Adami is recognized internationally as an important European artist. Spaightwood has works from his three major periods of activity. In his early Pop-related works, he offers us views of isolated fragments of modern society in which objects are taken out of perspective and context to allow us to see them anew. These are largely sleek designer-visions of a world with no visible signs of life in it. They were succeeded by a number of works focusing on historic moments and presentations of such heroes of modern culture as Freud, Joyce, and Walter Benjamin, often evoking rather ruefully the world they desired but failed to create. The works of his most recent period are perhaps his most interesting and attractive. They demonstrate his desire, as recounted in Jane Kramer's "Letter from Europe" in the May 14, 1984 issue of The New Yorker magazine, to reawaken civilization’s desire for a space to dream and to fantasize by revivifying the myths of Western culture and history, peopling his works with characters from Ovidian scenes and other fictive moments that might enable us to once again, renewed, begin the search for the springs of sexuality, desire, beauty, and creativity. Our inventory focuses upon the works of this period, representing the earlier ones mostly by inexpensive large-edition unsigned lithographs as a means of putting the later signed works within the context of his career to date.
The subject of a special number of Eighty, a French journal devoted to the works of the painters of the 1980s, he was also honored in 1985 by full-scale retrospectives at the Centre Georges-Pompidou in Paris and the Communo of Milan. Adami’s first major show in 1962 at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London was quickly followed by an exhibit at Documenta III in Cassel. In addition to representing Italy at the 1968 Venice Biennale, Adami has had major shows at the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), the Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels), the museums of Caracas, Ulm, Hambourg, Bordeau, Marseille, Charleroi, Mexico, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Siena, Venice, Aix-en-Province, the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Madison Art Center (Madison WI), the Palazzo Reale in Milan, and many other galleries in Europe and America. He is also the subject of critical studies by Jacques Derrida, Italo Calvino, Jean-Francois Lyotard and others.
Select Bibliography: Valerio Adami & Carlos Fuentes, Valerio Adami (Monaco: Marlborough Monaco, 2002); Valerio Adami, Werke 1976-1996. Frankfurt. 10/1996 (Frankfurt: Museum Bochum. 1996); Dore Ashton, "Searching High and Low" (NY: Marisa del Re Gallery, 1984); Italo Calvino, Vier fabels van Aesopus voor Valerio Adami/ Quatre fables d' Esope pour Valerio Adami/ Quattro favole d' Esopo per Valerio Adami/ Vier fablen von Aesop für Adami (Antwerp: Lens Fine Art, 1981); Pier Giovanni Castagnoli & Roberto Roversi,Valerio Adami à Bologna (Bologna: Stamparte Editrice, 1988); Jacques Derrida, "Le voyage du dessin" (Paris: Maeght Editeur, 1975); Paolo Fabbri, ed. Valerio Adami. Opere 1990-2000 (Milano: Skira, 2000); Pierre Gaudibert, ed. Adami: Image et Eros Chez Adami. Texts by Pierre Gaudibert, Carlos Fuentes, Alain Jouffroy, Henry Martin, Gérald Gassiot-Talabot (Paris. ARC/Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris); Hubert Damisch & Henry Martin, Adami (NY: Amiel Publisher, 1974); Roger Lesgards, Valerio Adami (Cherche Midi, 1999); Jean-Francois Lyotard, "It's As If A Line..." trans. Mary Lydon (Contemporary Literature 29 [1988)], 454-84; the essay was originally published in repères: cahiers d'art contemporain 6 (Paris, 1983). See also "Anamnesis of the visible, or Candour," The Lyotard Reader (Basil Blackwell, 1989), chapter 12; Adami. Narrazioni mitologiche. Ritratti simbolici. Quadri politici. Quadri letterari (Milano: Museo Mediceo di Firenze, 1996); Octavio Paz, "La ligne narrative," repères: cahiers d'art contemporain 77 (Paris, 1991); J. Zugazagoitia, ed. Adami. Itinerari dello sguardo. Spoleto, Palazzo Racani Arroni 25/6-13/7/1997 (Milano: Electa, 1997).
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