Color abstraction, 1970

Gianni Dova  

Chromatic abstraction is a work created by Giovanni Dova in the seventies. Silkscreen on paper, 90 x 70 cm with frame. Edition 182/199. Hand signed lower right.

He was born in Rome on 8 January 1925 to Edmondo Dova, Roman by adoption but of Piedmontese origins, and Maria Rauchensteiner originally from Munich. At 16 he moved to Milan with his family and here, from 1942, he attended the Brera Art School with the intention of then moving on to the Faculty of Architecture of the Polytechnic. But the war changed his plans, he met and frequented the artists who met in the literary cafés and who had as their point of reference, among others, the newspaper published by Ernesto Treccani, Corrente. Among these Renato Guttuso, Emilio Vedova, Renato Birolli, Ennio Morlotti, Bruno Cassinari, Giuseppe Migneco and together with them he recognized the importance of Pablo Picasso's work: Guernica as a symbol of the artists' struggle against barbarism. In 1945 he married Maria Grazia della Valle. In 1946 he joined the Realism beyond Guernica manifesto. In 1947 he exhibited at the Galleria del Cavallino in Venice and at the Galleria del Naviglio in Milan. Also in 1947 he joined the Spatialist Movement with Lucio Fontana, Roberto Crippa, Giorgio Kaisserlian, Beniamino Joppolo, Milani, Antonio Tullier, Sergio Dangelo, Carlo Crippa, Cesare Crippa, Gian Carozzi. Dova was among the protagonists of this movement that grew up around Carlo Cardazzo's Galleria del Naviglio and signed several manifestos including: the fourth (Manifesto dell'Arte Spaziale), Milan 26 November 1951; the fifth (Spatialism and Italian art of the 20th century); the sixth: (Manifesto of the A Space Movement for Television), Milan 1952. Later he joined the nuclear painting movement with Enrico Baj and Sergio Dangelo. In 1963 one of his works was exhibited at the Contemporary Italian Paintings exhibition, held in some Australian cities. In 1963-64 he exhibited at the exhibition Peintures italiennes d'aujourd'hui, organized in the Middle East and North Africa. His first works are close to surrealism; the artist integrates reminiscences of Max Ernst. An He died in Marina di Pisa on 14 October 1991.