Artist
Cavellini's artistic career found its beginnings from a talent for brush and ink script, used on windows and price cards at the family business. He later found himself scripting Mussolini's slogans during his army service. Dabblings with painting and drawing through the mid-1940s were eventually replaced in the early 1960s by works best classified as Neo-Dada or Nouveau Realiste. He would continue this diversion from traditional forms into the 1970s and 1980s with Mail art and Conceptual art.
"As these artistic activities unfolded Cavellini formed two essential convictions. First, art-making is fundamentally a form of behavior. In this he embraced a 20th-century tradition stretching from Dada through Fluxus and Austrian Actionism. Second, and more distinctively Cavellinian, art history and all that accompanies it--biography, taste, market values, reputations--are malleable fictions and therefore suitable materials for the artist" (Vetrocq 1993).
His eventual reputation as a mail artist resulted in part from the sheer number of individuals with whom he corresponded. In 1978, he sent his work Nemo propheta in patria, by post, to over 15,000 recipients.
Read more about this topic: Guglielmo Achille Cavellini
Famous quotes containing the word artist:
“When I say artist I don’t mean in the narrow sense of the word—but the man who is building things—creating molding the earth—whether it be the plains of the west—or the iron ore of Penn. It’s all a big game of construction—some with a brush—some with a shovel—some choose a pen.”
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“There was an artist in the city of Kouroo who was disposed to strive after perfection. One day it came into his mind to make a staff. Having considered that in an imperfect work time is an ingredient, but into a perfect work time does not enter, he said to himself, It shall be perfect in all respects, though I should do nothing else in my life.”
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“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
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