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Giulio Spolverato

BIOGRAPHY Born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, Giulio Spolverato attended a Comprehensive High School where he took up the study of art. It was here that he found a way to follow carefully (even though at an early age) the most important English painters that his teachers indicated to him through his studies. He came back to Italy in 1974 where he continued his art studies at the ISTITUTO TECNICO D’ARTE in the city of SALERNO and after obtaining his diploma in art; he took up architecture at the university of Naples. Giulio Spolverato’s paintings bring to the surface the hidden world of dreams that is often tinted with symbolic evocations. It is very clear that at the root of his artistic story there lies a perfectly detailed drawing that is supported by a specific and mature knowledge of colour. This is clearly visible both in the immensities of the landscapes and in the human figures (often faces) that are brought out of reality, and even out of dreams through a fascinating “image-figure” combination. In 1993 Giulio Spolverato was awarded with one of the most prestigious rewards for visual arts “PREMIO AMBIENTE” with a jury that was composed of GILLO DORLFES, EVERARDO DALLA NOCE, GIULIANO SORIA, JANUS, DONATO CONENNA, MAURIZIO VANNI, and others. Text by the art critic Prof. PIERO BOGGIA.

ART CRITICISM Giulio Spolverato’s pictorial language seems to take origin from the neo-figurative naturalistic archetypes of the American paintings of the sixties where we find the “hyper-realistic” and “pop” factions that bring to our minds names like John de Andrea and Andy Warhol. Traces of this influence can be found in one of Spolverato’s paintings “Water enables life to live” – 1981, but immediately afterwards, in 1984, Spolverato begins to look up and watch the sky. He could do it like Magritte; numerous paintings demonstrate clearly his linguistic capacity. But the god, or rather the astral demon of a post-ozone world takes a firm hold on this young artist and leads him to deep thoughts about the destiny of our holy mother earth. We could say that Giulio Spolverato has the courage to enter into a sort of “Time Machine” and relate back precisely with intense colours and figures the worlds that he visits. It is without doubt that he has the capacity to leave us enthralled by relating to us on canvas his many voyages. Text by the art critic Dr. DONATO CONENNA

From the catalogue:

VOYAGE IN THE TIME MACHINE By the art critic Dr. DONATO CONENNA. There is a scene in the film “The Forbidden Planet” that’s worth telling; a spacecraft lands on a mysterious planet light years away from earth, the spacecraft commander gets involved in an incredible story with a scientist that’s been living there for years studying a very strange and advanced race, after a while he enters into an enormous and ancient structure built inside the planet which in some ways is similar to a gigantic “wind tunnel” because his mission is to gain knowledge and, to complete his mission, bring back to earth that which he has learned on this mysterious civilization. This did not happen as to plan, as many things do not in the life of man. Perhaps through Giulio Spolverato’s paintings such an experience could “live” to be told: each canvas of his is begun as a support for a pre-existing landscape and he has the capacity to “bridge” his easel to the time machine (part of the earthly primordial beginning) by relating facts, visions and situations that are related to a time and to a place that are very close to what could be our beginning… or our end. Giulio Spolverato; unlike the spacecraft commander is able to imagine these situations right here on earth. He does not travel too far from the atmospheric physicality that we are used to; in fact his characters are surrounded by the horizons that are well known to man, sometimes in a realistic way and, sometimes in a hyper-realistic or even surrealistic way, but the peculiar landscapes depicted by this artist are “visited” by strange and yet familiar elements that arrive on earth from very far off in time and space. In “THE SKY WITHIN”, a transparent prism of light sits down gently right in the middle of a mountain range, giving more depth and mystery to the earthly natural beauty. The visit takes place with “MANTILLA” – 1992, where the laws of gravity are defied by “split-worlds” hovering across an emerald sea of mountains covered by a gun-metal sky. Giulio Spolverato’s paintings dig deep into the spirit of the origin of mankind and into his unquenchable thirst for knowledge and power over nature, which is destined to succumb to the laws of the universe, and to preserve them as in “THE OLD WAYS” or, in “UNA GUERRA PRIVATA”. Giulio Spolverato’s pictorial language has the force to unbalance (minutely) the concepts that mankind has been used to for so long: one microsecond spin of the “MANDALA” wheel is enough to change the view of man towards nature, but never enough for nature to give way to man as we can clearly see in “THE JEWELLED ROCK”. What kind of environment does this artist for-see or predict in this period of composition and, most of all, where could such surrealistic situations and events take place. The answer could be found in what ANDRE’ BRETON calls “The Law of the Psychic Automations”: each and every artist has the right…if not the duty to evoke facts that may or may not have ever occurred in places that may or may not have ever existed in times and spaces that may or may not have ever come to be; it is the right “to go beyond the limits of the mind” claimed by “THE FIRST SURREALIST MANIFESTO” in 1925. Giulio Spolverato seems to be the perfect spiritual descendant of BRETON. He evokes the “supernatural” phantasmagorias of APOLLINAIRE with the only difference that in 1930 these visions were nothing more than intellectual challenges that were to be solved in the “ateliers”, or in some reading room. But… if we take into account what is now happening to our atmosphere; for example the “hot-house” effect and the “ozone holes”, even the least of changes that could occur on the planetary system makes Giulio Spolverato’s art works something more than a mere “phantasmagoria”. Giulio Spolverato’s pictorial language seems to take origin from the neo-figurative naturalistic archetypes of the American paintings of the sixties where we can find the “hyper-realistic” and “pop” factions that bring to our minds names like JOHN DE ANDREA and ANDY WARHOL. Traces of this influence can be found in one of Giulio Spolverato’s paintings “WATER ENABLES LIFE TO LIVE” – 1981, but immediately afterwards, in 1984 Spolverato begins to look up and watch the sky. He could do it like MAGRITTE; numerous paintings clearly demonstrate his linguistic capacity. But the god, or rather the astral demon of a post-ozone world takes a firm hold on this young artist and leads him to deep thoughts about the destiny of our holy mother earth. We could say that Giulio Spolverato has the courage to enter into a sort of “Time Machine” and relate back precisely with intense colours and figures the worlds that he visits. It is without doubt that he has the capacity to leave us enthralled by relating to us on canvas his many voyages. Text by Dr. Donato Conenna from the catalogue “Voyage in the Time Machine”. First edition printed in the city of ARONA in February 1994 by EDITEL.

GIULIO SPOLVERATO - ON THE TRAILS OF OUR FUTURE By the art critic Donat Conenna

15 – 29 OCTOBER 1994 - TEMPLE OF THE ARCHANGEL SAINT MICHAEL FIDENZA - ITALY Patronage of the Town Hall of Fidenza.

Not “futuristic” but “futurable”, the nature of Giulio Spolverato`s paintings, due to the structure of the symbolic language and to its temporal diversion, is without doubt entirely particular. As he approaches mankind and he begins to listen to his ancestral sensations (the fear of darkness, the agony, the immense open spaces, the towering heights and the abysmal depths), his colours discern between the serenity, or at least the tranquillity of the forms and the great “situational” enigma, and face the planetary situations of torment, anguish and the drama of a state that even if belonging to an undetermined future, it is already history. Almost as in a dramatic explosion, Giulio Spolverato gathers the somewhat fragmented trails of a civilization that has yet to become, he catches the transient phase of a continuous cosmic metamorphosis, as it were; so much that in his paintings the universe never lives in a resolved and defined form. There are no shores towards peaceful beaches or passing through known countrysides in Spolverato`s paintings. He expresses in an almost persistent manner an unstable and crudely dynamic equilibrium, always facing an horizon that is crossed by more than one sun and many moons, and above all, by geometrical pieces of planets that, if they have a task, it is that to lead “in vitro” to a formal and physiognomic solution to the whole universe. Really it is the presence of man that is a constant in Spolverato`s paintings, and only by accident, or rather as a noted reflection, he is often able to understand the narrative temptations. But even when he ventures into the “landscape”, the imprint is frequently dramatic and the rising echo has a sound that is not unlike that which breaks through the drama that lies within the story of man. This is the case of one of his paintings where a primordial breath of wind touches the grass, and where suddenly a crystal prism appears. Spolverato`s true culture is therefore the “situational scandal”, the difference between metamorphosis and change: it is a flow of living colours, which are driven towards the dawn that kisses an unusually rational architecture. It is the hair, which adorns the slender face of a woman, an element that extends itself like a skin from which filters a perfume that is human and yet plant-like. As a matter of fact, the landscape of the artist Spolverato is not futuristic but it is futurable, it has known the infinite erosion of time, it feels the unceasing disruptions which touch the skin of man, it forces indicative data just enough to sweep away the physiognomy, to distort and change the role. It is no longer the time of Adam enclosed by Genesis with the wonder of formal perfection. There is no suggestion in Spolverato`s paintings of a man’s “image and resemblance” to God, this could of happened in the area of the neo-classic or in the sphere of the baroque, or in the torment of the romantic confrontation with the first lights of the impressionism or, (libera nos!) as it happened with the hyper-realism chromatic aberration of a certain Andy Warhol: an American photocopier. Here, in Giulio Spolverato, man appears by now to be disassociated from earth to run the same adventure of the soulless “thing” yet he is stretched and attracted to the great shores of knowledge. Spolverato attempts the spiritual adventure, he gathers the grass and flower stems as though they were wood artefacts, he faces the risk of cosmic decay with those pieces of sky that brush against planets and satellites without altering (miracle!) the elements of the icon-narrative equilibrium of the painting and of the gravitational laws. And perhaps he succeeds in giving life to a fragment of landscape in an island of rock, a metaphysical condition where nature tears itself to pieces like an up-rooted flower from the earth searching for its roots. How often do the clouds of Giulio Spolverato shatter against the impossible horizons of Stonehenge like a piece of sky devoured by the flames of “Scienzana” or suddenly they are lacerated by an electronic thunderstorm scream on the shores of The Sea of Tranquility? We can say that the realism of the future is an emanation of the expressive drama of man against his becoming. We can assume, once and for all, that Spolverato`s operation is an answer to the streams of images and sounds and noises that come from planet earth. His, is a shimmering Constellation of Silence: an anti-form on the point of being born, announced by a scream or by a light that is aware of the impulse of a cosmic revolution which silently overwhelms us, huge, without ever reaching the closed circle of the ozone layer. The destiny of man and of the landscape that have already lived through tomorrow ! Therefore it is not enough for the painter to be a painter: he must be the forerunner, the visionary, the video screen of those scenes that have been touched by hand but have yet to be born. He must be the visitor, he who documents and relates the appearance of the archaeological civilizations of the future. With this limitless cosmos (practically everything is allowed to a surrealist artist), Giulio Spolverato runs through the planetary bowels, and by doing so expresses therefore the urgency of life, the technological torment of being and becoming. Or perhaps we can say that this artist is living through a kind of an environmental imaginary beginning, which can only be imagined through a voiceless rhythm and through the deafening blows of the colours that (once the wind of creativity has calmed down on the canvas) search impetuously for a true note or a defined sound. But the enormity and the impetus of the representation allow him in those cones of light to carry out a surgical operation, to plunge into the bowels of man and of the world. Therefore, on the surface of the canvas he brings to life a kind of broken and wordless landscape, and there on its extension, almost by way of centripetal force, rigid geometric shapes and spacious districts live together: and here, rising from an orderly plan of the foundation we find a new “impossible” yet real situation. His alphabet of colours becomes more vivid, the journey more striking, the symbolic language always more apparent. Giulio Spolverato falls into the same syndrome of “imagination to power”, as happens to the adepts of the religion of surrealism, from Breton to Dali, from Delvaux to Magritte, and he becomes therefore a healthy bearer of situations and of environmental “stations” that have lived beyond what has yet to come, even though they are clear in form and even though they are laden by a symbolic and narrative chaos. It is however very clear that our painter does not follow fashion. That which is most modern and new is professed by Giulio Spolverato as a true laic believer; and held within a spirit of originality, because it is by these ancient paths that are as old as time itself, and by the never ending new paths that the trail of his message has taken shape and form. The presentation of the exhibition is held by the art critic Dr. Donat Conenna of the National Catalogue “Mondadori” and by Professor Silvio Ceccato from the State University of Milan.

EXHIBITIONS

1987 Los Angeles 10 opere allo studio “X”. WEST” – Lion

1990 Los Angeles Collective “Pittori Italiani” Nice (Fance) “Art Jonction International” Palais des Exposition 5 – 9 July (Palma Arte) Rouen (France) Salon d`Art Contemporain 12 – 20 October (Palma Arte) Padova (Italy) “Arte `90” Mostra d`Arte Contemporanea Quartiere Fiera 26 – 29 October (Palma Arte) Carpi – Modena (Italy) “Art Box” – 3a Mostra d`Arte Moderna Castello dei Pio – November (Palma Arte)

1991 Firenze (Italy) 6a Mostra Nazionale Palazzo degli Affari 26 – 30 September (Palma Arte)

Padova (Italy) “Arte `91” – 2a Mostra d`Arte Contemporanea Quartiere Fiera 17 – 21 October (Palma Arte) *Dedicated 3rd page in Monthly Magazine “Art Leader – October

Carpi – Modena (Italy) “Art Box” – 4a Mostra d`Arte Moderna Castello dei Pio 21 –25 November (Palma Arte) Firenze (Italy) “Esposizione Internazionale Artisti Contemporanei” Salone Italiano Arte Contemporanea Palazzo degli Affari 05 –08 December (Palma Arte)

1992 Ginevra (Switzerland) “Europ Art” Palazzo delle Esposizioni 29 April – 03 May (Palma Arte) Citta` di Busseto (Italy) “Via Roma” Collective 01 August – 13 September (Palma Arte) Fidenza (Italy) Centro Culturale San Michele Collective 13 – 30 September (Palma Arte)

Melbourne (Australia) ACAF 3 Collective 01 – 04 October (Palma Arte) *Award Winner for painting: “The Land Beyond The Sea”.

Padova (Italy) “Arte Padova `92” Quartiere Fiera Collective 22 – 26 October (Palma Arte) Firenze (Italy) “SIAC” – Salone Italiano Arte Contemporanea, Palazzo degli Affari Personal Exhibition 05 – 08 November (Palma Arte) Carpi – Modena (Italy) “Art Box Carpi” Castello dei Pio Collective 15 – 18 November (Palma Arte) Hamburg (Germany) “Art Hamburg” Collective 03 – 06 December (Palma Arte)

1993 Ferrara (Italy) *Award Winner - II Premio “Filippo de Pisis”

Firenze (Italy) Medaglia d`oro Targa San Venceslao al “Premio d`Arte Internazionale *Gold Medal San Venceslao to International Art Award

Cesenatico – Forli` (Italy) Diploma di merito della Giuria al Premio Europeo d`Arte “Cesenatico” *Diploma from the Jury to the European Art Award “Cesenatico”

Tokyo (Japan) International Contemporary Art Fair “TIAS” Trade Center Harumi

Grosseto (Italy) Targa Comune di Grosseto – Arte per la Terra *Town Hall Medal of Grosseto – Art For The Earth

New York (USA) International Contempory Art Fair “ARTEXPO – Convention Center” Dallas (USA) International Contempory Art Fair “ABC Show” – Market Hall

Firenze (Italy) “Premio Italia per le Arti visive `93” – Spazio Comunale *”Award Winner Italia For Visual Arts ‘93”

Milano (Italy) “Primavera d`Arte `93” – Galleria Eustachi

Arona (Italy) Premio Ambiente 1993 – Galleria del Sempione *Award Winner For The Environment 1993 – Galleria Del Sempione

*Nomination and Award Winner “Golden Page”

*Award Winner for the painting: “Il Giorno Del Loro Ritorno”

And For The Painting

*“The Mirror Of Illusion”

Arona (Italy) “Re di Quadri” Galleria del Sempione *Award Winner “King Of Painting” Galleria Del Sempione Collective 18 December 1993 – 09 January 1994

Milano (Italy) Collective - Area d`Artista Area Expo

1996 Torino (Italy) Galleria “La Telaccia d`Oro *Award winner: Diploma for the painting: “Orthanc”

PERSONAL EXHIBITIONS

1993 Ginevra (Switzerland) Cora Gallery Paris (France) Galerie des Arts

1994 Arona (Italy) Galleria del Sempione Fidenza (Italy) Tempio Di San Michele Arcangelo

2009 Calestano (Italy) “Calestano And Beyond The Sky” Sala “Andrea Borri”

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Italian National Catalogue Mondadori

International Catalogue Premio Ambiente – Cover

Video “Ambiente Italia” – TV Channel Rai 3

Italian National Catalogue Fenice 2000

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