eumi

Europe and Milan (1957-1968)
He was still very young and, yet, he already kept a substrate of memories, emotions, frames of mind which are hard to confine in a pattern. And at one point, he felt the need to experience new possibilities. He was invited to the Venice Biennial in 1958, and in the same year he was awarded his first international prizes. He experimented new techniques: watercolours, oil painting and xylography. He spent some time in Lausanne, and moved to Paris in 1959. He became Le Corbusier’s pupil and collaborator. In the French capital city a singular episode took place. Jean Cocteau visited one of Spatari’s solo shows and was irresistibly attracted by one of his works; he pulled it off the wall and took it with him, leaving a signed thank you note in its place.
Spatari met Picasso and Max Ernst, the latter was to introduce him to the “frottage technique”. In the meantime, he produced glass mosaics, sculptures, murals and frescoes.He moved from an early figurative phase to prismatism and then to an informal dynamism through which he supported the primacy of the Artist’s interpretative subjectivity over the mere representation of the Real.
The “frottage” technique he learnt from Ernst emerged during his stay in Milan, in his Compositional and Totemic dynamism. He met Montale, Carlo Levi and Guttuso. Despite his success, he never stopped experimenting.