Project Description
Giulio Turcato (Mantua 1912 – Rome 1995), Study for the Spoleto catalogue cover
Tempera on paper 23 x 70 cm signed (Turcato) in the lower right corner and with a dedication (A Mario Padovan) in the lower left corner. The work is being archived at the Giulio Turcato archive, curated by Ettore Caruso. Provenance: Mario Padovan collection.
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Giulio Turcato was an Italian painter, one of the main exponents of Italian informal abstraction. He arrived in Rome in 1943, where he attended the Osteria Fratelli Menghi, a well-known meeting place for contemporary painters, directors, scriptwriters, writers and poets between the 40s and 70s. In Rome, together with Emilio Vedova and Toti Scialoja, he exhibited at the Galleria dello Zodiaco and at the Rome Quadriennale. On the occasion of an exhibition at the Galleria del Secolo in Rome, together with Corpora, Fazzini, Guttuso and Monachesi, he signed a Manifesto of Neocubism, published by “La Fiera Letteraria” in 1947. At the end of the year he went to Paris with Accardi, Attardi, Consagra, Maugeri, Sanfilippo and Vespignani, remaining strongly impressed by the work of Magnelli, Picasso and Kandinski. In 1948 he participated in the National Exhibition of Visual Arts in Rome. Subsequently he joined the group of the New Front of the Arts, and participated in this group at the 1948 Biennale. In 1949-1950, Turcato joined the project of Giuseppe Verzocchi aimed at creating a collection of paintings dedicated to the work of contemporary artists, sending, in addition to a self-portrait, the work The unloaders. The exhibition activity and the critical fortune of Turcato have few equals in Italian art of the ‘900: he is also present at the Biennale in 1954, 1956, 1958 (Personal room and winner of the National Award), 1966 (Personal room), 1968, 1972 (Personal Room), 1982, 1986, 1988, 1993 and one last time in 1995, bringing his participation to the Venetian festival to 15.
In 1955, during one of the many Roman Quadrennials to which he was invited, the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome buys his ‘Reticle’ for inclusion in the permanent collections. He exhibited with personal shows all over the world, including the documentary reviews of Kassel and the Biennale di San Paolo. Among the museums, he exhibited at the MoMa in New York, at the Contemporary Art Pavilion in Milan, at the Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst in Munich, at the Musée de l’Athenée in Geneva, the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In 1956 he traveled to the Far East passing through Moscow to reach China. Starting in 1960 he exhibited with Novelli, Perilli, Dorazio, Consagra, Bemporad and Arnaldo Pomodoro in the context of the reviews entitled Continuità, promoted in various Italian galleries by Giulio Carlo Argan. Two solo shows, one at the New Vision Center Gallery in London and another at the Venice Canal, take place during the 1960s. In 1973 the city of Spoleto dedicated a first anthological exhibition to him, curated by Giovanni Carandente, followed one year later by a larger one at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. Precisely at the first anthological exhibition in Spoleto, set up in the XVI Festival of the two worlds, the work presented here, coming from the collection of the painter Mario Padovan, can be traced back: in particular, this grid is to be considered a project for the catalog cover “Giulio Turcato. Works from 1954 to 1973” published by the Nuova Foglio Editore in 1973 and edited by Vana Caruso.
