GIAN CARLO VENUTO
GIAN CARLO VENUTO
Gian Carlo Venuto was born in Codroipo (UD) in 1951. He teaches Decoration at the Accademia di Brera in Milan, and lives and works in Gorizzo (UD) and Milan. After debuting on the abstract-informal – i.e. conceptual – art scene, and after re-examining his cultural and artistic background, during the early 1980s Venuto started drawing inspiration from the painters of the early Italian Cinquecento. From their frescoes Venuto brought out – like elements of a rediscovered sinopia under- painting, contained in an informal pictorial texture (La condanna dello sguardo, 1983-84) – figures or friezes that in time shed their character of citations and became increasingly autonomous (Angeli della memoria, Frutti italiani, Vasi alche- mici, 1985-86), eventually bursting into bloom as a sensuous vegetation marked by incessant metamorphoses (Die Zauberflöte, Black Flowers, 1987-89). Influenced by his extensive travels abroad (Scotland, England, Australia, Senegal, Hungary, Turkey, Lithuania, Germany, Finland, Greece, Spain and Portugal), during the 1990s Venuto's painting shifted toward the recovery of plastic form (Alberi della luna 1992; Blu turco 1993; Estasi lituana, 1995), which became sublimated in the blurred contours of water-lilies and clouds in later works such as: I giardini dell'anima, 1994-95; I cieli sopra Berlino, 1996-97; Frammenti di cielo (frescoes – encaustic paintings) 1998; Nugae, 1999; Nuvola fulva, 2001; and Luci preliminari (pottery, majolica, porcelain and blown glass), 2003.
Venuto's most recent work explores the relationship between the painted surface and the physical perceptibility and transgression of its limits (Cjantadis, large oil paintings, 2005), and between wall painting and the space that encloses it (Para- venti, mobile frescoes, 2006; Costellazione, wall installation, fresco, mosaic and encaustic painting, 2008; apsidal frescoes in the Chiesa della Marigolda at Curno – BG, 2010).