The Artist

GILLO DORFLES

The artist, art critic, author and philosopher Gillo Dorfles played an important role for the concrete art movement as well as for the development of contemporary art criticism.

Dorfles grew up in Genua although he was born in 1910 in Trieste where he returned to take up his medical studies during the late 1930s. After graduation he began to spend more and more time on art criticism and essay writing. When Art Informel movement started up in Italy, Dorfles founded together with Soldati, Monnet and Munari the Movimento arte concreta (MAC) which was also associated with his theorizing. Concrete art was intended to emanate "directly from the mind" and consequently to be more "cerebral". It is often composed of basic visual features such as planes, colors and forms. Unlike the „Zurich concrete" as Bill or Lohse who were in close contact with MAC Dorfles interpreted the term "concrete" on his own way: strictly geometric forms were displaced by amporphus structures that evolved from pure color and without any special reference. After the resolution of MAC in the late 1950s Dorfles focussed more and more on his personal way of painting.

His artworks have been shown in numerous retrospectives. " Il Kitsch ", " Il Feticcio quotidiano", " Le oscillazioni del gusto ", " Il disegno industriale e la sua estetica " or „Ultime tendenze dell’arte oggi” are only some of his most famous publications. His latest book "Gli artisti che ho incontrato" (Eng. "The artists I met") was published in 2015.

„Ich wollte schon immer ein Kunstmaler sein, mehr als alles andere, ohne an Erfolge, Ehrungen oder Gewinne zu denken, die die Kunst mit sich bringen kann. Es ist der Akt des Zeichnens und des Malens, der für mich  – seit meiner Kindheit – beinahe eine zwingende Notwendigkeit war. Es hat mich dazu geführt, die Seiten meiner Schulbücher mit Kritzeleien (oder waren dies wunderbare Erfindungen), das Holz der harten Schulbänke, oder im Sand Sommerstrände.“ (G.Dorfles, „Autogistificazione“, in Gillo Dorfles. Metamorfosi, catalogo, Kurator L. Caramel, Fabbri, Milano, 1988, p. 25)