Collection: Roberto Crippa

Roberto Crippa was born in Milan in 1921 and trained at the Brera Academy, where he encountered artists and critics who would influence his career. After his early figurative work, he moved towards abstraction and in 1949 signed the Manifesto of Spatialism promoted by Lucio Fontana, becoming one of the protagonists of this revolutionary movement.

Beginning in the early 1950s, Crippa developed his signature visual language, based on spirals, vortices, and dynamic lines, which he painted on monochrome or textured backgrounds. His "spatial spirals" are not merely decorative forms, but signs charged with energy and tension, reflecting a new vision of art as an extension of space and matter. These works placed him at the center of postwar Italian abstract art.

At the same time, Crippa also experimented with three-dimensional techniques, collage, and iron sculpture, moving between informal and material, creating series such as "Totem" and "Lunar Surfaces." He was among the first Italian artists to use industrial materials, burning, and reliefs, contributing to the evolution of informal and spatialist art.

He participated several times in the Venice Biennale (1950, 1954, 1956, 1960) and the Rome Quadrennial, achieving growing international recognition. He exhibited in France, Germany, the United States, and South America. His works soon entered the collections of major European and American museums and foundations.

A multifaceted artist, he was also a passionate stunt pilot and a collaborator with Italian industrial companies, creating architectural-scale panels and decorations. His visual language, composed of centrifugal tensions and nervous textures, remains one of the most recognizable in 20th-century Italian art.

Roberto Crippa died prematurely in a plane crash in 1972. His artistic legacy is today preserved by important museums, archives, and private collections, which continue to recognize his work as one of the most original in the Italian abstract scene.