For its autumn exhibition, Spazio -1 offers an unusual juxtaposition between two artists of different generations: the Ticino painter, Livio Bernasconi (born Muralto, 1932) and the American sculptor, Carol Bove (born Geneva, 1971). As every year, Spazio -1 also presents a new installation of the Collezione Olgiati, with the aim of co-relating artworks by historical and contemporary artists acquired at different times.

The artistic identities of Livio Bernasconi and Carol Bove were forged by the exchanges and cross-pollinations between Swiss and American culture. This year, the American artist, Carole Bove is representing Switzerland at the Venice Biennale. Livio Bernasconi, who trained in Ticino and Italy, lived in the United States in the mid-1960s, a sojourn that produced a rigorous and prolific comparison between his European training, in the field of the informal American Pop Art, and Abstract Expressionism. Bernasconi’s pictorial dimension and Bove’s plastic universe – in spite of the different media they use and their different intellectual mindsets – are characterized by their abstract visual language enriched with great chromatic energy.