Literature

A. Valtolina, Adami. 1956-1963, Gli anni a Milano/The Years in Milan, Fondazione Marconi-Skira, Milan 2015, ill. p. 13, n. 46

During the 1960s Valerio Adami became one of the leading representatives of the Narrative Figuration movement and took part in a number of group and solo exhibitions in Paris, among them the seminal show La Figuration Narrative. 

He soon gained an international reputation and was shown at documenta III in Kassel (1964), the Venice Biennale (1968) and the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas (1969). In 1965, the Studio Marconi held its first Adami exhibition.

Looking at Adami’s work from the 1960s, comic books and cartoons as well as the graphic art of billboards come to mind. Further influences were Cloisonnism, a post-Impressionist movement in which bold, flat forms of colour are bordered by black lines, and British Pop art with its inspiration from commercial advertisements, magazines, movies and celebrity culture.

Many works from the early 1960s depicted pure energy and frenzy: objects blown into a thousand pieces, cosmic rays and dense smoke clouds mixed with speech bubbles, stars, onomatopoetic keywords and body fragments such as lips, fingernails or legs. (…) A large number of the paintings from the later 60s, was inspired by the numerous photos from Adami’s visit to New York in 1966 where he took pictures of shop windows, hotel rooms, public toilets and subway stations. While in New York, he met Saul Steinberg and Allen Ginsberg and resided and worked at the Chelsea Hotel.