Luigi Veronesi

Luigi Veronesi (Milan 28 May 1908 - 25 February 1998) was an Italian painter, photographer, director, and set designer. Born in Milan, he began to analyze and explore the creative potential of photography in his father's darkroom at the age of 17,. In the 1920s, he began his artistic career, attending a course in textile design. At the same time, his exploration of photography led him to use certain techniques to create highly original images. Veronesi was introduced by Raffalle Giolli to a group of intellectuals associated with the magazine Poligono. At the age of 20, he became interested in painting, studying with the Neapolitan painter Carmelo Violante who, at that time, was a professor at the Carrara Academy in Bergamo. Veronesi participated in the first group show of abstract art in Italy; it was held on 4 March 1934 in the Turin studio of the painters Felice Casorati and Enrico Paolucci. The other artists included Oreste Bogliardi, Cristoforo De Amicis, Ezio D'Errico, Lucio Fontana, Virginio Ghiringhelli, Osvaldo Licini, Fausto Melotti, Mauro Reggiani, and Atanasio Soldati, all of whom signed the "Manifesto della Prima Mostra Collettiva di Arte Astratta Italiana" ("Manifesto of the First Group Exhibition of Abstract Italian Art"). He took part in the 1936 Milan Triennial. The same year he was part of an abstract art exhibition in Como that included Lucio Fontana, Virginio Ghiringhelli, Osvaldo Licini, Albero Magnelli, Fausto Melotti, Enrico Prampolini, Mario Radice, Mauro Reggiani, Manlio Rho, and Atanasio Soldati. The catalog contained an introduction by Alberto Sartoris. Again in 1936, Veronesi illustrated Leonardo Sinisgalli’s "Quaderno di geometria". In 1939, he had a personal exhibition at Gallerie L'Equipe in Paris. That same year he published "14 variazioni su un tema pittorico" with a musical commentary by Riccardo Malipiero, initiating an insightful analysis of the relationship between musical and chromatic scales, with particular interest in dodecaphonic music. In Milan, in 1932, Galleria Il Milione hosted Veronesi’s first figurative creations. Subsequently, he began his personal exploration of abstractionism. In Paris, Veronesi formed a relationship with Léger in 1932. Interested in Russian and Dutch constructivism, he then abandoned the figurative structure of his debut, delving into geometric abstraction. In 1934, Veronesi joined the Parisian group Abstraction-Création where he became acquainted with experiments in Swiss constructivism and subscribed to the Bauhaus method, with Wassily Kandinsky’s "lesson" being instrumental. He took part in the Arte Astratta Arte Concreta exhibition at the Royal Palace in Milan. He was very active first in theater and later in cinema, making a total of 6 abstract, experimental films. Of these, four have been lost completely, while only short, unprojectable clips remain of the others (the first ones date back to the 1940s). During the war, Veronesi used his knowledge of graphics and design to become a counterfeiter for the National Liberation Movement. After the war, he was a co-founder of the photographic group La Bussola. He worked for many years as a graphic designer and advertising agent; some of his shots became covers for such magazines as Campografico and Ferrania. In 1949, Veronesi joined the Movement for Concrete Art (MAC) – founded in Milan in 1948 by Atanasio Soldati, Gillo Dorfles, Bruno Munari, and Gianni Monet – and participated in the movement’s exhibitions. Veronesi’s interest in music continued, creating a polydimensionality in his art intended as an overall plan. His research on the mathematical relationships of musical notes intensified as he translating the notes into tonal relationships of color. He thus created numerous chromatic transpositions of musical scores. In the late 1990s, by the musician Sergio Maltagliati expanded Veronesi’s research. He was named to the Chair of Chromatology and Composition at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts due to his scientific research on color, color perception, and music in the 1970s (1973-77),. He was an active participant in many of the exhibitions during those years, including the exhibition of Italian abstractionism at the 33rd Venice Biennale, the Festival of Contemporary Music, and a solo exhibition at the Galleria Spatia in Bolzano in 1980 in addition to another in Pordenone in 1984. In 1983, he received the Feltrinelli Prize for painting from the Accademia dei Lincei. In 1987, he worked together with Maria Lai, Costantino Nivola, and Guido Strazza on the artistic design for the communal wash-house in Ulassai, Sardinia. In 1989, Luigi Veronesi and Giancarlo Pauletto co-authored a book on the artist Genesio De Gottardo. Still, in the 1980s, he designed several sets for the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the sketches of which are permanently in the theater’s museum. His activity as a scenographer was also marked by his interest in investigating the relationship between sounds and colors through visual transpositions of musical frequencies. He died in the city of his birth in 1998.