Franco Nonnis: The Experimental Artist Who Defied the Market

Franco Nonnis (Rome, 1925–1991) was a multidisciplinary artist who moved between music, painting, and stage design. After a degree in mathematics, he turned to art in the early 1950s, befriending Roberto Melli, Orfeo Tamburi, and Achille Perilli. By the late 1950s, he was exhibiting abstract, colorful canvases in Germany, influenced by Kandinsky and Emilio Vedova. In 1957, he collaborated with composer Franco Evangelisti on the electronic composition 'Incontri di fasce sonore' and joined the experimental music association Nuova Consonanza, connecting with writers Giorgio Manganelli, Nanni Balestrini, and Alfredo Giuliani. His Cronogrammi series merged painting and writing. Nonnis evolved toward Informale, incorporating mixed media and corrugated cardboard. Despite increasing exhibition opportunities in Italy and Spain during the 1960s, his aversion to the market hindered his career. Director Antonio Calenda noted Nonnis lived on nothing and failed to commercialize his art, unlike his peers. After a 1991 exhibition at Museo Laboratorio della Sapienza curated by Simonetta Lux, Nonnis was forgotten until the current retrospective 'Sobre sí mismo: Franco Nonnis 1959-1965' at La Galleria Nazionale in Rome, curated by Maurizio Farina, Francesco Mozzetti, and Guido Rebecchini, featuring 21 paintings from 1959 to 1964.