GIOVANNI TURAZZA 1939 - Born in Rome.
High school, classical studies, degree in Agriculture. He paints since he was a
boy, experimenting many techniques.
1970 – He opens an art gallery in Malcesine on lake Garda, Italy, and he
begins staging exhibitions, mainly featuring graphics (Braque, Burri, Campigli,
Capogrossi, Carrà, Castellani, Chagall, Dalì, De Chirico, Dorazio, Ernst, Fontana,
Hundertwasser, Jorn, Lam, Manzù, Magnelli, Marini, Matta, Masson, Mirò, Moore, M.
Ray, Nicholson, Nigro, Picasso, Vasarely and others), which he also collects himself.
In 1974 he meets the Cuban painter Wilfredo Lam at the art gallery
Nuovo Sagittario in Milan. Many people still remember the exhibition, transferred
for a period in the castle of Malcesine, of graphic works by Giuseppe Capogrossi
in 1976; he loves particularly this artist, of whom he gathers many sheets,
very rare today.
The contacts he has are important for his formation.
He takes interest on rocky incisions, on primitive and negro art, on red indian
civilization.
At the same time he addresses his attention to design (Sottsass, Branzi, Joe Colombo,
Mendini, De Lucchi, Castiglioni, Starck, Arad and others).
He draws objects (chairs, tables, carpets, mirrors, earings, vases, coffe cups,
etc.) and realizes some prototypes (see IDEAS).
November 1980 – Examining a painting of his, dating back some years, he perceives
two signs which, united, make three squares, and, on the base of these signs, he
begins a research on the theme of love and life.
At the beginning these two signs have fixed form (size, position, colour vary),
then they change more and more. The art research of Turazza goes in many other directions
with many other signs/elements wich lies automatically in spontaneous painting.
He calls his compositions “love situations”, which he divides
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into “flowers” and
“not flowers”. In them he sees a fundamental dualism, constituted by something which
contains (vase/space, field) and something which is contained (flowers, elements),
in which the relationship between the elements (love) comes to prevail over the
elements themselves.
1982 – Renato Cardazzo,
director of the famous art galleries “Del Naviglio” in Milan and “Navigliovenezia”
in Venice, watching a drawing “flowers” of him, writes to Turazza the compliments
“for the good taste and the cleanliness”.
1984 – One of his drawings enters in the Contemporary Visual Arts Documentation
Center of Genoa.
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Paola (on the left) and Daniela Turazza with Renato Cardazzo
at Navigliovenezia, in the eighties.
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With his wife Francesca he opens the shop Artemalcesine with an exhibition of wood
sculptures and fitting objects by Giuseppe Rivadossi (Nave, Brescia, Italy), proposing
art and top design pieces of furniture. He is a fan of Memphis Design Milan.
Mariaclara Goldschmiedt (Milan) dedicates him a service on the international furnishings
review GAPcasa, in summer 1994, under the title “Mercanti Philosopher”, publishing
his chair “March 1991” and an adjustable shelf of him, both in wood, out of common
and very practical. He works about cube, realizing objects for fitting (wood small
tables, iron cubic structures, etc.)
2007 – The daughter Paola succedes in the activity in the new space in the
harbour square.
In the course of years he paints four landscapes of Malcesine, where he lives, birthplace
of his ancestor Domenico Turazza, scientist and life senator of the former kingdom
of Italy; of two of these paintings he prints a photolithography and a serigraphy
of the last one, in which appear the typical two signs of his picture and the mountain
is fuchsia, the sky green and the lake yellow.
The local Tourist Board commissioned him a poster of “Malcesine 2”, sold out in
a short time.
Recently his research is about square, in memory of
Bruno Munari.
He has a permanent exhibition of his works in his own space in Malcesine, via Statuto
14, and at Artemalcesine.
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