«The painter-sculptor Roberto Crippa was born in Milan in 1921. He studied at the Brera Art Academy in Milan where he was the fellow student of Aldo Carpi, d’Achille Funi and Carlo Carra. At the beginning of his career, like lots of young painters of his generation, Roberto Crippa was influenced by neo-cubism and was thus generalized. His first solo exhibition was at the Bergamini Gallery in Milan in 1947.
The artists was one of the first in Italy, to practice gestural painting, which he produced between 1948-1952 his sharply-colored spiral webs. In 1948, Crippa becomes one of the founding members of the Spacialist group, a group founded around Lucio Fontana, whose objective was to search for a new spatial representation, by technical means that was resolutely modern. From 1948 he participated regularly in group exhibitions and notably the Biennale of Venice.
Later he will devote himself to what the artist calls ‘Collages’, cut out forms that animate static surfaces. Roberto Crippa plays with the effects of matter on rough thick, surfaces, like wood or bark; the effects of plant elements or smooth or shiny metal, or transparent elements. His research naturally leads him towards sculpture and from 1956 he constructs numerous cut-out, welded metal works, of insects and monsters that are in line with the work of Chadwick. The artist is interested in movement in space; is he not he experienced airplane pilot who will represent Italy in the world aeronautic championship in 1971.Paralleling his painting and sculpture, Roberto Crippa also experiment with graphic work (engravings, lithographs, illustrated books). In the middle of the 60’s, he moves towards monochrome reliefs, most often painted in tones of gray.
The artist dies in a plan crash in 1972 in Bresso. He was 50 years old.»

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Emilio Scanavino (Genoa, 28 February 1922 – Milan, 28 November 1986) was an Italian painter and sculptor.In 1938 the young Scanavino enrolled to the Art School Nicolò Barabino of Genoa where he met his teacher Mario Calonghi, who had a great influence on Scanavino’s first formation. In 1942 he had his first exhibition at the Salone Romano of Genoa. In the same year he enrolled at the Faculty of Architecture at Milan University. In 1946 he married Giorgina Graglia.
In 1947 Scanavino moved, for the first time, to Paris where he met poets and artists such as Edouard Jaguer, Wols and Camille Bryen. This experience results invaluable on his stylistic grown. He especially assimilated Cubism echoes which he rendered into a personal interpretation since 1948 when he exhibited at the Gallery Isola of Genoa. In the '50 years He was part of the Group «I sette del Numero» of the Numero Gallery in Florence, together the other famous painter Rocco Borella. In 1950 he exhibited at the 25th edition of the Venice Biennale and in 1951 at the Apollinaire Gallery of London in a two-person exhibition with the sculptor Sarah Jackson.

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Lucio Fontana ( 19 February 1899 – 7 September 1968) was an Italian painter, sculptor and theorist of Argentine birth. He was mostly known as the founder of Spatialism and his ties to Arte Povera.Born in Rosario, province of Santa Fe, Argentina to Italian immigrant parents, he was the son of the sculptor Luigi Fontana (1865 — 1946). Fontana spent the first years of his life in Italy and came back to Argentina in 1905, where he stayed until 1922, working as a sculptor along with his father, and then on his own. Already in 1926, he participated in the first exhibition of Nexus, a group of young Argentine artists working in Rosario de Santa Fé

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" Heinz Hajek-Halke was born in Berlin on December 1, 1898, but spent his childhood in Argentina. Back in Germany, he began to study graphics in Berlin in 1915. In 1916, he served as a soldier in World War I; thereafter he continued his studies.
Hajek-Halke began to take photographs in 1924, and soon he had work with the agency «Presse-Photo». He experimented with photographic techniques – among them light montages, double exposures, photo collages and photo montages. One special technique is «combi-photography,» in which Hajek-Halke mounted several negatives for one print. His pictures were innovative and made use of the newly discovered possibilities for manipulating photographs.
According to Hajek-Halke himself, he wanted «to place [...] an illusionistic actuality next to natural reality with all of the means available through advanced photographic technology, maintaining artistic principles». He worked in advertising, created reportages and took nude photographs.
In 1933, Hajek-Halke opposed the order by the NSDAP to falsify documentary films and moved to Lake Constance, where he worked with macro photographs of insects. In 1937, he created several photo reportages in Brazil. Two years later, he worked as a photographer at the Dornier-Werken in Friedrichshafen. In the last year of the war, he found himself imprisoned in France, but was able to flee soon thereafter.
Hajek-Halke was fascinated with snakes and built his own viper farm; he kept working with experimental photography. He created flexible figures out of wire which served as subjects for his photographic experiments («light graphics»). In 1949, he met Otto Steinert, who belonged to the group «fotoform». Hajek-Halke became a member of the group for a short while, and six years later he was appointed Professor of Photography and Photographics at the University of the Arts in Berlin."

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Walter Joseph De Maria (October 1, 1935 – July 25, 2013) was an American artist, sculptor, illustrator and composer, who lived and worked in New York City. Walter de Maria's artistic practice is connected with Minimal art, Conceptual art, and Land art of the 1960s.LACMA director Michael Govan said that «I think he's one of the greatest artists of our time.» Govan, who worked with De Maria for a number of years, found De Maria's work «singular, sublime and direct.De Maria was born in 1935 in Albany, California. His parents were the proprietors of a local restaurant in Albany. Walter De Maria's first academic interest was music—first piano, then percussion. He also took to sports and cars, of which he made drawings. By 1946 he had joined a musicians’ union

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Ralph Humphrey (April 14, 1932 – July 14, 1990) was an American abstract painter whose work has been linked to both Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. He was active in the New York art scene in the 1960s and '70s. His paintings are best summarized as an exploration of space through color and structure. He lived and worked in New York,The Estate of Ralph Humphrey is represented exclusively by Garth Greenan Gallery, New York

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«Christopher Lee „Chris“ Burden (April 11, 1946 – May 10, 2015) was an American artist working in performance, sculpture and installation art.Christopher Lee Burden, the son of Robert Burden, an engineer, and Rhoda Burden, a biologist, was born in Boston in 1946 and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts,France and Italy.[4] When he was 12, he endured emergency surgery — performed without anesthesia — on his left foot after having been severely injured in a motor-scooter crash on Elba; during the long convalescence that followed, he became deeply interested in visual art, particularly in photography.Burden studied for his B.A. in visual arts, physics and architecture at Pomona College and received his MFA at the University of California, Irvine – where his teachers included Robert Irwin – from 1969 to 1971. Burden began to work in performance art in the early 1970s, he made a series of controversial performances in which the idea of personal danger as artistic expression was central.
One of Burden’s most reproduced and cited pieces, Trans-Fixed took place on April 23, 1974 at Speedway Avenue in Venice, California.For this performance, Burden lay face up on a Volkswagen Beetle and had nails hammered into both of his hands, as if he were being crucified on the car. The car was pushed out of the garage and the engine revved for two minutes before being pushed back into the garage.
Later that year, Burden performed his piece White Light/White Heat at the Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York. For this work of experiment performance and self-inflicting danger, Burden spent twenty-two days lying on a triangular platform in the corner of the gallery. He was out of sight from all viewers and he could not see them either. According to Burden, he did not eat, talk, or come down the entire time........»

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Jean Fautrier (May 16, 1898 – July 21, 1964) was a French painter, illustrator, printmaker, and sculptor. He was one of the most important practitioners of Tachisme.Jean Fautrier was born in Paris in 1898. He was given his unwed mother's surname and raised by his grandmother until she and his father both died in 1908. He then moved to London to be with his mother. There, in 1912, he began to study at the Royal Academy of Arts. Unsatisfied by instruction he thought too rigid, he left to study briefly at the Slade School, which was reputed to be more avant-garde. He was disappointed again and decided to go it alone, devoting himself to painting. The works he saw in the Tate Gallery made a far greater impression on him; he especially admired the paintings of J. M. W. Turner. He was called up for the French Army in 1917, but was discharged in 1921 due to his poor health.

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Włodzimierz Borowski was one of the artists whose work reflects the major changes in Polish avant-garde art from the 1950s until the end of the 1970s. He was born in 1930 in Kurów in Lubelszczyzna, and died on December 31st 2008 in Warsaw. Between 1956 and 1959 he studied art history at the Catholic University in Lublin, where – even during the times of Stalinist propaganda – some philosophical freedom persisted.

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«Karen Karnes (November 17, 1925 – July 12, 2016) was an American ceramist, best known for her earth toned stoneware ceramics. She was born in 1925 in New York City, where she attended art schools for children. Her garment worker parents were Russian and Polish Jewish immigrants, and the family lived in the Bronx Coops. Karen was influenced in many ways by her parents' communist philosophies, and has professed respect for working in small communities.
In 1967, Karnes first experimented with salt-firing at a workshop at the Penland School of Crafts.Karnes' more recent work deal with contemporary vessels, which are given different attention to design than her original pottery. She still today makes many traditionally functional forms. Today Karen primarily fills her kilns with more contemporary forms, but she continues to produce casseroles, teapots, cups and bowls.
Another of her most well-known forms is the cut-lid jar, a form she first made at a workshop with Paulus Berensohn. Karnes continued to experiment with this form from the late 1960s until she stopped throwing.
Karen decided to live the rest of her life on a farm, working with clay and using old firing practices such as wood and salt firing. In 1998, her house and studio burned to the ground because of a kiln fire.With the help of donations from a large pottery sale, Karen rebuilt her country house and studio. She received a Graduate Fellowship from Alfred University, and more recently won a gold medal for the consummate craftsmanship from The American Craft Council.Her work is displayed in numerous galleries and permanent collections worldwide»

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