For Giuseppe Santomaso, 1930s Paris was the starting point: it was the city in which he encountered the languages that would launch his career as a creative but meditative artist, developing his own personal interpretation.
After having met Picasso and Braque, therefore Cubism but also Surrealism, Santomaso brought the lessons of the Parisian avant-garde to Italy and to the group Fronte Nuovo delle Arti (New Front for the Arts), with his still-lifes, interiors, and the famous Windows series that he showed at the 1948 Biennale, ten works that are now all included in the exhibition staged at the Cini Foundation.

The show, commemorating the centenary of the artist’s birth, will run from 12 April to 13 July, on the Isle of San Giorgio, in the halls of the new exhibition centre. The show dedicated to Santomaso and the abstract option, curated by Nico Stringa, in fact inaugurates the venue’s activities.

Santomaso was not just a painter, but also an innovative and sophisticated publisher. He won considerable success with the prints made for the publication of Grand Air by Paul Eluard, and On Angle by Ezra Pound.
In the 1950s, when he worked with the “Group of Eight” promoted by Lionello Venturi, he won the Venice Biennale International painting prize, and he laid the foundations for a long friendship with Peggy Guggenheim, who worked hard to publicize her friend’s works in the United States.
The works that the American collector had the chance to evaluate include those exhibited at the Kassel biennial show, in which the artist took part immediately before travelling to São Paulo in 1953.
Significant works from that period include: L’ora delle cicale, Ritmi rurali, Ricordo verde and Alba sulle falci.

by Chiara Casarin | :venews

Tr. Henry Neuteboom

April 2008 

«Santomaso e l’opzione astratta»
From April 12  to July 13
New exhibition centre - San Giorgio Maggiore island

Opening April 12, h 11 am.