Gastone Novelli (1925- 1968)

Gastone Novelli (Vienna 1925 – Milan 1968) is recognised as one of the leading figures in Italian painting after World War II. On the centenary of his birth, the Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna in Venice presents a major monographic exhibition, offering an opportunity to rediscover the artistic quality and revolutionary impact of his work. The project forms part of a series of significant exhibitions that Ca’ Pesaro has dedicated over the years to post-war masters, from Cy Twombly to Arshile Gorky, and Afro to Roberto Matta, among others.

Novelli’s presence in Venice is further celebrated by the addition to the civic collections of two works donated by his heirs. These masterpieces mark the extremes of his mature production: “Era glaciale” (“Ice Age”), 1958, and “Allunga il passo amico mio” (“Quicken your pace, my friend”), 1967.

The exhibition unfolds across eight rooms on the museum’s second floor and presents approximately sixty works, focusing on the most intense period of Novelli’s production from 1957 to 1968. It opens with his informal works from the late 1950s and progresses to the works of the end of the decade, where Novelli’s language acquires an increasingly explicit ethical and political resonance. The only works excluded are those from his early years in Brazil, which were the subject of the ‘first chapter’ of analysis in this year’s exhibition “Gastone Novelli. A Arte deve viver ao sol” (“Art must live in the sun”) at the MAC USP in São Paulo, curated by Ana Magalhães and Marco Rinaldi.

The chronological arrangement emphasises the succession of different phases in the artist’s practice, demonstrating how, over just a little more than ten years, he addressed key points in contemporary artistic debate. Two rooms are dedicated to the works he selected for the Venice Biennale in 1964 and 1968, invitations that represented fundamental milestones in his career and, as Novelli stated, “give a clear and complete indication of the possibilities of my language”.