Ennio Tamburi, Italian Abstract Paintings, Oil on Cardboard, 1960s, Set of 6

Ennio Tamburi was born in Jesi on 9 September 1936. He lived and worked between Rome and Zurich. In Rome he began his activity in the 1950s, frequently staying in Paris, approaching the earnormal because he feels the urgency of responding to the characteristic existential discomfort of those years. Painting becomes for drums the most suitable means of expressing the evil of living caused by the destruction and lacerations of the post-war period. LN Those years will receive numerous awards such as the Arezzo Award, May of Bari, the Prato Award, the Art Meetings Award of Bologna and that of the Rome Quadriennale. Around the 1960s it begins to address its attention to conceptual art, focusing on its research and sculpture, using mainly sulfate and neon sheet metal to express, through the silhouettes, the physical and psychic condition of modern man, dominated by the sense of incommunicability. Of this period they are works such as the Defo / Iati trees, a couple, man puzzle and the A and 2, all realized in the 1960s, are also part of the Cesure: photographs taken in Rome, whose main subjects are a sort of " Architectural grappette "As the artist defines them, which serve to support unsafe structures and in any case not particularly stable. Through them drums it seems to affirm the principle of the Union, of something "solid" that allows him to fight the sense of precariousness and solitude typical of the "condition humaine". Many of these works have been exhibited in collective and personal exhibitions such as: contemporary, Rome 1972; Galleria il Punto, Turin 1973; Festival of the two worlds, Spoleto 1974; Volterra - Interventions in the city 1974; Venice Biennale, Palace of Diamonds, Ferrara 1975; Two Mondi Gallery, Rome 1976; Modern art gallery, Arezzo 1976; La Tartaruga Gallery, Rome 1977; Kunsthalle, Kôln and Düsseldorf 1977, Galleria 2000 - Bologna 1978. For a short time it alternates the study and artistic research with the business activity at notes magazines, where its designer talent finds a further expressive possibility. The 1980s determine a definitive turning point for drums, both regarding its poetics and for the techniques used. After a profound reflection on the sense and value of his research he moved to Switzerland, discovering concrete art, thus abandoning the line until then followed to look at reality more neutral and objectively. During a trip to Asia he discover very valuable cards by hand from Tibet, Nepal, China, India and Japan, each characterized by a plot and a particular texture. This discovery will take him to undertake numerous trips to Europe, the United States, Africa and Asia. Its journey to Japan and Burma will be fundamental, places where the study of paper production techniques will further exploit. The paper therefore reveals "antidote" with respect to the materials traditionally used in painting, becoming the new medium through which, with watercolors and tempera, drums realizes its work. In the 1980s 1990s and 2000 the cards already equipped with a living life now host signs and symbols of the artist's imagination: visions, ideas, experiences are translated into abstract language but extraordinarily communicative. Essential elements are the "dots" that describe, through empirical geometries, what drums saw or imagined, giving rise to works charged with energy and vitality. Using from time to time of brushes of various sizes drums alternates the realization of works of great and small format. In these years, drums exposed in many Italian and European cities: Salomon Gallery, Paris 1980; Galleries Mark, Paris 1982; Study at 1985; Fortress of the fourteenth century, Montalcino 1987; Temple University Rome and Philadelphia 1990; Gallery of the 500, Siena 1992; Art Gallery, New South Wales, Sidney 1993; Kunsthaus Richterswil 1998; Italian Studies Center, Zurich 1999; Die Halle, Zurich 2000; Galleries; Anton Meier, Geneva 2003; The Nef, Ancienne Eglise, Le Noir Mont, Switzerland 2004; Liarart, Rome 2005; Casanatense Library, Rome 2006; Lazertis Galerie, Zurich 2007; Museum of the Convent of San Giovanni, Müstair 2009; Fabriano Space, Milan 2009. At painter's activity he often joined that of scenographer by collaborating in the scenography of films such as sense and death in Venice of Luchino Visconti and that? of Roman Polanski, drawing posters for the theatrical performances of Giorgio Strehler and Luca Ronconi and finally creating the sets for Lamento and Reflects, for the ballets of Monte Carlo in 1994 and for 'the après-midi of a fauna', for the Compagnia Introdans, in Arnhem in the Netherlands in 1997. In recent years he began to realize the so-called 'sculpturines', small works on worked and painted paper: "travel sculptures" to use Munari's terminology. Another novelty are the books, real diaries or texts illustrated in which the artist records thoughts, impressions and sensations: projects, notes and daily notes, as if it were an intimate and secret diary. After having exposed from the early sixties in Italy and abroad at important public and private galleries, in 2012 the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome dedicated to drums a great retrospective. In his most recent works drums reaches unpublished outcomes of compositional balance. The forms of its abstract painting, in fact become the definitive through a deep and touching meditation on fundamental themes: nature, time, existence. "My direction is towards unfinished geometric shapes, fluid, with the liquid material of the colors left free to run: I create banks on the paper, but I also like that the forms pass anyway, spurting" (ET March 2018) L ' Last staff before the artist's disappearance was held at the Garden Room of the Acattelico Cemetery of Rome (May-June 2018). Immediately after his death, from 15 December 2018 to 30 January 2019 Crac Puglia Contemporary Art Research Center inaugurates the personal exhibition of Ennio Tamburi, "Continuous", curated by Luca Arnaudo and Roberto Lacarbonara, a project completed by the same artist The last months before his disappearance.