Betty
Danon
Biography
Having moved to Milan in 1956, Danon showed her work in several exhibitions in Italy and abroad. Among the group exhibitions: in 1977 Magma at the Museum of Castelvecchio (Verona), in 1978 Materializzazione del linguaggio at the Venice Biennale, in 1979 at the National Modern Art Gallery of Lisbon and the Westfälischer Kunstverein of Münster, in 1980 at the Venice Biennale in Il tempo nel museo, in 1981 at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome and at the São Paulo Bienal, where she also exhibited in 1982 at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo. She voluntarily left the traditional exhibition circuits in the 1980s and continued her artistic activity in private until her death. In recent years, her works have been exhibited in several group exhibitions: in 2019 Doing Deculturalization (Museion, Bolzano) and The Unexpected Subject: 1978 Art and Feminism in Italy (Frigoriferi Milanesi, Milan); in 2020 Writing by Drawing (Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva). A large part of her archive is conserved at the Mart of Trento and Rovereto (Archivio del ‘900, Fondo Betty Danon).
Critical text
(…) All my work is based on a dynamic and dialectic
research within an interior dimension invariably
centred on man as a spectator and protagonist in a world
of endless combinations and probabilities…
all considered a big enigma about
what concerns being and becoming,
the happenings of micro and macrocosm,
the mystery of chance, the ambiguity of reality.
The basic element I use to express myself
is l i n e, as a dynamic psychic force.
By superimposing signs and the endless
possibile combinations I carry out an analysis
of surface-space, space-time-rhythm
relationships, and I make what I call “abstract scores”.(…)
_Betty Danon
poetics declaration 1975
