Dadamaino

Eduarda Emilia Maino, nicknamed "Dada" for Eduarda, was born in Milan, Italy.[1] Dadamaino first completed a medical degree before taking up art at the end of the 1950s. She frequented a group of young artists who followed Lucio Fontana and the spatialism movement. Members of the group included: Piero Manzoni, Gianni Colombo, Enrico Castellani and Agostino Bonalumi.[2]

In 1958, Dadamaino produced a series of works called Volumi, which were exhibited in her first solo show at the Galleria dei Bossi in Milan the same year.[3]

Shortly after, Dadamaino joined Azimuth, a group funded by Piero Manzoni, and the Germany-based Group Zero formed by Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and Günther Uecker.

The following years brought important experiments, among them the occupation with color grading and interferences between 1966 and 1968. Dadamaino intensively examined the effects of spectral colors to which she added black, white and brown in order to interrelate them. In 1967, at the peak of this development, she made her well known "ricerca del colore", an "exploration of the color". In squared plates Dadamaino analyzes the reciprocal effect of color and form, by grading each color in light and dark shades and contrasting it in lamellar stripes, she creates motion in the observer's eye. These were works of special aesthetic and one of her most important period of creation. [4]

Dadamaino counted Lucio Fontana and Yves Klein as major influences.

Dadamaino had two solo shows at the Venice Biennale in 1980 and in 1990.

• 1962 : Nul group exhibition, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
• 1983 : Retrospective, Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy
• 2000 : Retrospective, Bochum museum, Bochum, Germany
• 2011 : "Volumes 1958-60", The Major Gallery, London, United Kingdom
• 2013 : Dadamaino, Le Consortium, Dijon, France
• 2013 : Dadamaino, Tornabuoni art, Paris, France

Dadamaino’s works can be seen in collections such as the Tate in London, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in Venice, the Philadelphia Museum of Art,[5] the Foundation of Concrete Art in Reutlingen, Germany and the Museum of Contemporary Art Villa Croce in Genoa.