2026: One hundred years of Giorgio Ascani Nuvolo. Inventor of silk-screen painting.

Giorgio Ascani was born in the San Giacomo district of Città di Castello in 1926 into a family of printers, the fourth of five brothers. From a very young age, he became involved in art, restoring and designing floor plans for the town’s churches, as well as creating banners and props for theatrical performances. In June 1944, he enlisted—together with his brother Giuseppe—in the ‘Brigata d’Urto di San Faustino’ (San Faustino Shock Brigade) and during this period he took on the partisan nickname Nuvolo.

In the early 1950s, he met Alberto Burri during a solo exhibition at the Galleria dell’Angelo. Burri was already an established painter in the capital and invited Nuvolo to Rome to help him with various commissions. Nuvolo accepted and moved into Burri’s studio at number 15 Via Margutta, a street teeming with artists and art workshops. Here, in the lively artistic climate of Rome, he came into contact with the leading exponents of contemporary art – both Italian and American – and began to create his first works of art using screen printing, an industrial technique he had begun to study in the early post-war period. Nuvolo did not use it with the help of industrial technology, but began to develop his own original method and language that would characterize him throughout his artistic career.

In the mid-1950s, his works were exhibited in the most important galleries in Rome, including Topazia Alliata’s Galleria Trastevere and Plinio De Martiis’ Galleria La Tartaruga. His works were purchased by Italian and American collectors, such as Peggy Guggenheim and Earl Stendhal. He was invited to exhibit not only in Italy but also in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

In the mid-1960s, he began working as a screen printer for other artists, founding the ‘Studio Nuvolo’ in Via Lungotevere degli Artigiani in Rome, which in the following years became ‘Multiplo Serigrafico snc’ in Cerbara, after his permanent return to Città di Castello in 1984. From 1979 to 1991, Nuvolo was the holder of the Chair of Painting at the Pietro Vannucci Academy of Fine Arts in Perugia, also serving as Director until 1984. during these years, he promoted a revolution within the academic teaching system by introducing new disciplines and prioritizing experience and direct knowledge of works and artists, who were often invited to Perugia to hold seminars.

In the 1980s, he left teaching to devote himself full-time to his graphic design studio and his own works, increasing his production by experimenting with new solutions and techniques until 2005. He died in Città di Castello on October 10, 2008.