Giuseppe Santomaso (1907-1990) - Composizione

The painter-engraver- lithographer Giuseppe Santomaso was born in Venice in 1907. He studied in his hometown at the Academy of Fine Arts (1932-1934). He began his graphic career in 1938, a mode of expression he would never abandon, an opportunity to participate in the adventure of the modern illustrated book. Fascinated since adolescence by the avant-gardes, he travels (1937) first to the Netherlands where he studies the Impressionist and Fauve artists. After a stay in Paris (1939), where he was deeply struck by the works of Matisse, Braque, Bonnard and Picasso, the young artist engages in the Corrente movement developed in Milan between 1938 and 1943, a movement that reflects the need for a break with official rhetoric. In 1946, Santomaso becomes a founding member of the “New Italian Artistic Secession” which would later be called the “Front of the Arts” — a group of anti-fascist artists — and subsequently takes his place within the Group of Eight (with Renato Birolli, Antonio Corpora, Ennio Morlotti, Emilio Vedova, Giulio Turcato, Afro Basaldella and Mattia Moreni); it is during this period that the artist begins his first explorations towards abstraction. Between 1948 and 1950, his works reveal an emphasis on color, considered more important than the formal construction of the previous period. Santomaso’s expression becomes instinctive, color truly is the essential element. The artist’s work is based on the automatism of gesture, the exploitation of transparencies, and the vibration of colors. He drew his chromatic palette from the tradition of Venetian painting, thereby endowing his work with a new, vibrant essence, saturated with poetry. Solo and group exhibitions followed one another: he participated in Documenta in Kassel (1955, 1959 and 1964), in the São Paulo Biennale (1961), in the Tokyo Biennale (1967) and in the Venice Biennale (13 times!), there was also his solo show at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona in 1979. Numerous retrospectives of his work were organized (Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and Brussels in 1960, Hamburg and Berlin in 1965-66, Venice in 1982, Locarno in 1990). From 1957 to 1974, Giuseppe Santomaso taught at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice. The artist passed away in Venice in 1990.