Blu 1970

Agostino Bonalumi made Blu without telling us when, or even really how, and I think that’s alright. The flat, even color he has used gives the piece this quiet, serene feeling, but then he goes and disrupts everything with this curve that comes out of nowhere. It’s like a formal joke, a visual pun, and it’s so unexpected. The way the light catches on that curve makes it feel almost like a separate object, like something that's been grafted onto the canvas, and that gives the piece a tactile quality. I wonder if Lucio Fontana ever saw this. They were working around the same time, and both were playing with the idea of pushing painting into the third dimension. But where Fontana slashed, Bonalumi caresses. It’s all about how you engage with the surface.