Italo
Bressan

Italo Bressan was born in Vezzano, in the province of Trento, in 1950. In 1962 he moved to Milan, where he attended the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, where he graduated in 1974 and where he began teaching painting in 1983. In 1992 he obtained the Chair of Painting at the Accademia Albertina in Turin and from 2002 he returned to Milan, at the Accademia di Brera, to hold the position of holder of the course of painting. He currently lives and works between Milan and Trento. Since the mid-seventies, his research has been carried out around a reflection on the basic elements of painting: form and color. Form materializes through colour, which is the protagonist and constant fulcrum of his work: given by superimposed application and chromatic and luminous contrasts, it creates a sense of transparency and a suggestion of vibrant suspension. Between 1985 and 1987, Bressan focused his research on the structural component of the painting, in which one can glimpse, though elusive, parts of the drawing, which form a kind of construction: solid architectures, with apparently non-existent contours, highlight the changing of the support, obtained by assembling canvases, planks or glass, which make it even more articulate the relationship of the work with the space in which the shadows assume a primary role. Drawing is a parallel activity that the artist carries out in a constant and autonomous way with respect to pictorial production. The artist's poetics pursue the contrasts between negative and positive, between above and below and between light and shadow, which become predominant towards the end of the 1990s, particularly in those works where the contextual use of paper and glass in the support reinforces the colour contrast and the concept of double and opposition. The attention to materials and their interaction defines three moments within Bressan's production and at the same time outlines the red thread of his research: from painting on wood, the artist moves on to painting on glass, and then in recent years to the use of gauze and veils. From 2016 the use of tulle, a material he has always loved, will characterize a series of works entitled Anime, which convey reflections and remedies on his previous works. During his career, the artist has exhibited in numerous solo exhibitions and important exhibitions, including the XI Quadrennial in Rome (1986) and the 54th Venice Biennale (2011), in the Lombardy Pavilion; at Palazzo Te in Mantua, curated by Vittorio Sgarbi; his works have been presented in group exhibitions organized by prestigious institutions, such as the PAC in Milan, the Galleria Civica in Modena, the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice, the Galleria Civica and Palazzo delle Albere in Trento, the Palazzo della Permanente in Milan, the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Bologna. He has also participated in important art fairs, including Art Basel in 1989 and 1992.