Renato Spagnoli‘s artistic career (Livorno 1928-2019) took shape after his visit to the Venice Biennale in 1960, where he was struck by the profound visual renewal, the rhythm and liberating atmosphere of art and music and, in particular, by the work of Franz Kline. From 1961 onwards, Spagnoli‘s works moved away from figuration to embrace the characteristic features of Action Painting which, between 1962 and 1963, first approached Classical Florentine Abstract Art and then the letter “A”, a sign that would become distinctive in his work. With his anarchist friend Giorgio Bartoli, Spagnoli founded the Atoma Group in 1963, which was joined by Mario Lido Graziani and Renato Laquaniti. They presented their manifesto in 1964 at Fiamma Vigo‘s Galleria Numero in Florence. The Atoma Group participated in the founding of the Experimental Museum of Contemporary Art in Turin. His work until the mid-1990s was close to Visual-Concrete Poetry, but also in line with Optical and Kinetic research. This dual aspect of his investigation, as indicated by Lara-Vinca Masini, led him to forge links with visual poets such as Eugenio Miccini and Giuseppe Chiari, but also with Bruno Munari, whom he met at the Sincron gallery in Brescia.
In his works from 1995 to the present day, we witness the gradual and definitive breakdown of Spagnoli‘s characteristic style, with the typical features of his early 1960s works making a comeback, but in sculptures, either freestanding or wall-mounted, which articulate themselves, “climbing” into space and creating rhythms of solids and voids, of entrances and exits of structures in motion. In his early years, he collaborated in Livorno with gallery owners Bruno and Fabrizio Giraldi, then, thanks to his friend and gallery owner Roberto Peccolo, he held exhibitions and enjoyed stays in Italy, France, Germany and England, coming into contact with various artists, including Eliseo Mattiacci and Hugo Demarco. His works in Livorno include the large A in Piazza Attias (2011) and Grido Rosso in Piazza Grande (2016). Renato Spagnoli passed away in Livorno on 13 March 2019.