, a cultural association made up of nine members. In the same year Massironi, who in his first works adhered to abstractionist themes, participated in the San Fedele prize in Milan, with a work made up of orthogonally opposed surfaces in corrugated cardboard. At the end of 1960, the members of the "Ennea" group had been reduced to five (with Massironi Alberto Biasi, Ennio Chiggio, Toni Costa and Edoardo Landi) and the association changed its name to "Gruppo Enne". The group opposed the figure of the artist - demiurge (considered a legacy of idealist and spiritualist criticism) and, often, the members carried out collective work. The members of the group defined themselves as "visual operators" and scientifically investigated the world of perception, referring their research to the theorists of Gestaltpsychologie (psychology of form); the active subject of art was considered the user, no longer a contemplator, but an actor of artistic creation as much as the designers of the work. In the meantime, both Massironi and Biasi entered into relationships with exponents of the Milanese avant-garde; Enrico Castellani and Piero Manzoni, who made the "Azimutuh" tunnel available to the Enne Group. Contacts also developed with Enzo Mari, Bruno Munari and the T Group. The N Group was based in via San Pietro 3 in Padua, after having shared the headquarters in Piazza Duomo with Potere Operaio for a short period. This venue was also used for the dissemination and promotion of neo-avant-garde art through exhibitions, conferences, conventions and debates, therefore outside the traditional circuits of galleries. The exhibition Behind closed doors: no one is invited to intervene (11 – 13 December 1960) was important. and the one dedicated to the baker Giovanni Zorzon (18 March 1961), the latter set up with loaves of bread suspended in space or placed against the wall in an environment illuminated by rare electric lamps. There was a deliberate assonance between the name of the baker Zorzon, a fictional character, and that of Giorgione (Zorzi from Castelfranco): the group aimed to reveal the hidden and necessary work in the production of goods, which it believed always had aesthetic elements in itself. Not strangers to the myth of total art, with their manifesto of 1961 (XII Lissone prize), the members of the Enne Group declared themselves experimental designers, "outside of any artistic trend", in search of a new definition of art, in the awareness that "there can be no separation between architecture, painting, sculpture and industrial product". Many works were produced and signed collectively, in coherence with the idea that in contemporary times, material and intellectual production is always and only a product of a multi-subject process. In 1962 Massironi participated in the Arte programmata exhibition, organized by Bruno Munari and presented by Umberto Eco, at the Olivetti showroom in Milan; the exhibition was then repeated in many countries in Europe and the United States. In 1964 Massironi and the Enne Group participated in the XXXII Venice Biennale. In 1967 Massironi abandoned his direct artistic activity and, with Alberto Biasi, founded the advertising graphics course at the "Ruzza" institute in Padua. However, he continued his research in the aesthetic field, on topics such as folds, subtractions, the comparative anatomy of knots and frames. He taught at the universities of Rome, Padua and Verona as a full professor of general psychology and qualified as a "perceptologist". Throughout his artistic and scientific life Massironi continued to maintain contacts with the political and social avant-gardes active in the Veneto area. His home was a point of reference in Paduan culture thanks also to his wife Franca. Massironi was struck by a serious neuronal disease, but, after abandoning active teaching, he continued to produce works. He died on November 30, 2011.