Forma 1

Giulio Turcato was born in Mantua in 1912. He was educated in art and life drawing in Venice at the Scuola d’arte, Liceo Artistico and Libera Scuola di Nudo, and he would later teach drawing at the post-elementary Scuola di Avviamento Professionale. His first still life and landscape paintings are from 1926 and his first participation in a group exhibition dates from 1932. In 1937 he moved to Milan: here he worked as a draughtsman with the architect Giovanni Muzio and in 1940 he exhibited in a group show at Galleria Grande. Between 1942 and 1943 he came back to Venice, where he taught, and took part in the XXIII Art Biennale. In 1943 he moved permanently to Rome and participated in the IV Quadriennale. In 1945 he was one of the founders of the “Art Club” with Prampolini, Fazzini, Jarema, Savelli, Mafai, Corpora, Consagra and Perilli. The following year in Warsaw he took part in the Exhibition of Contemporary Italian Art and joined the manifesto for the “Nuova Secessione Artistica Italiana”. In 1947 he set up “Forma 1”, the first group of abstract artists in Rome, with Accardi, Attardi, Consagra, Dorazio, Guerini and Sanfilippo, and then signed the Formalism manifesto. In 1948 he exhibited at the XXIV Venice Biennale and at the II Salon des Beaux Arts in Paris. He went to the “Peace Conference” in Warsaw with Quasimodo, Ginzburg, De Grada, Fiore and Treccani. Among the many shows, in 1949 he took part in XX Century Italian Art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and he was given a solo show at the Galleria del Naviglio in Milan. In 1950 he was awarded a prize at the Venice Biennale. In the same year, he entered the “Otto” group with Afro, Birolli, Corpora, Moreni and Morlotti, taking part in the 1952 Venice Biennale with them. Starting in the mid-1950s, he held important solo shows at Galleria del Naviglio in Milan, the XXV Venice Biennale, Galleria La Tartaruga in Rome, the XXIX Venice Biennale and Grattacielo in Milan. He took part in a group exhibition at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, and participated in the Guggenheim International Award in New York and Documenta II in Kassel. In 1960 he entered the “Continuità” group, whose activities were documented in various exhibitions.
In 1961 he presented the first compositions with Tranquillanti [Tranquillizers] at Galleria Il Canale in Venice; at the 1966 Venice Biennale he proposed his Superfici Lunari [Moon Surfaces].
Numerous solo shows can be remembered from the 1970s, amongst which the ones at the Schubert in Milan, Barozzi in Venice and Milan, Martano in Turin, Segno in Rome, again at the Venice Biennale, Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, the Italian Cultural Institute in New York and the Museum of Modern Art in Bucarest. His fervid exhibition activities continued during the next decades, such as on occasion of the anthology at the PAC in Milan and the retrospective at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome, and later, in the 1990s, at Cà Pesaro in Venice. Since his death, in 1995 in Rome, his works have continued to be exhibited in shows in institutions, museums and galleries.
In 2012, for the one hundred-year anniversary since his birth, the show Giulio Turcato. Stellare was put on at the Museo di Arte Contemporanea in Rome, featuring over twenty years’ of his artistic oeuvre. Turcato. Dalla forma poetica alla pittura di superficie was held at CAMEC in La Spezia in 2016.