EVENT DESCRIPTION
White Cube Hong Kong is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings by Salvatore Emblema (1929–2006), marking the first solo presentation in Asia of works by the Italian artist. Born in 1929 in Terzigno, Naples, Emblema, with his singular focus on the qualities of light, space and transparency, diverged from his contemporaries in Italy’s post-war avant-garde. Inspired by the landscape of his upbringing – a volcanic red zone on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius – Emblema worked predominantly with natural materials, extracting his pigments from soils, stones and agricultural materials.
Spanning the 1960s to the 1980s, the show displays pivotal works that capture Emblema’s radical exploration of light, space, and material. Working from the volcanic landscape of southern Italy, Emblema embedded his canvases with elemental materials — raw jute, oxidised earth, and mineral pigments in tones of sienna, deep black, burnished red, and electric blue. By removing threads from his canvasses, a technique he called detessuto, he transformed them into a porous veil, allowing light, air, and the surrounding architecture to permeate the work. For Emblema, painting was never fixed; it was, as he wrote, “a space made of light,” a living field of transparency, vibration, and atmosphere.
In the early 1950s Emblema met Jean Dubuffet, whose unorthodox approaches, like mixing oil paint with mud, sand, glass, gravel, and cement, further encouraged his interest in working with materials widely considered debased. During this period, Emblema was also looking at works by Lucio Fontana and Alberto Burri, who also challenged traditional painting techniques and the conventional picture plane. In 1957 Emblema was invited to New York by David Rockefeller, a major supporter of his work. There he frequently visited the studios of Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman. This experience shaped Emblema’s work in the decades that followed. Though resistant to categorisation, his work resonates with Arte Povera and Minimalism, while remaining defiantly singular.
