Set of 6 abstract paintings by Ennio Tamburi, Italy 1966

Ennio Tamburi was born in Jesi on September 9, 1936. He lived and worked between Rome and Zurich. It was in Rome that he began his activity in the 1950s, staying frequently in Paris, approaching the Informal because he felt the urgency to respond to the existential malaise characteristic of those years. Painting became for Tamburi the most appropriate way to express the pain of living caused by the destruction and lacerations of the post-war period. During these years he received many awards such as the Arezzo Prize, the Maggio di Bari, the Prato Prize, the Incontri d'Arte Prize of Bologna and the Quadriennale of Rome. Around the 1960s he began to focus on conceptual art, concentrating his research on the object and sculpture, using mainly sulfated sheet metal and neon to express, through silhouettes, the physical and psychological condition of modern man, dominated by a feeling of incommunicability. Works such as Alberi defoiati (Dead Trees), Coppia (Couple), Uomo puzzle and La A e il 2 (The A and the 2), all made in the 1960s, also belong to this period. Cesure is also part of the work: photographs taken in Rome, whose main subjects are some kind of "architectural clusters", as the artist defines them, which serve to support insecure structures and anyway not particularly stable. Through them, Tamburi seems to want to affirm the principle of union, of something "solid" that allows him to fight against the feeling of precariousness and solitude typical of the "human condition". Many of these works have been exhibited in collective and personal exhibitions such as: Contemporanea, Rome 1972; Galleria il Punto, Turin 1973; Festival Dei Due Mondi, Spoleto 1974; Volterra - Interventi nella Città 1974; Biennale di Venezia, Palazzo dei Diamanti, Ferrara 1975; Galleria Due Mondi, Rome 1976; Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Arezzo 1976; Galleria La Tartaruga, Rome 1977; Kunsthalle, Kôln and Düsseldorf 1977, Galleria 2000 - Bologna 1978. For a short period he alternates his studies and artistic research with the activity of graphic designer for well-known magazines, where his talent as a draughtsman finds another possibility of expression. The 1980s marked a definitive turning point for Tamburi, both in his poetics and in the techniques he used. After a deep reflection on the meaning and value of his research, he moved to Switzerland and discovered concrete art, gradually abandoning the line he had followed until then and taking a more neutral and objective look at reality. During a trip to Asia, he discovered valuable handmade papers from Tibet, Nepal, China, India and Japan, each characterized by a particular texture and consistency. This discovery led him to undertake numerous trips to Europe, the United States, Africa and Asia. His trip to Japan and Burma will be fundamental, places where he will deepen his study of paper production techniques. Paper thus proved to be an "antidote" to the materials traditionally used in painting, becoming the new medium through which, along with watercolors and tempera, Tamburi created his works. In the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, the papers, already endowed with a life of their own, now host the signs and symbols of the artist's imagination: visions, ideas, experiences are translated into an abstract but extraordinarily communicative language. The essential elements are the "dots" that describe, through empirical geometries, what Tamburi has seen or imagined, resulting in works full of energy and vitality. Using brushes of different sizes, Tamburi alternates between large and small works. During these years, Tamburi has exhibited in many Italian and European cities: Galerie Salomon, Paris 1980; Gallerie Mark, Paris 1982; Studio a 1985; Fortezza Trecentesca, Montalcino 1987; Temple University Rome and Philadelphia 1990; Galleria del '500, Siena 1992; Art Gallery, New South Wales, Sidney 1993; Kunsthaus Richterswil 1998; Centro di Studi Italiani, Zurich 1999; Die Halle, Zurich 2000; Gallerie; Anton Meier, Geneva 2003; La Nef, Ancienne Eglise, Le Noir Mont, Switzerland 2004; LIART, Rome 2005; Biblioteca Casanatense, Rome 2006; Lazertis Galerie, Zurich 2007; Museo del Convento di San Giovanni, Müstair 2009; Fabriano Space, Milan 2009. In addition to his work as a painter, he has often worked as a set designer, collaborating on the sets of films such as Senso and Death in Venice by Luchino Visconti and Che by Roman Polanski, designing posters for the theatrical productions of Giorgio Strehler and Luca Ronconi, and finally creating the sets for Lamento and Reflects, for the Monte Carlo Ballet in 1994 and for Afternoon of a Faun, for the Introdans Company, in Arnhem, Holland in 1997. In recent years, he has begun to create "Sculturine," small works on worked and painted paper: "travel sculptures," to use Munar's terminology.