NUVOLO The Crucial Years
April 6 – July 26, 2019
Opening: Friday, April 5, 2019, 6 – 9 pm
The exhibition
SCARAMOUCHE loves ALINE is pleased to announce the opening of its gallery in Milan.
The inauguration of the exhibition spaces in Corso Porta Ticinese will take place April 5, 2019 with the show NUVOLO. The Crucial Years, on view through July 26.
A pioneer in his use of silk-screen printing applied to the visual arts, Giorgio Ascani (1926–2008), nicknamed Nuvolo as a teenaged partisan during WWII, is the architect of one of the most extraordinary and singular artistic journeys of postwar Italy.
Following his in-depth studies and experimentation with new materials, Nuvolo was among the first in Europe to innovate the technique of serigraph. Surpassing the limits in the use of mechanics and reproduction series, he created unique and unrepeatable works. The poet and critic Emilio Villa was enthralled by the artist’s process and coined the term Serotipie: an artifice of language, a rhetorical form therefore, to define not a technique but rather pictorial works. Extraordinary works without equal, the serotipie are the cornerstone of an articulated exploration that the artist conducted throughout his lifetime.
The exhibition presents a curated selection of works from the 50s to the early 60s, the noted crucial years. These are the years that follow Nuvolo’s time spent with Alberto Burri and his influence, the transfer of his artistic and cultural life to 1950s Rome, the decisive meeting with Villa – who followed his work from the very first debuts – and then with Cagli, Colla, Mirko, Twombly, Peggy Guggenheim and many others. They are the years of dedicated and intense passion, of incessant work, years of creation, of grand exhibitions. The term crucial (crux) indicates the intersection of Nuvolo’s pictorial cycles that overlap, influence, permeate an irregular but harmonious continuum scanning his limitless artistic pursuit.
NUVOLO. The Crucial Years reunites works from some of his most revealing pictorial periods: the Serotipie (1952–1992), the Sacchi (1953–1957), the Bianchi (1957–1960) and the Bianchi Collages (1958–1964). In these same years, the artist continues to innovate as the fabrics and animal skins salvaged from old clothing and remnants, often painted, become the material of his art, and a treadle Vigorelli sewing machine the instrument of a new geometric–spatial orchestration. On view are notable examples of Cuciti a macchina (1958–1963), which together with the Daini (1960–1962) and the Tensioni (1962–1965), are among the artist’s most representative and experimental works.
Nuvolo’s biography
Giorgio Ascani is born in Citta’ di Castello on October 12, 1926.
Son of typographers, he grows up in Umbria where during the Resistance he’s nicknamed “Nuvolo” (cloud) by his partisan companions, comparing his swift appearance to a sudden cloud in the sky. The name will stick with him the rest of his life.
After the war, Alberto Burri, with whom he had begun to collaborate, calls Nuvolo to Rome where he moves and begins his artistic activity.
There in the capital he lives the artistic and cultural buzz of the 50s and 60s: the debate between artists and realists, the birth of the Gruppo Origine, the international comparison with American artists, and the founding in 1952 of the periodical Visual Arts. It is precisely this magazine that introduces his work for the first time, accompanied with a text by his friend Emilio Villa. Villa would also present Nuvolo’s first solo show in 1955 at the Carrozze Gallery in Rome.
After his second solo show in Florence at Fiamma Vigo’s Galleria Numero, introduced with a text by Cagli, from 1957 onward Nuvolo’s work is supported and promoted by the Galleria Tartaruga of Rome, directed by Plinio De Martiis. Here Peggy Guggenheim would acquire her first works by the artist. Guggenheim continues to follow Nuvolo, acquiring numerous works that later she would sell to prestigious American museums.
In the coming years he exhibits in various Italian galleries and begins to frequent Milanese circles: Fontana, Tancredi, Scarpitta and Castellani, among others. He also participates in important national expositions including the National Quadrennial of Art of Rome and the Lissone Award. In these years and up to the 70s the exhibition activity of the artist proceeds, as he is invited to participate in solo and group shows throughout Europe and the United States.
Beginning in the late 60s, Nuvolo is occupied with teaching and in 1977, wins the Painting Chair of the Accademia di Belle Arti of Perugia. He would also become director of the institution from 1979 to 1984.
In 1985 he moves his Roman studio as well as his screen-printing atelier, established in 1968, to Citta’ di Castello. In fact, Nuvolo had always accompanied his own artistic work with long–standing collaborations with acclaimed international artists to realize their serigraph works.
In 2008 he dies at his home in Citta’ di Castello at the age of 82.
In 2015, the Nuvolo Archive Association of Citta’ di Castello is established by the artist’s family and his wife, Liana Baracchi, who would become its president.
A significant exhibition, Nuvolo and Post-War Materiality 1950–1965, curated by Germano Celant, opened in October 2017 at Emmanuel Di Donna Gallery in New York.
About Scaramouche loves Aline
The story of Scaramouche was born in New York at the beginning of 2009. For seven years he presented an experimental program in his spaces on the Lower East Side of the city; Here he introduced artists of diverse nationalities, often in their first solo shows in the United States, and further inserted them into the American market through acquisitions and exhibitions in public institutions and museums.
The notable public and critical success is evident from reviews and spotlights garnered by major American press such as Artforum, The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, Art in America, Art Papers, The New Yorker, Architectural Digest, Time-Out NY, Artnet Magazine, Huffington Post and Modern Painters, among numerous international publications as well.
Arriving at the end of his New York period, Scaramouche meets Aline with whom he decides to move to Italy, home of the Commedia dell’Arte and their place of origin. Together in the heart of Milan, they’ll continue his artistic journey marked by the vivacity and courage that characterize his temperament;
“He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.”
(Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche, 1921)
