Venice - The great tribute to Virgilio Guidi
In three exhibitions retraced the entire production of the Master
The Venetian exhibition of Di Myriam Zerbi Virgilio Guidi (1891-1984) is a pleasant and suggestive discovery of an artist with a rich and multifaceted production that has been unjustly neglected for years and that deserves the homage that Venice today pays tribute to him thanks to the collaboration of the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa with the GR Art Studio. “A man submerged in air, in the earth and in the sea”, says Giovanni Granzotto, curator, together with Stefano Cecchetto and Dino Marangon, of the Venetian retrospective, a painter capable of living “the present with the eye, with his memory always turned to the past and the thought always projected to the future”. Guidi always admired nature, he considered it “the only road to be faced, traveled, crossed and discovered: because nature was for Guidi our one and only wealth” (Giovanni Granzotto). Guidi is a poet-painter. “Guidi’s artistic path branches out along two parallel roads: painting and poetry, creating an emotional crossroad that encodes a unique language, rich in cultural references and subtle chromatic vibrations,” says Stefano Cecchetto. The works can be seen at the Fondazione Bevilacqua la Masa, in the venues of Piazza San Marco and Palazzetto Tito (the latter houses the Sonino collection) and in the Franchetti Gallery at Ca’ d’Oro, in an exhibition that retraces the entire creative arc of the Roman master, putting into dialogue, with paintings of artists of the past, the works of the painter to emphasize the link with tradition. He was a regular attendee of the Venetian Biennale since 1920, and since 1927 he started teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice. Virgilio Guidi was a child of art, his father being a sculptor and poet; he begins to paint with Aristide Sartorio and admires Giotto, Piero della Francesca, Cezanne, Matisse and Mondrian as his masters. The poets Vincenzo Cardarelli and Alfonso Gatto were his friends. His artistic story is a “ride made of light” (Giovanni Granzotto) of seventy years, which leads us from Rome to Venice. For Guidi, light is the “spirituality and poetry of the work of art,” and it is with light that he creates forms. He has always painted, looking for, as he confesses, “a possible union between visible and invisible things, between the figures of the mind and those of experience”, of the 1910s to the nature morte from the works of fifteenth-century inspiration , Portraits Madre che si leva of the ‘20s ( of Adriana)from the chromatic body of Roman landscapes to the lagoon views in which painting becomes essential, evanescent, suspended and timeless, Punta detached from descriptive data ( San Giorgio and of 1947, della Dogana of the ‘50s).
Guidi is a child of art, he began to paint with Sartorio and LOOKED AT Giotto, Piero della Francesca and Cézanne
His stylized Marine zenitali Venices, “slow appearance with a deep lyrical breath” (Cesare Orler), become the icon of an artistic practice in continuous Figure nello experimentation, from the of the ‘40s to the astonished spazio of the ‘50s, and from Cieli, Baronesse Angosce e Tumulti, in which light becomes and Occhi a stain and a filament, to the of the 1960s, ending with the Volti the dynamic and emotional chromatism that of the 70s.
His stylized Venices are "slow apparitions with a deep lyrical breath"
Alberi e figure agitate creates The personality of the master and the atmosphere of his studio, or of his house full of cats, the breaks with his cigar at the Santo Stefano gallery, come back to mind in the memories of those who frequented him - Pouchard, Zamberlan and De Marco – which are written in the beautiful Manfredi catalog which combines illuminating essays with lively memories. It is stimulating to meet with such an essential figure of the 900s, whose thought constantly revolves around light, which was for him “the emotion of things”, and to the complex relationship of man with the cosmos: “the search to resolve this relationship is the profound, anguished, torturing drama of today’s artist”.
