Irma Blank

Blank was born in Celle, Lower Saxony.[2][3] In 1955 she traveled to Italy, first to Syracuse, Sicily, in the tradition of Goethe's Italian Journey.[4] She stayed in Italy for life, working as a high school art teacher, with time for her own art only at night.[2] She lived in Milan from 1973,[3] where she had contact with a scene of concrete poetry.[5] She derived prints and paintings from written meaningless texts.[5] In the 1970 she collaborated with Mirella Bentivoglio several times. Her technique in Trascrizioni, a cycle begun in 1973 and ended in 1979, was to transcribe texts from printed material, such as newspapers, poetry and treatises, in black ink on transparent paper; during the process she "read" the material in monotonous sounds with her mouth closed,[2] which she recorded.[5]

In the 1970s, her art found international recognition at the documenta 6 in Kassel in 1977 and the 1978 Venice Biennale, but then fell into obscurity outside Italy until a rediscovery in the 2010s.[2]

She wrote in 2001:

I save writing from its enslavement to sense: writing purified of sense. I return to the zero point, the semantic zero, the semantic void: silence as a germinating source. ...
I give autonomy back to the sign, to the body of writing, in order to give voice to the silence, to the void. To the thoughts unthought. Writing is not linked to knowing, but to being. Writing is the home of being. ...
Nonverbal writing, writing that remains in silence, original truth. ...
Writing, place of perdition and discovery.[6]

Blank's art was presented at the 2017 Venice Biennale.[2] A retrospective of her work was held from 2019 to 2022, curated by Johana Carrier and Joana P. R. Neves.[1] It was presented at the Culturgest in Lisbon and MAMCO in Geneva in 2019, at the CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, the CCA Tel Aviv-Yafo and the Bauhaus Foundation Tel Aviv in 2020, at the Museo civico Villa dei Cedri in Bellinzona and the Bombas Gens Centre d'Art in Valencia in 2021, and at the ICA (Intitute of Contemporary Art) in Milan in 2021.[1] Walther König, Cologne, published an extensive monography.[1]

Blank died in Milan on 14 April 2023, at the age of 88.[2][7][8]

Blank's works have been presented in solo and group exhibitions, including:[1]

• 1977: Metamorphosen des Buches, documenta 6, Kassel[5][9]
• 1978: Materializzazione del linguaggio, Venice Biennale[5][9]
• 1979: Sprachen jenseits von Dichtung, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster[9]
• 1981: XVI São Paulo Art Biennial[9]
• 1989: Konfrontation 1974–1989, Bonner Kunstverein[9]
• 1992: Geteilte Bilder. Das Diptychon in der neuen Kunst. Museum Folkwang, Essen[9]
• 1992: Kunstsache, Kunstmuseum, Düsseldorf[9]
• 1997: Augenzeugen, Die Sammlung Hanck, Kunstmuseum, Düsseldorf[9]
• 2010: Modernités plurielles de 1905 à 1970, Centre Pompidou, Paris[9]
• 2011: Irma Blank & Silvie Defraoui: Writings Galleria Michela Rizzo, Venedig[9]
• 2012: Le mie parole, e tu? Galleria dell'Incisione, Brescia[9]
• 2013: Senza Parole P420[6][9]
• 2017: Venice Biennale[2][9]
• 2021: Museo Villa dei Cedri, Bellinzona[10][9]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Irma Blank.

• The first retrospective of Irma Blank at Culturgest, 2019 (artist speaking in Italian, Portuguese subtitles) on YouTube