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One step from heaven 1997-2007
€10,800
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ProfessionalManzano, ItalyOn Whoppah since October 2024 • 5 sales
Product description
Tempera on canvas
Width 135 cm
Height 100 cm
BIOGRAPHY Giorgio Celiberti was born in Udine in 1929. He began painting at a very young age; at just nineteen, he participated in the 1948 Venice Biennale, the first postwar Biennale. In Venice, he attended art school and then Emilio Vedova's studio. In the lagoon city, he shared a bedroom and studio with Tancredi at the Pensione Accademia. He spent a lively time with Carlo Ciussi, Marco Fantoni, and Romano Parmeggiani, who were also studying in Venice during the same period. Following in the footsteps of his uncle Modotto, one of the most important Udine painters of the 1930s, a protagonist, together with the Basaldella brothers (Afro, Dino, and Mirko), Filipponi, and Candido Grassi, of the twentieth-century renewal of Friulian art, Celiberti moved to Paris in the early 1950s, where he came into contact with the major representatives of figurative culture from beyond the Alps. Thus began a series of journeys that would remain fundamental to his education: in 1956, he won a scholarship from the Ministry of Education that allowed him to stay in Brussels, where he was able to complete his research on avant-garde art. From 1957 to 1958, he was in London: these were the years in which the expressionism of Bacon and Sutherland dominated. A tireless traveler, curious, internally haunted by a fever for novelty and knowledge, he sojourned in the United States, Mexico, Cuba, and Venezuela. From these experiences he developed a repertoire of signs and techniques, which he reworked in the following years. Upon returning to Italy, he spent a long and fruitful period in Rome, where he frequented the leading artists of the Italian art scene. His return to Udine, in the mid-1960s, allowed Celiberti to begin a process of self-reflection, which continues to this day, rich in creative output, always characterized by a consuming desire for experimentation. In 1965, an event occurred that was destined to radically alter his art. He visited the Terezín concentration camp, near Prague, where thousands of Jewish children, before being massacred by the Nazis, left testimonies of their tragedy in graffiti, drawings, brief diary entries, and a booklet of poems—moving testimonies of their tragedy. In 1975, the Anthropomorphic Walls arose from reflections on the finds from the Porto necropolis near Fiumicino, from early Christian Rome, Roman Aquileia, and Lombard Cividale. From the 1960s onward, he devoted himself specifically to sculpture, although his creative activity has increasingly been characterized by an original symbiosis between plastic and pictorial expression. His first works in bronze, stone, and ceramic are dedicated to the monumental themes of Horses and Rider, followed by an original faunal gallery: Cats, Birds, Goats. Subsequently, his sculpture abandoned its monumental grandeur to engage in a private dialogue with the traces of an ancestral past, which seem to emerge from a collective unconscious, of which the artist presents himself as the inspired spokesperson. In affinity with the “Archaeological” themes of painting, the Schegge and the Stele were born, which recall ancient tombstones engraved with enigmatic hieroglyphic inscriptions, the light Bassori, similar to fragments of lost civilizations sunk in an immemorial past. He participated in the most significant art events in Italy and abroad: the Venice Biennale, the Rome Quadrennial, the Esso Prize, the Burano Prize, the Marzotto, the Michetti, La Spezia, San Marino, Autostrada del Sole, the International Fiorino Prize, the exhibition of New Italian Painting in Japan. He has held over a hundred solo exhibitions. Among the most significant are those in Paris (1953 and 1982); London (1956); Dallas (1963); New York (1963); Toronto (1976); Vienna (1978); Amsterdam (1979); Nova Gorica (1982); Novo Mesto (1983); Jaffa, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv (1983); Brussels and Strasbourg (1987); Salzburg, Los Angeles (1989); London, Düsseldorf, Barcelona (1990); Madrid and Paris (1992); Millstat, Ghent (1993); Chicago (1995); Zagreb Museum (1998). He has also exhibited several times in Bologna, Florence, Genoa, Palermo, Rome, Turin, Trieste, Venice, Verona and of course Udine. An anthological exhibition of paintings was held in 1980 at the Galleria Spazzapan in Gradisca d’Isonzo (Gorizia). In the spring of the following year, an exhibition was held at Villa Simes Contarini in Piazzola sul Brenta (Padua), in whose park, alongside the hundred or so paintings presented in the rooms, large sculptures in bronze, stone and steel were placed. The Villa Simes experience was resumed and developed in the summer of 1985 inside and in the parks of the Venetian Villas of Carbonera (Treviso). In the same year, Celiberti, invited by the Municipality and the Tourist Board of Trieste, placed monumental steel and resin steles in the main streets and squares of the Julian capital for a whole year, bronze sculptures at the Castle of San Giusto, and stone sculptures at the Castle of Miramare. The exhibition moved from Trieste to Udine, winding its way through the castle, the city and the Centro Friulano di Arti Plastiche. Between the late 1980s and the early 1990s, prestigious exhibitions continued in Italy and abroad: Exhibition at the Pagani Foundation in Legnano (1987); an anthological exhibition at Villa Varda in Brugnera di Pordenone, at the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara, at Art L.A. in Los Angeles (1989); Exhibitions at the Galleria Davico in Turin; at the Galleria Forni in Bologna, at Art London in London, at the Art Forum in Düsseldorf, at the Sala Pares in Barcelona, a solo exhibition at the Galleria Giulia in Rome (1990); exhibitions at the Arco in Madrid, at the Gran Palis in Paris, at the Salone di Settembre in Venice, at the Galleria Rotta in Genoa and a new anthology of painting and sculpture in the spaces of the Fondazione G. E. Ghirardi in Villa Simes Contarini in Piazzola sul Brenta (1992); a solo exhibition at the Galleria Annunciata in Milan, a review of frescoes at the Galleria B. S. in Venice, and an exhibition of monumental bronzes in the city of Millstatt, Austria (1993). In 1991 Celiberti also created two prestigious public works: the Mosaic of Friendship in the atrium of the University of Ljubljana and the fresco covering over 800 square metres on the vault of the Kawajyu Hotel in Shirahama, Japan. Further exhibitions were held in 1994 at Palazzo Costanzi, the Risiera di San Saba in Trieste, and at the FIAC in Paris. In January 1996, an anthological exhibition opened in Conegliano at Palazzo Sarcinelli, followed by another at Pergine Castle. In 1997, an exhibition of paintings and sculptures was included in the events at Villa Manin in Passariano. Exhibitions in 1998 testified to the growing interest in the artist: Celiberti's sculptures were inserted into a European context set within the bastions of the walls of Treviso, Lignano Sabbiadoro hosted other monumental sculptures, and the master held solo exhibitions at the Angel Orentsanz Foundation gallery in New York, at the Museum of Saint Paul de Vence, and at the Zagreb Museum. His international career saw him exhibit in Umag, Ljubljana, and Munich between 1999 and 2000, and in the Jubilee Year he created a three-meter cross for the Church of Fiumesino (Pordenone). Numerous exhibitions were held during this period, both in Italy and abroad, among the most notable being a 2002 show at the former ghetto of Vittorio Veneto and in the halls of the former University of Bergamo. In 2003, Celiberti won the Sulmona Prize, and in 2004, his hometown of Udine dedicated a retrospective to him at the Giovanni da Udine Theater, featuring a wide-ranging selection of his recent productions. In 2005, the Villa Breda Museum in Padua hosted the “Giorgio Celiberti Anthology from the Biennale to Giotto,” and Prince Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy donated a large painting by Celiberti to the MART in Trento and Rovereto, which was added to the museum’s permanent collection. A group exhibition of sculptures was held in Prato della Valle and in the gardens of the Scrovegni Chapel. 2006: Exhibitions in Venice (Venice Design Art Gallery), Munich (Galerie Prom), Conegliano (House Museum of the “Cima da Conegliano” Foundation). 2007: Castelfranco Veneto (Galleria Art&Media), and Tolmezzo (Palazzo Frisacco). 2008: Prato (Confartigianato), Cividale del Friuli: open-air sculpture exhibition. 2009: For his eightieth birthday, he exhibited at the Jewish Museum of Venice and at the Abbey of Rosazzo. In 2011 he was invited to the Venice Biennale for the fifth time; he donated a large Stele that was placed in the courtyard of the Terezín fortress (Prague). 2012: exhibition at the Casa dei Carraresi in Treviso. Sculpture exhibition in the squares of Valletta (Malta). 2013: retrospective exhibition at Villa Manin. Between 2014 and 2015: exhibition The Passion and the Body of History at the National Museum of Ravenna. In 2016 he exhibited at the Philippe Daverio Library in Milan, in 2018 at the Marino Marini Museum in Pistoia, from 2019 to 2020 at the Maca Museum of Contemporary Art in Acri (Cosenza). 2021: exhibition at the Luxury Hotel Danieli in Venice and at the Heart gallery in Vimercate (Monza and Brianza). Installation for Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 26, 2022, on the tallest bell tower in Italy in the town of Mortegliano (Udine), and exhibition at San Vito alle ex carceri. Honorary citizenship from the Municipality of Mortegliano with recognition of the Lombard Seal by the President of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Regional Council, Pietro Mauro Zanin. Rome 2022: visit to the Ministry of Culture and mention for his career by Minister Dario Franceschini; visit to the Ministry of Economic Development: meeting with Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti. Exhibition in Cividale del Friuli from June 25 to September 25. On October 5, 2022, the Historical Archives of the Venice Biennale will dedicate a study conference to him entitled: "Giorgio Celiberti, from the 1948 Biennale to the present." Midolini Award for Lifetime Achievement. Exhibition "Gioiel li di Celiberti" at the "Loft ai Dogi" in Passariano di Codroipo (Udine). Solo exhibition in Portogruaro (Venice) at the Arte Androne 51 gallery. 2023: exhibition in Gradisca d'Isonzo, at the La Fortezza gallery. Exhibition at the headquarters of the Regional Council of Friuli Venezia Giulia. Lives and works in Udine.
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ConditionExcellentColorsBlueMaterialCanvasNumber of items1OrientationLandscapeArt sizeLargeHeight100 cmWidth135 cm
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About this seller
ProfessionalManzano, ItalyOn Whoppah since October 2024 • 5 sales