Peter Downsbrough's “autobiography”, conceived and "written" in 2023, his last artist's book ever.
Autobiography is a series published by Tonini Editore. Each volume is dedicated to an artist, who is free to carry out the topic of the autobiography by means of text or visual supports. Belonging to a series, each book has the same size and maximum amount of pages (64). The selection of the artists participating to the series is coordinated by a scientific committee made up of six renown personalities in the world of the art research and collection: Pedro Barbosa (collector and founder of the Coleção Moraes - Barbosa), Alex Bacon (art historian), Claudio Guenzani (gallery owner in Milan, owner of the Studio Guenzani),
Michele Lombardelli (artist, composer, typographer and consultant for several publishing houses), Shwetal Ashvin Patel (writer and researcher, founding member of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale), Christoph Schifferli (collector and scholar), and Valentino Tonini (director of the homonymous publishing house).
The work of visual artist, photographer and film artist Peter Downsbrough (1940-2024)
has had a major impact on the perception of art. The varied work of the artist—ranging from sculpture and books to photography,
video, and film—maintained a complex relationship with architecture and
typography, while also drawing on the achievements of the early avant-garde
(Bauhaus, De Stijl) and Minimal Art.
In terms of form, the work of Downsbrough
is highly rigorous and exhibits a powerful geometric sense, restricting itself
primarily to the use of line, plane, negative space (cutting away), and
delimitation. In addition to his spatial manipulations, the artist also has
a keen interest in place, as is evidenced in his cartographical works and
city photographs.
Downsbrough studied architecture and art. Around the mid-1960s, after several years of work and exploring materials, an evolution took place with resulted, in 1970, in the work with the Two Pipes (outside), Two Dowels (inside), and Two Lines (on paper). At the same time, he also started taking photographs to document these pieces. Buy taking photographs of "cuts" that already existed in the urban landscape. Some of these photographs were used in books, some appeared in magazines, but it wasn't until 1960 that they showed up in exhibitions. From 1977 on, Downsbrough realized several videos as well as audiotapes. A record was made in 1978 and released in 1982. In 1980, on the Spectacolor Board on Times Square, N.Y., he realized a piece, a 30 second spot shown once every hour for four days and documented it in a short film, "7 come 11". The work with maquettes as a means of exploring space and structure started around 1983. The first commissioned public work was a wall piece realized in Rennes, France, 1990.
