Edmondo Bacci's 'L'energia della luce' at Peggy Guggenheim Collection

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice is hosting 'L'energia della luce', a solo exhibition dedicated to Venetian spatialist painter Edmondo Bacci (1913–1978). The show focuses on his 1950s canvases, a period of international acclaim, including the 'Avvenimenti' series—explosions of color and light that evoke abstract lyricism, sometimes mixed with sand and plaster. Earlier works reflect Bacci's postwar ethical commitment, with grids of black marks referencing the Marghera factories, later dissolved by color. Later sections feature 'Carte bruciate' (burned papers), where fire transforms paper into unpredictable black constellations. In the 1970s, influenced by Kinetic art, Bacci incorporated everyday objects. The exhibition concludes by inviting a comparison between Tiepolo's 'Giudizio finale' (c. 1730–35) and Bacci's 'Avvenimento #31-A (Esplosione)' (1956), highlighting the Venetian pictorial tradition. Bacci was a signatory of the 1953 manifesto 'Lo spazialismo e la pittura italiana del XX secolo' but developed his own spatialism where light and space are evoked through color. As Toni Toniato wrote, 'Bacci does not paint the phenomenon, he enacts it.'