Aldo Schmid Biography
Aldo Schmid was born in Trento in 1935 to a family of ancient Viennese origins. He attended higher education courses at the Teachers' Institute in Trento, in the meantime the demands of his artistic vocation matured. He thus deepened his knowledge on the origins of the avant-garde, visiting Rome and Venice where he established relationships with the major artists of these cities. He formed relationships with Guidi who took an interest in his work, and with Toni Toniato, animator of the magazine Evento, close to the positions of phenomenological aesthetics. In Salzburg he followed the courses directed by Kokoshka and established fruitful relationships with the Austrian master, drawing from his teachings a vision of man, expressed in terms of neofiguration, with feverish signs and rather dramatic contents. After this phase he manages to recompose the image in a dynamically structured synthesis. During the sixties he exhibited in numerous group exhibitions and in 1964 he concluded his commitment to a solo exhibition at the Galleria del Cavallino in Venice, at the Ferrari in Verona and at the Galleria 2000 in Bologna. The following year he was awarded the San Fedele Prize in Milan in recognition of one of the best young Italian artists. After the exhibition at the Cavallino, he committed himself to the study of the various doctrines on color and the expressions implemented in this area by modern artists, from Seurat to Matisse, from Mondrian to Max Bill. In 1967 he again exhibited the results of his pictorial experiences at the Galleria del Cavallino in Venice and established constant relationships with the critics Marchiori and Apollonio who dealt with his work. He comes into contact with the Japanese painter Nabuya Abe who includes him in the "Illumination" group, which will bring together exponents from various countries, engaged in experiences of new abstraction. With the group he will exhibit in Germany, Switzerland and various Italian cities. Towards the end of that decade he concluded the cycle of "Color Structures" and began the "Sequences" and the "Frequencies" which focused on a process of objective verification of the relationships between primary and secondary colors and which he presented starting from 1970 to L'Argentario Gallery in Trento. The new decade opens with the first prize of the magazine "Le Arti" and with a solo exhibition at the Galleria del Naviglio in Milan. He was invited by Marchiori to participate in the "Sguardo a Nord-est" exhibition. He stayed in Milan for some time and frequented the circle of artists and architects, supported by his friend Baldessari. He comes into contact with the "Gruppo zero" who invites him to exhibit in Düsseldorf. In 972 he joined the exhibition "For pure Painting" which ascertained the line of the new abstraction in Italy and which would constitute a point of reference for any further critical investigation on the situation of the new painting; he exhibits a group of works at the X Quadrennial in Rome, in the section curated by Filiberto Menna. He was invited to the XXXVI Venice Biennale with a group of graphic works. In 1973, he accompanied the exhibition organized in Bergamo (Galleria Method) by the critic Luciano Francalanci with an essay that summarized his scientific and aesthetic conceptions. He was invited by Giorgio Cortenova to the exhibition "A possible future", organized by the Civic Museum of Ferrara. He also exhibited at the Bolzano exhibition on the theme "Pictorial practice". He develops the analysis of the interferences between contrasts and that of the cancellation of the margin to obtain a fusion of colors, according to progressive transparencies and gradualness. In Venice, at the Marciana Library, he completed personal research useful to complete his voluminous study on the problem of color, which is currently unpublished. In 1976 he was invited by Luciano Caramel to the "Colore" exhibition as part of the Silvestro Lega Prize. With the painter Veronesi he discusses the theoretical results of mutual experiences on color. He exhibited a cycle of his latest paintings at the Galleria Ferrari in Verona. In 1976 he committed himself to completing the 720 permutations of the Non-black, which had already been started for some time. The same year he created the Chromotypes which are pure energy of chromatic radiation that forms the substance of pictorial reality. Meanwhile, he studies the project of an electronic device for investigating the gradual combinations according to schemes of progressive proportion of pigments, quantity and density of colour. In 1977 he met the critic Marcelin Pleynet in Paris and made arrangements with him for a collaboration. With some Trentino artists (Mauro Cappelletti, Diego Mazzonelli, Gianni Pellegrini, Luigi Senesi, Giuseppe Wenter Marmi) he founded the Astrazione Oggettiva group on the basis of a program he developed. In 1978 he was in contact with a well-known Italian publisher to publish the book he wrote on color theory; during a trip to Rome, where he was going to discuss the introduction of the volume, he was the victim of the tragic train accident that occurred on the Bologna-Florence line.
