Aldo Tambellini
His paternal grandfather, Paul Tambellini, was a coffee plantation owner in São Paulo, Brazil who later retired to Lucca.
Shortly after, Italy under Mussolini entered World War II as an ally of the Nazi regime, interrupting Tambellini's studies, but making an indelible impression on his artistic process.
In an interview with Femficatio, Tambellini discusses a particular young German soldier who liked art and used to admire his watercolors, and who also shared his feelings: "He didn't like the war either."
Tambellini took a series of odd jobs, picking potatoes with migrant workers and painting gasoline tanks in Oil City in Syracuse, New York.
While stepping on wet paint, he slipped toward the tank's unsecured edges and stopped a few inches from a sixty-foot drop – a plunge that could have killed him.
Shortly after, at the age of 17, Tambellini prepared his portfolio and met with Lee Brown Coye (illustrator of "Weird Tales") at the Syracuse Museum.
[3] At 18, Tambellini joined VEDET, which consisted of artists Hilton Kramer (who later became conservative critic for The New York Times) and James Kleege.
After completing his MFA, Tambellini moved to the Lower East Side, Manhattan, where he rented a studio above a shop for $56.00 a month.
In a flyer distributed by the Group highlighting its intentions it read: "For the purpose of forming a community of the arts, of individuals and groups, of poets, actors, dancers, painters, musicians, photographers, sculptors, film-makers, and all those vitally interested in the creative expression of man.... We believe that the artistic community has reached a new stage of development.
We feel the hunger of a society lost in its own vacuum and rise with an open active commitment to forward a new spirit for mankind.
There, through his collaboration with the black activist literary community, Tambellini pushed the bounds of intermedia to moving electromedia shows that involved him painting directly onto cellulose slides that were run through a projector; accompanied by a dancer, jazz, and poetry.
In 2009, Performa 09, the NYC performance biennial, hosted a memorable recreation of Black Zero at White Box (34 years after it premiered at the Astor Playhouse in 1965) featuring William Parker and Hill Greene on double basses and Ben Morea on clamorous machines, among others.
Both performances were produced by Swiss conceptual artist Christoph Draeger, who invited bass legend Henry Grimes to join this time.
The musical improvisations accompany simultaneous slide- and film projections by Aldo Tambellini and his team of eight performers, and sound recordings by the late Calvin Hernton's radical poetry.
The 2012 re-creation at the Tate Tanks of the 1965 Astor Playhouse performance in New York City noted the many Group Center artists involved—with Aldo Tambellini and Elsa Tambellini on projectors, Ben Morea on the clamorous machines, Ron Hahne on the spiral machine, Bill Dixon playing the horn, Alan Silva bass, and Calvin C. Hernton's recorded poetry and voice.
No!art was a major intermedia movement, whose work dealt directly with World War II themes and the Holocaust, both of deep significance to Tambellini.
In June 2010, Tambellini exhibited in a group show, Celluloid Cameraless Film at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt Germany.
[16] Consisting of video footage shot from his apartment window at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues, the work was digitally re-mastered and projected on six large screens.
This work was filmed at an open air Tambellini installation in August 2014, and featured actress and model Holly Payne-Strange.
Furthermore, the Foundation seeks to ensure that Tambellini's works are accessible to all via permanent placements and loans in galleries and museums throughout the world.
[18] On August 15, 2019, Tambellini's work was curated by NY-based filmmaker and artist Alex Faoro, hosted by the Boston-based experimental film collective AgX.
It is the case of an impermanent electronic beam capable of exchanging inter-global communications, a medium which should be explored for its speed of light, its instantaneous quality.
From 1976 to 1984, Tambellini conducted courses and workshops in communication and media, as well as participating in live experimental events in slow-scan in the United States, Europe, Japan and Australia.
While at CAVS he participated in "Arts Electronica" in Vienna, Austria and lectured on Aesthetics and Technology at the Institute of Design in Offenbach am Main, Germany.
In 1980, Tambellini founded Communicationsphere, a network of artists, performers, technicians, and engineers who were interested in the impact of telecommunications on the changing modern society.
