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Achille Bonito Oliva
Bonito Oliva at the Biennale di Venezia in 2007
Born1939
Caggiano, province of Salerno
NationalityItalian
Occupation(s)art critic, art historian

Achille Bonito Oliva (born 1939) is an Italian art critic and historian of contemporary art. Since 1968 he has taught history of contemporary art at La Sapienza, the university of Rome. He has written extensively on contemporary art and contemporary artists; he originated the term Transavanguardia to describe the new direction taken in the late 1970s by artists such as Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Nicola De Maria, and Mimmo Paladino.[1] He has organised or curated numerous contemporary art events and exhibitions; in 1993 he was artistic director of the Biennale di Venezia.

Life and career

Bonito Oliva was born in 1939 in Caggiano, in the province of Salerno, in Campania in southern Italy. He studied law, and then took a degree in letters. He took part in events connected with the avant-garde Gruppo 63 literary movement of the 1960s.[2]

In 1968 he began teaching history of contemporary art at La Sapienza, the university of Rome.[2]

He became active as an art critic, as a writer on history of art – with work on Mannerism, the historic Avant-Garde movements, and the Neo-Avantgarde – and as an organiser and curator of contemporary art events and exhibitions.[2]

In about 1978 he coined the term Transavanguardia to describe the work of artists such as Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Nicola De Maria and Mimmo Paladino, who – in a manner comparable to that of the Neo-Expressionists and the Neue Wilden – discarded the abstract and conceptual approach of the Neo-Avantgarde and instead returned to figurative painting using the traditional techniques and materials, and at times also the forms and motifs, of the past. Bonito Oliva curated an exhibition of their work at the Biennale di Venezia in 1980.[3]

Books

Bonito Oliva has written many books, including monographs on artists such as Marina Abramović, Francis Bacon, Georg Baselitz, Joseph Beuys, Alighiero Boetti, James Lee Byars, Giorgio de Chirico, Braco Dimitrijević, Marcel Duchamp, Giuseppe Ducrot, Alex Katz, Georgia O'Keeffe, Frida Kahlo, Paul Klee, Nam June Paik, Joan Miró, Pino Pascali, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Mario Schifano, Nancy Spero, Andy Warhol, Wolf Vostell,[4] and Robert Wilson.[citation needed]

As author

As editor

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Achille Bonito Oliva.
  1. ^ Achille Bonito Oliva (1979) The Italian Trans-Avantgarde. Flash Art. (92–93), translation by Michael Moore. Archived 23 February 2019.
  2. ^ a b c Bonito Oliva, Achille (in Italian). Enciclopedie on line. Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Accessed September 2017.
  3. ^ Transavanguardia (in Italian). Enciclopedie on line. Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Accessed January 2021.
  4. ^ Gewalttätigkeit als objet trouvé. Retrospektive Wolf Vostell 1958–1974. Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, Berlin, 1974.
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