Giuliano Ghelli


Giuliano Ghelli was an Italian painter who produced several series of works, each rooted in the practice of drawing. An autodidact, Ghelli's early influences were informalism and geometric abstraction, from which he developed a cartoon-like style of figuration inspired by pop art and Surrealism. Ghelli was said to draw on affect over intellect, working personal interests and relations, and, later, dreams into his pictures; the Italian word racconto often appears in the artist's titles.

Debut and early work (1962-1978)

At age 17 Ghelli began to frequent the studios of several contemporary Florentine painters and soon met the avant-garde art dealer Fiamma Vigo. Through Vigo's Numero gallery, Ghelli discovered a community of artists and writers who strongly influenced his approach to painting. Ghelli debuted in 1963 with two works on canvas in a group exhibition at Vigo's Numero gallery in Milan. He continued to exhibit his work in Vigo's galleries in Florence and Venice into the late 1960s.
In 1972 Ghelli signed a contract with the Sangallo gallery in Florence; the associated stipend allowed him to paint full-time.

''Il portapaesaggi'' (The Landscape Carrier)

From 1973 Ghelli's works tended increasingly towards figuration, with crudely drawn elements of landscape, road signage, mechanical elements and humanoid-robot figures. In 1974 he published the pocket volume Il portapaesaggi with text by the contemporary art historian Lara-Vinca Masini.
In 1975 Ghelli's paintings were exhibited in New York and Los Angeles and in 1977 Ghelli returned to New York to exhibit his work and travel cross-country. Starting in 1978 Arezzo-based Novart produced a line of jewelry based on Il portapaesaggi.

Sentiment and narrative (1980-1989)

From 1980 a "narrative dimension" emerged in Ghelli's prints and paintings. The sparsely-drawn hills, robots, and signage of the previous decade are joined by envelopes, houses, and the occasional hand-written phrase. In her text describing the paintings in Ghelli's 1983 Ferrara exhibition the critic Maria Luisa Frisa noted "The theme of romantic love... in all its facets: desire, jealously, abandonment, distance. The interplay of narrative, landscape and technological artifact in Ghelli's work was commented by the art historian Lara-Vinca Masini in her 1989 Arte Contemporanea, noting, in Ghelli's paintings, a "lucid, fable-like transcription of technology and robots."

Mature work (1990–2014)

Mechanical themes: Leonardo and Mercedes-Benz

In 1990 Ghelli was introduced to the Leonardo scholar Carlo Pedretti, then professor of art history at UCLA. From meetings with Pedretti followed a set of silkscreens and then paintings inspired by Leonardo da Vinci, culminating in the 1992 exhibition In viaggio con Leonardo in Milan. Ghelli would continue to reference Leonardo's work, in particular the illustrations of the Codex Leicester, in several works from the 1990s onwards.
Ghelli's Leonardo paintings were noticed by Jochen Prange, the head of Mercedes-Benz Italia S.p.A., and led to a commission for twenty paintings for the company's new Rome headquarters, which hosted a one-man exhibition for the artist in 1995.

The ''Aborigeni,'' ''Migrazioni,'' and ''Esercito di terracotta''

Many of Ghelli's canvases from the late 1990s are densely packed with color and form. In his text "Ghelli's 'Horror Vacui'", Carlo Pedretti characterized this period's style as "painting that does not allow empty space" linking it to the workings of the subconscious and dreams.
In 2000, a trip to Sydney, Australia and a reading of Bruce Chatwin's novel The Songlines led Ghelli to paint series of canvases referencing Aboriginal symbols and Dreamtime. In this same period the artist painted a series of works on paper and canvas depicting shoals of fish, each with the title "Migrazione". These series were cited by some critics as evidencing Ghelli's interest in dreams and in the ancestral and unchanging.
Ghelli's Esercito di terracotta resulted from the artist extending his practice of painting fabric tailors busts to sculpting and decorating pre-fabricated, fresh clay forms. Through carving, stamping, and the application molded shapes, Ghelli created approximately fifty small terracotta female busts soon followed by a larger series. Some journalists and public figures associated the work to the partially-excavated Terracotta Army of Xi'an.

The ''"Cantiere"'' and the ''Segreti''

In 2011 the artist created an art lab for secondary school students called the "Cantiere Giuliano Ghelli". Concurrently, Ghelli had been experimenting with twine wrapped around his pieces, one of which he brought into the art lab. Ghelli invited the students to "write on a small piece of canvas … a phrase no one would ever read". Each such piece was then "folded... soaked in glue, placed under the twine and covered with paint." The resulting painted tailor's bust belongs to a series of mixed media works called "Segreti" made between 2011 and 2014.

Select one-man exhibitions

1973: awarded a scholarship offered to young artists by the city of Florence.
1975: participated in the 10th edition of the Quadriennale nazionale d'arte di Roma.
1975: included by noted critic Tommaso Paloscia in Bolaffi Arte's annual listing of "top Italian artists".
1980: included in Bolaffi Arte's listing of "leading Italian graphic artists".
2006: awarded, with three other artists, the critic's Vela d'oro at the 51st edition of the Rassegna di pittura Marina di Ravenna.
2013: awarded the Gonfalone d’argento, top honor of the Consiglio Regionale della Toscana.
2013: named Commendatore dell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana.
On the artist's birthday in May 2015 the Museo Civico di San Casciano Val di Pesa was rededicated as the Museo Giuliano Ghelli.

Public collections

Palazzo Vecchio, Direzione di Servizi Territoriali Integrati, Servizio Musei Comunali, Florence, Italy
Museo della Contrada Priora della Civetta, Siena, Italy
Museo archeologico di Massa Marittima and Complesso mussale di San Petro all'Orto, Massa Marittima, Italy

Books

Lara-Vinca Masini, Giuliano Ghelli, Il portapaesaggi, 1974.
Claudio Nobbio, Stefano Giraldi, Sergio Staino, Giuliano Ghelli, Eclisse Parziale, 1998, Florence, City Lights Italia.
Marina Nordera, La Bella addormentata nel bosco , text by Patrizia Veroli, illustrations by Giuliano Ghelli, 2003, Palermo, L'Epos.

Select exhibition catalogs

Ghelli, curated by Aldo Passoni, 1974.
Giuliano Ghelli, curated by Maria Luisa Frisa, 1983.
Giuliano Ghelli. Proiezioni metafisiche dell'immaginario, curated by Lara-Vinca Masini, 1989, Mantova, Cleb Gallery
In viaggio con Leonardo, curated by Carlo Pedretti, 1992, Milano, Riproduzioni ABC di Sergio Necchi.
La Parola colorata, curated by Nicola Micieli, texts by Umberto Cecchi, Marco Pistoia and Maurizio Vanni 2001, Prato, Centro Pecci, Studio Bibliografico Pratese.
Il cappello e la creatività, curated by Maurizio Vanni, 2005, Poggibonsi, Carlo Cambi Editore.
La fabbrica della fantasia, curated by Ilario Luperini, 2011, Pontedera, Bandecchi & Vivaldi.
Giuliano Ghelli. 50 anni in viaggio tra pittura e scultura, curated by Sandra Stanghellini, texts by Cristina Acidini, Nicola Danti, 2013, Florence, Palazzo Panciatichi, Consiglio Regionale della Toscana.
Genius Loci. Fiabe dipinte, curated by Giovanna M. Carli, texts by Giovanna Carli, Eugenio Giani, Andrea Ferrante, 2016, Florence, Polistampa.
Giuliano Ghelli inedito. Gioco e forma in opere dal 1963 al 1983 nel clima fiorentino contemporaneo, curated by Mirella Branca, texts by Mirella Branca, Lara-Vinca Masini, Barbara Casalini, 2018, Florence, Polistampa.