Gregorio Vardánega (Passagno, Italy, 1923 - Paris, France, 2007)
He was born on March 21, 1923, in Passagno, Treviso, Italy. His family settled in Argentina when he was a little child. He began his artistic studies at the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes in 1939, where he graduated as a Drawing Professor in 1946.
In 1946 he took part in the Asociación Arte Concreto-Invención and participated in several of its exhibitions.
Two years later he traveled to Europe with Carmelo Arden Quin and had an exhibition at the Salon d’ Amérique Latine, Paris, in 1949, where he met Michel Seuphor, Georges Vantongerloo, Antoine Pevsner, Sonia Delaunay, Max Bill, and other important abstract artists.
He returned to Argentina in 1950 where his works were exhibited in Joven pintura (Young Painting), at the Peuser gallery.
In his early works he used glass and Plexiglas, and from flat geometric forms he drifted to the investigation of hemispheres. Later, his interest in the kinetic search took him to devise movable mechanisms and, towards the 60s, his Plexiglas spheres showed the peculiarity of containing other smaller spheres or receiving projections of colored lights. Departing from a few and simple elements, Vardanega managed to create manifold variations with games of light and movement.
He was one of the charter members of the Asociación Arte Nuevo (New Art Association) and the Artistas no Figurativos Argentinos (Argentine Non-Figurative Artists, ANFA) group. In 1957 his works were included in the Argentine representation to the IV Biennial International Exhibition of San Pablo and he participated in the International Exhibition of Brussels the following year, where he was awarded a Gold Medal.
By 1959 he decided to settle in Paris, where his works were regularly exhibited at the Salon France-Amérique (1959); Realités Nouvelles (1961); Structures, at the Galerie Denise René (1961); Trente Argentins de la Nouvelle Génération, at the Galerie Creuze (1962); Art d'Amérique Latine, at the Musée d'Art Moderne (1962); Esquisse d'un Salon, at the Galerie Denise René (1963); Art Argentin Actuel, at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1964); Structure et mouvement, at the Galerie Denise René (1966); and at the Biennale de Paris (1967), hosted by the Musée d'Art Moderne, among other important exhibitions.
He also participated in Nouvelles Tendences, Zagreb and Venice (1963); Mouvement, Zurich (1964); Kinetik II, Düsseldorf (1964); Lumière, mouvement et optique, Brussels (1965); Instituto Di Tella, Buenos Aires (1966); La luce, Rome (1967); and Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo (1968).
Among his most relevant exhibitions, he took part in Grands et jeunes d'aujourd' hui, Grand Palais, Paris (1978-82); Argentina, Arte Concreto Invención 1945. Grupo Madí 1946 (Argentina, Concrete Art-Invention 1945, Madí Group 1946), at the Rachel Adler Gallery, New York, 1990; Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1993); and in the Abstract Art from the Rio de la Plata, Buenos Aires and Montevideo 1933/53 exhibition, at The Americas Society of New York (2001).
