Vincenzo Baviera

Vincenzo Baviera created, on his pre-visit to the island in June 1997, a Model of how he wanted to transform 'the gallery' at Grange House. During this Swiss artist's month-long residency he realised this Installation (drawing from his roots in Constructivism) and the resulting exhibition ran until 12th December 1997. A 12 page b/w catalogue documents the work made in Guernsey

Mehrfachpendel
Steel, 2.3 x 9.8 x 2.8m, 1996

Pendel 1994
Steel, 335 x 232 x 93cm, 1994

Stehdreher
Steel, 180cm (height), 1995

Vincenzo Baviera is a Swiss artist whose work has its foundations in Constructivism. Like many of his contemporaries living in mainland Europe the movement led byTatlin and embodied by Naum Gabo and his brother, Antoine Pevsner, in their Realistic Manifesto of 1920, has formed the bedrock for the whole of his artistic endeavour. In fact, constructive thinking has, in no way, been limited to problems of form and aesthetics but has become typical of a way of seeing, feeling and acting. As Naum Gabo wrote to Herbert Read "I have come to the conclusion that a work of art restricted to what the artist has put in it is only a part of itself. It only attains full stature with what people and time make of it. It involves the whole complex of human relation to life. It is a mode of thinking, acting, perceiving and living"

This sentiment is taken up by Vincenzo Baviera and it's influence can be seen clearly in his work which embraces Content and Form (from the Constructive point of view one and same thing) while clearly also searching for gravity-defying solutions. With no doubt, in his work such as "Mehrfachpendel", 1996, he succeeds. Here, cones, traced in space by steel rods, are suspended from the ceiling. The effect is to control space while inherently creating a dialogue with the existing room. In fact Baviera goes as far as to say that his work should be "measured" by it's width, length, breadth, time and gravity. From his point of view "the earth carries me rather than me standing (with a claim) on the earth"

It is a challenge for artists working today to embrace the concept of Constructivism, keep true to its beliefs and yet carry on discovering new forms. As fellow countryman and Switzerland's most distinguished non-objective artist, Max Bill, said in 1972 "art is just as pluralist as our society. If you move among present-day problems you naturally have to grapple with them all and this generates the picture of the world from which you derive your creative impulse. In the course of time you take an independent attitude, you regard past and present critically in the light of your studies and your own experience"

Vincenzo Baviera has lived all his life in Zürich, was part of the 1968 protests and was in the city when Camille Graeser exhibited his "Permutation S" painting which introduced "translokation" into the Constructivist canon. He saw, while at university, such hope in the Russian rationalisation and drew inspiration from his professor who had been, himself, a pupil of Le Corbusier. Not surprisingly Baviera became immersed in Bauhaus and Constructivist history and while looking back he began to want to find new visual solutions to the continual quest of "perfecting our world": Gabo went on to say, in his essay of 1937 that "this is the task which we constructive artists have set ourselves, which we are doing, and which we hope will be continued by the future generation". Vincenzo Baviera has taken up this challenge