Art and computer in the information age through the activities of the Leonard V-Idea Gallery in Genoa

Abstract

In 1985 in Genoa Rosa Leonardi - who had already been involved in the direction of various avant-garde galleries in the previous decades - opened a new exhibition space called Leonardi V-Idea with the exhibition Nel vuoto del ritorno, which presented computer videos made by the Giovanotti Mondani Meccanici collective. This is the beginning of a twenty-year activity that will see the gallery qualify itself as one of the most important venues in Italy for the promotion of computer art, through exhibitions, events, conferences, and debates. In addition to group exhibitions that documented the constant updates in the sector (in 1989, for example, La Bellezza dei Frattali), the gallery hosted personal exhibitions of experimental artists such as Massimo Contrasto, the aforementioned Giovanotti Mondani Meccanici, PostMachina and Tommaso Tozzi. The material relating to this particular area of interest of the gallery, consisting of documents still partly unpublished and including works of computer art by various Italian artists, is today conserved in Genova at the Leonardi V-Idea Archives and the University of Genoa Archives of Contemporary Art. Through the study of these materials, the essay intends to offer a contribution on the history of computer art and its diffusion between the eighties and nineties of the last century.

Keywords

• computer art
• digital imaging
• computer graphics
• art and technology
• leonardi v-idea