Renato Pengo Biography
Renato Pengo (Padua, 31 October 1943) is an Italian painter, active since 1966 in the languages of painting, photography, video, installations and performances. His training took place at the Art Institute, where he explored the various artistic techniques and disciplines. In 1969, on the occasion of his first solo exhibition, the famous poet and writer Diego Valeri presented it at the Galleria Traghetto in Venice. Two other important solo exhibitions date from this period: at the ¨Il Giorno¨ Gallery in Milan and at the ¨La Chiocciola¨ Gallery in Padua. In the first half of the Seventies, Pengo's work deviated from the premises of academic training and existentialist expressiveness, opening up to new forms of experimentation. Strictly cerebral serial structures lead to the almost total essence of color and the obsessive recording of the characteristics of an alienating and programmed society. In the wake of this awareness he experiments with different languages: performances, happenings, use of the photographic medium and industrial materials, direct interventions on society. Attentive more to the authenticity of the artistic experience, to its maieutic effectiveness than to market feedback, he participated in two national exhibitions in recent years: in 1975 at the X Quadrennial in Rome, and in 1976 at the annual exhibition of the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation in Venice. In 1970 he won first prize at the Decima Triveneta of Young Artists. In 1975 he was among the founders of the ¨Azionecritica¨ group, whose cultural activity took place in the neighborhoods of Padua, through performances and murals, together with Eugenio Barba's Odin Teatret. In the meantime, the use of photography becomes fundamental for Pengo, both as an experience of conceptual analysis and as a new subject for pictorial intervention conducted by manipulating emulsified surfaces. From this period are some personal exhibitions in Salzburg (Galleria Romanischer Keller), Villach (An Der Stadtmauer), Rovigo (Accademia dei Concordi), as well as several group exhibitions in Prato (Rassegna Internazionale Nuove Tendenze), and in Padua (Galleria Stevens, ¨Matrici and images¨), as well as the activity of photography teacher. But it was from the early 1980s that Pengo sought other paths, internal alphabets that made his research increasingly complex. Two large pictorial cycles date from this period: ¨Itineraries painted by time¨ and ¨Future archaeologies¨, on display in Ferrara (Palazzo Massari), Amsterdam (Italian Cultural Institute), Aja (Galleria Van Voorst Van Beest) and in Padua in the Gallery Stevens and in the Civic Gallery. In these same years he created videos based on the deceleration of the image, with which he participated in numerous national and international exhibitions and events: Catodica (Rome), Ifduif (Lugano), Le arti del cinema (Verona), Festival Mondial do Minuto in Sao Paulo (Brazil) and at the FilmFestival (Turin). The staunchly self-reflective character and the pressingly topical themes that Pengo's research develops place him in a particular position in the panorama of contemporary art in Italy and Europe. Since the 1990s, his interest has also focused on anthropology and psychoanalysis. During this period he participated in conferences such as ¨Cosmogonie della mente¨ (Padua, 1996) curated by Luigi Pavan and Gian Piero Brunetta; ¨L'énigme du visible¨ (Paris, 1998) edited by Vanessa Delouya. Pengo's original intuition dates back to the 1990s and opens up a new horizon of knowledge: the "technological shock", which according to the famous French critic Pierre Restany, is the expression of a poetics that develops "in the spiritual and imaginary universe , full of vibrations and cosmic energy in a space that becomes the immaterial void¨. The most significant exhibitions in recent years took place in Madrid, Tunis, Paris and New York. Towards the end of the nineties the work was enriched with new materials: plexiglass, slate and iron; while the dominant colors are vermilion red and cobalt blue. In 1999, in Padua, in the Palazzo del Monte di Pietà, his important solo exhibition took place: ¨Mutant Perceptions¨ (Electa catalogue). In 2000 he created a video-manifesto from which a non-legible, pre-linguistic writing was born, made up of figurative signs and fugitive words. Two important cycles are also from this period: ¨Oltre il titolo¨ and ¨Maree¨, presented in Padua (Galleria Dante Vecchiato), Florence (Palazzo Vecchio), Arezzo (Sala dei Grandi) and Ancona (Mole Vanvitelliana). In 2002, a large work was acquired at the Splendore Art Museum in Giulianova. In 2004 one of his multimedia installations took place in Piero Della Francesca's house in Sansepolcro. In May 2008 the exhibition ¨Traghettare il tempo¨ took place at the National Museum of Villa Pisani (Stra), followed by the solo exhibition ¨Oltre¨ at the Net Center in Padua and in December 2008 the exhibition ¨Beyond the image¨ at the Civic Museum of Piazza of the Saint in Padua.
