Giulio Turcato

Giulio Turcato was born in Mantua on March 16, 1912. In 1920 he moved with his family to Venice, where he occasionally followed the Academy or rather the school of the nude, because the family always opposed him in his artistic choice.

In 1934, during his military service in Palermo, he experienced the first symptoms of a lung disease that would mark a large part of its existence. In the same year he was present at the IV Craft Show, within the group of Venetian artists selected by ENPI. In 1937 he settled in Milan where, often ill, he went to various hospitals, managing to create architectural perspectives for the architect Muzio of Milan, to set up his first personal exhibition and to get in touch with the Corrente Group without joining it .

In the years 1942-43 he taught drawing in a professional start-up school in Portogruaro and made his debut at the 23rd Biennale with the work Maternità. Attilio Podestà comments: "In the competition for works inspired by the present moment, it is still worth noting: the Maternity of Turcato, which refers to Birolli". He occasionally travels to Milan in the company of Emilio Vedova.

In 1943 he arrived in Rome, where he participated in the IV Quadrennial and in an exhibition at the Galleria dello Zodiaco, together with Vedova, Donnini, Purificato, Leoncillo, Valenti and Scialoja. In the same year, another solo exhibition at the "Bell", and therefore the beginning of a new chapter in Turcato's life and art: his participation in the Resistance, and after the Liberation, the definitive transfer to the city. From this moment on, his artistic activity is closely linked to the social and political commitment, culminating in his membership of the Italian Communist Party.

In 1945 the Sandron publishing house (Rome) fired the volume Interviste di frodo, in which Marcello Venturosi, noting some moments of Roman artistic life, also talks about Turcato, tracing a personal portrait of him. In the same year he joined the "Free Association of Figurative Arts" and the "Art Club" of Prampolini and Jarema, contributing to most of the association's exhibition initiatives, in Italy and abroad. 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, disclosed by "The Literary Fair" in 1947. At the end of the year he went to Paris with Accardi, Attardi, Consagra, Maugeri, Sanfilippo and Vespignani, being deeply impressed by the work of Magnelli, Picasso and Kandinkij.

On March 15, 1947 he signed the Forma manifesto in Rome with Accardi, Attardi, Consagra, Dorazio, Guerrini, Perilli and Sanfilippo (together with whom he attended Guttuso's studio in via Margutta), published in April in the first and only issue of the magazine "Forma ", where his article Crisi della pittura also appears. In the summer of the same year he took part in the first exhibition of the "New Front of the Arts" at the Spiga Gallery: the exhibition constituted his official adhesion to the movement. In October he exhibited with Consagra, Dorazio, Guerrini and Perilli at the Art club in Rome: the exhibition is considered the official exit of Forma. With the same group and the critic Guglielmo Peyrce, in November, he wrote the mural newspaper Da Cagli a Cagli to protest against the text by Antonello Trombadori published in the catalog of the Corrado Cagli exhibition at the La Palma gallery in Rome.

Numerous episodes characterize his biographical story in 1948: he travels to Milan and Venice, in Poland, and participates in the V Quadrennial in Rome and the Venice Biennale. In 1949 he held numerous solo shows in Milan, Rome and Turin and his painting Rivolta (1948) became part of the collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome.

In 1950 he moved back to Paris, where he got to know Manassier, Pignon and Michel Seuphor. With works inspired by social issues, he participates in the Venice Biennale. The following year he competed for the Taranto Prize and his Piccolo Porto became part of the collections of the Quirinale palace.
In 1952, with Afro, Birolli, Corpora, Moreni, Morlotti, Santomaso, Vedova, he joined the "Gruppo degli Otto", promoted by Lionello Venturi, with whom he exhibited at the Venice Biennale. He holds a solo exhibition at the Cassapanca in Rome (11 paintings), accompanied in the catalog by a text by Enrico Prampolini. Take part in a collective dedicated to itinerant design in the United States.

He became assistant to the Chair of Figure at the Liceo Artistico in Rome in 1953 and had a solo show at the Naviglio in Milan and took part in the debate on the theme of Modern Art and Tradition opened on the pages of "Realism" in February. He returns to the XXVII Venice Biennale with an intense writing by Emilio Villa that appears on "Visual Arts". In 1955 Carrieri talks about Turcato in the volume Avant-garde painting and sculpture in Italy. He exhibits at the Roman Quadrennial (the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome buys his own lattice).

In 1956 he made a trip to the Far East passing through Moscow to reach China, where in June he exhibited together with Sassu, Tettamanti, Zancanaro, Raphael and Fabbri at the exhibition Five Italian Painters in China. During the '57, the interest from the critics for his work is remarkable and in the '58 the Venice Biennale orders his own room, including eleven works introduced in the catalog by Palma Bucarelli.

In 1959 Giulio Carlo Argan and Nello Ponente consider his work in art after 1945 and is present at the second edition of Documenta in Kassel. Along with other artists decided not to attend the Rome Quadrennial in protest against the organization and the governing bodies that govern and, during an interview, explaining the reasons for its decision. He signs an article entitled Conformism: mental laziness, which appeared in the pages of "Arte Oggi" in May, in which he talks about the positions taken by contemporary painting.

Starting in 1960 he exhibited with Novelli, Perilli, Dorazio, Consagra, Bemporad, Giò and Arnaldo Pomodoro as part of the exhibitions entitled Continuità, promoted in various Italian galleries by Giulio Carlo Argan. In '60 has a display along with Ajmone Dova and the Art Workshop of Livorno, and a paper appearing in Crack volume. Two solo shows, one at the New Vision Center Gallery in London and another at the Venice Canal, take place during '62, during which Gillo Dorfles talks about his work in the book dedicated to the latest trends in today's art.

In 1963 Emilio Villa returned to take care of him by presenting his personal exhibition to the Turtle of Rome. He also stipulates a contract with Dorazio with the Galleria Marlborough in Rome and celebrates the event by giving himself a trip to New York as a simple tourist.

In 1964 he joined in marriage with the Roman filmmaker Vana Caruso, he exhibited at the Scaletta di Catania and at the Bandiera di Roma.
The following year he took part in the Rome Quadrennial, winning the Prime Minister's prize, and was convened for the first celebratory review dedicated to Form 1.

In 1966 Maurizio Calvesi in "The two avant-gardes" and Maurizio Fagiolo in "Ratio 60" talk about his painting, while Nello Ponente takes care of the text that accompanies his personal room at the Venice Biennale, in which, among the 13 exhibited works, several foam rubber.

In 1969 he was in Frankfurt, where, on the occasion of a solo exhibition at the Main Galerie D.I.V., Werner Haftamann retraced some stages of his artistic career during a conference. In the seventies his exhibition activity intensified: he had solo shows from Boni Schubert in Lugano and from Grafica Romero in Rome; in 1972 he had a personal room at the Venice Biennale. At the same time, the process of "historicization" of his work begins, ideally inaugurated by the monograph Giulio Turcato that Giorgio de Marchis fires in 1971, the first ever in the artist's bibliography.

In 1973 the city of Spoleto dedicated a first anthological exhibition to him, curated by Giovanni Carandente, followed after a year by another, larger one, at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. On February 24, 1984 the Giulio Turcato exhibition opens at the Contemporary Art Pavilion in Milan.

He participates in the historical reviews dedicated to Form 1 in Bourg-en-Bresse and Darmstad (1987). It is present again at the Venice Biennale, hosted in the section entitled Opera Italiana (1993). Following a respiratory crisis, he died in Rome on January 22, 1995.