Emilio Isgrò

Emilio Isgrò (born October 1937 in Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto, Sicily) is an Italian artist and writer, noted for his use of the erasure technique in his art works.

Biography

Isgrò made his literary debut in 1956 with the poetry collection Fiere del Sud (Arturo Schwarz Editore). In 1964 he first began erasing encyclopaedias and other texts, making his personal contribution to the birth and development of visual poetry and conceptual art. In 1966, during a one-man show at the Galleria Traghetto in Venice, he published Dichiarazione 1, defining his conception of poetry as ‘general art of the sign’. He published the volume of poems L'età della ginnastica (Mondadori).

In 1977 he took part in the Venice Biennale, returning there in 1978, 1986 and 1993. He was one of a group of artists featured in the exhibition Contemporanea (1973), curated by Achille Bonito Oliva in the underground car park of the Villa Borghese in Rome. The following year saw the publication of L'avventurosa vita di Emilio Isgrò nelle testimonianze di uomini di stato, scrittori, artisti, parlamentari, attori, parenti, familiari, amici, anonimi cittadini (Il Formichiere), which was entered for the Strega Prize. In 1976 the first retrospective of his work was held at the Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione (CSAC) in Parma. In 1977 he was awarded the first prize at the XIVth Bienal de São Paulo in Brazil. That same year he also published the novel Marta de Rogatiis Johnson (Feltrinelli). In 1979 he presented Chopin, an installation and musical score for 15 pianos, at the Rotonda della Besana in Milan. In 1982 his Gibella del Martirio and San Rocco legge la lista dei miracoli e degli orrori were performed in Gibellina. From the following year and for three consecutive seasons, his Sicilian trilogy Orestea di Gibellina was also performed in Gibellina at the Festival Internazionale delle Orestiadi. In 1985 the Teatro alla Scala commissioned him to create the multimedia installation La veglia di Bach in a Milan church, San Carpoforo. In 1986 he presented the installation L'ora italiana at the Civic Archaeological Museum in Bologna, commemorating the victims of the terrorist bomb attack at the city’s railway station on 2 August 1980. In 1989 he published the novel Polifemo (Mondadori), at the same time working out a new theory of erasure in Teoria della cancellatura (Galleria Fonte d'Abisso). Isgrò’s work was featured in the exhibition The Artist and the Book in Twentieth-Century Italy, held in 1992-1993 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and in 1994 at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. In 1994 he also published the novel L'asta delle ceneri (Camunia) and returned to poetry with the collection Oratorio dei ladri (Mondadori). In 1998 he donated his sculpture Orange Seed to his Sicilian birthplace, the town of Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto.

2001 saw a major retrospective of his work, Emilio Isgrò 1964-2000, held in the unfinished church of Santa Maria dello Spasimo in Palermo, now an arts venue. With Le api della Torah he also began a cycle of work featuring insects. In 2002 he published another book of poetry, Brindisi all'amico infame (Aragno), which was shortlisted for the Strega Prize and won the San Pellegrino Prize for poetry awarded by the Italian town of San Pellegrino Terme. In 2007 he collected essays and writings previously published in various newspapers and magazines in a critical and theoretical companion to his creative output entitled La cancellatura e altre soluzioni (Skira). In the following year a retrospective of his work, Dichiaro di essere Emilio Isgrò, was held at the Centro per l'arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato. In 2009 he exhibited in Milan at the Palazzo Stelline, and the following year in Marsala, Sicily, with Disobbedisco. Sbarco a Marsala e altre Sicilie. At the same time the exhibition Var ve yok opened at the Taksim Sanat Galerisi in Istanbul, while his fourteen Codici ottomani were also on display at the Boghossian Foundation in Brussels.

In May 2011 he presented the installation L'Italia che dorme at the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Rome, as part of the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy. The same year saw the inauguration in Milan, at the Bocconi University, of his Cancellazione del debito pubblico. In 2012 three of his earlier installations were reconstructed in Milan: in the Palazzo Reale, Dichiaro di non essere Emilio Isgrò (1971) and L’avventurosa vita di Emilio Isgrò nelle testimonianze di uomini di stato, artisti, scrittori, parlamentari, attori, parenti, familiari, amici, anonimi cittadini (1972); in the Gallerie d'Italia, L'ora italiana (1985–1986). In June 2013 he was given a retrospective, entitled Modello Italia, by the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Rome. In 2014 his self-portrait Dichiaro di non essere Emilio Isgrò entered the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence, while in Milan his Grande cancellatura per Giovanni Testori was installed on-site in Piazza Gino Valle, in the newly regenerated Portello district.

In 2015 he created the Seme dell’Altissimo, a marble sculpture measuring 7 metres in height which stands on the exhibition site of the Milan Expo.

Literary works

Collections of theoretical and critical writings

• Emilio Isgrò. L'Oro della Mirandola: Cancellature per Giovanni Pico (edite by Giulio Busi e Silvana Greco), Fondazione Palazzo Bondoni Pastorio, 2014. • cancellatura e altre soluzioni (edited by Alberto Fiz), Skira, 2007. • Come difendersi dall’arte e dalla pioggia (edited by Beatrice Benedetti), Maretti Editore, 2013.

Plays

• L'Orestea di Gibellina e gli altri testi per il teatro (edited by Martina Treu), Le Lettere, 2011.

Poetry

• Fiere del Sud, Schwarz, Milan, 1956. • L'anteguerra, Einaudi, Turin, 1963. • Uomini & Donne, Sampietro, Bologna, 1965. • L’età della ginnastica, Mondadori, Milan, 1966. • Preghiera ecumenica per la salvezza dell’arte e della cultura, Archivio di Nuova Scrittura, 1993. • Oratorio dei ladri, Mondadori, Milan, 1996. • Brindisi all’amico infame, Nino Aragno Editore, Turin, 2003.

Novels

• L'avventurosa vita di Emilio Isgrò nelle testimonianze di uomini di stato, scrittori, artisti, parlamentari, attori, parenti, familiari, amici, anonimi cittadini, Il Formichiere, Milan, 1974. • Marta de Rogatiis Johnson, Feltrinelli, Milan, 1977. • Polifemo, Mondadori, Milan, 1989. • L’asta delle ceneri, Camunia, Milan, 1994.

Film

• La jena più ne ha e più ne vuole, project, screenplay and screen tests for a cancelled film, 1970.