He studied at the Brera artistic high school in Milan. He worked in the neo-cubist and then neo-concretist fields, presenting abstract paintings at his first solo exhibition at the Cavallino gallery in Venice in 1947, with an introductory text by Beniamino Joppolo, finding credit among collectors. Read the full biography
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He studied at the Brera artistic high school in Milan. He worked in the neo-cubist and then neo-concretist fields, presenting abstract paintings at his first solo exhibition at the Cavallino gallery in Venice in 1947, with an introductory text by Beniamino Joppolo, finding credit among collectors. In the 1950s he joined Fontana's Spatialism, alongside Crippa, Corpora, Peverelli, Tancredi, Dangelo. From 1951 to 1955 he worked in the 'tachiste' field with acrylic enamels airbrushed or mixed with sand and dripped onto the canvas by 'dripping'. Dova is also among the first interpreters of the 'nuclear painting' of Baj and Dangelo (he joined the movement in 1951 with Bertini) and of the experimental research of the informal in Italy. The solo exhibition at the Galleria del Milione in 1951, presented by Gillo Dorfles, and the presence at three consecutive editions of the Venice Biennale, alongside the support of critics, gave the artist vast notoriety at a national and international level. He recovers figuration through contact with Surrealism and his acquaintance with Max Ernst, perfected at the personal exhibition set up by the artist at the XXVII Biennale. His canvases, with vitreous colors suggestive of abyssal depths, are populated with strange insects, totems, disturbing metamorphic presences. From the figural influences of Fautrier's 'Otages' he passes to brutal totemic characters strongly structured and compressed in space, full of existential, derivative references from Lam. Among the countless personal exhibitions in private venues, mention should be made of the one in Turin at the Galatea gallery, presented by L.Carluccio in 1958. Long stays in Brittany in the early 1970s made his iconology turn in a naturalistic sense, with the abandonment of his usual aggressiveness of the subjects for a more relaxed interpretative climate.
