Emilio Vedova

My works are not creations, but earthquakes.Emilio Vedova

Born in Venice, Emilio Vedova (August 9, 1919–October 25, 2006) was the son of artisans who taught himself to draw, sketching buildings and Renaissance paintings around Venice. Two of his first major works, The Raising of Lazarus and Crucifixion from Behind (both 1937) were inspired by dramatic compositional and lighting effects of Tintoretto.

Vedova joined the Resistance in Rome, and made a name for the drawings he did as a partisan. After the war he 1946 joined Renato Guttuso in founding the avant-garde group, the Fronte Nuova delle Arti, an an uneasy mix of abstract and figurative artists. In 1948 he had his first show at the Biennale.

In 1953, as his work became increasingly abstract, Vedova broke with the Fronte Nuova, believing the mission of the artist was to express reality, referencing contemporary events, yet without resorting to realism. Along with fellow Italians Lucio Fontana and Alberto Burri he became a major figure in the art informel movement—the European take on the abstract expressionism of American artists such as Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock.