Teodosio Magnoni was able to transform a creative obsession for the concept of space into artwork, thanks to his own geometric and poetic sense. Noël Arnaud wrote “I am the space. Where I am”, and this line was taken up by Magnoni in some of his works, as to reveal the vibrant spatial texture and the artist identification with it.
Piramide interrotta, part of the collection of the Premio Termoli thanks to the friendship between the artist and Achille Pace, who was crucial in the creation and the various editions of the Premio Termoli perfectly represents his idea of making art: Magnoni works on the line that can vary in length and thickness. Interrupted, broken or continuous lines and angles, generating new layers perceived with elusive depth perceived as empty presences with distinct relational features.The sculptor takes away the material to create the work. But the material in Magnoni’s artworks is immaterial, that is not directly related to a natural substance, but consists of the elimination of any representational or narrative element that comes from the outside and can contaminate the body of the work. Magnoni “undresses” the sculpture to arrive to its essence, in this way it isn’t enclosed in a shell anymore. The author never adopts the curve (only as a part of the circle shape, abandoning it straight away): it is already the synthesis of a representation for him. The line and the angle that can be created between two lines are different. A line is its own representation, it’s an existing form free from references, defined as such.
Teodosio Magnoni was born in Offanengo (Cremona) in 1934. He attended the painting class at the Accademia di Carrara in Bergamo and subsequently mosaic school in Ravenna. In 1959, after long stays in Switzerland, Spain and Sweden, he moved to Rome, where he was influenced intensely by the artistic, literary and musical avant-garde. At the beginning of the Seventies, he conducted an original research on space, where the pivotal point is not the occupation of space, but its emptying. At this stage of his research there is the switch from painting to sculpture. The forms of Teodosio Magnoni’s works become more geometrical, even though the artist makes them lose their original and conventional features. From the beginning of the Seventies, he was involved in the theoretical elaboration and in the empiric proofing of the Heideggerian concept of the transformation of space into place and of the sculpture as a place, together with study on the significant void, a theoretical and factual elaboration that continuously characteriseshis production until recent years. In the mid-eighties the image places are more complex, covering “natural” themes.
Magnoni’s exhibiting activity started in 1954 with his participation in the Premio Dalmine. His first solo show was in 1965 atLa Salita gallery in Rome. He had more than fifty solo shows in Italy and abroad and has also taken part in historical and thematic exhibitions. Such as the 1976 and 1978 Venice Biennale, the exhibition at the Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum of Hagen (Germany) in 1978, the exhibitions at Palazzo dei Consoli of Gubbio in 1987, at Palazzo del Comune in Venzone (Udine) in 1992, at Rocca di Umbertide, Centro per l’arte contemporanea, Umbertide (Perugia) in 1996, at Galleria Comunale d’arte in Cesena in 2001.
He has realized large sculptures in private and public places. Among others: Spirale aperta, Velletri, 1992; Colonna trasparente, Palazzo della FAO, Rome, 1993; Ali, Museo d’arte contemporanea di Maglione, Turin, 1999; Torre dei colori che cambiano, Aeroporto Leonardo da Vinci, Fiumicino, 2002; Ara, Brufa, Perugia, 2007.
From 1985 he lives and works in Sutri. From 2009 he is a member of the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca.