84 - Giovanni Alicò (Catania 1906 - Milan 1971) - Still life with mandolin, book and jug, 1931 CM 40x50 , framed 57x67 Oil on canvas

Giovanni Alicò (Catania 1906 - Milan 1971) - Still life with mandolin, book and jug, 1931 CM 40x50 , framed 57x67 Oil on canvas Signed and dated at lower right. Giovanni Alicò was born in Catania in 1906. A self-taught painter, his approach to art is free from constraints or preconstructed binaries. In 1935 he settled first in Naples then in Milan. In 1942 he was present with a work at the XXIII Venice Biennale,and in the same year, he held his first solo exhibition at the Tornabuoni Gallery in Florence. There followed,between 1948 and 1953, six years of activity in Argentina,with three solo shows in Buenos Aires and many participations in group shows in various national salons in the cities of La Rioja, Santa Fè, Mendoza and Rosario. Returning to Italy, from the mid-1950s and throughout the following decade several were his solo shows in Catania, Milan, Rome and Como. He was Premio Suzzara in 1955 with the work Contadino che riposa, where the painter, freed from a cold realistic description and far from the neo-Cubism schemes typical of the early postwar period, indulges in a painting of luministic suggestion, from the wide backgrounds of greens, grays, and earths, supported by a dense pictorial matter defined by a thick outline. The painting is currently kept in the Galleria Civica d'Arte Contemporanea in Suzzara. In 1957 he exhibited at Galleria il Pincio in Piazza del Popolo in Rome, one of the most active in the art exhibition scene, where Renato Guttuso and Carla Accardi were also exhibiting there. He began his artistic journey by depicting carts in his painting with colorful stories of puppets using preferably flat colors, later he introduced delicate,vibrant colors into his palette and focused on themes pervaded by a marked spirituality. Favorite subjects are female figures, still lifes and landscapes. In the 1950s Giovanni Alicò approximates his style to that of Guttuso, in the area of social realism. His focus is on a synthetic figurative painting,which proceeds by suggestion in general adherence to the themes of social realism. After 1960,an important poetics made of arabesques and shaded mobilie luminous and chromatic effects enters his work. From 1967 anthropomorphic characters, sort of ghosts,appear on such backgrounds,hovering in the space of the composition. The artist's latest production is instead characterized by paintings where signs, repeated geometric shapes and large patches of color are rendered with intense and vivid colors, arriving at outcomes of an informal and material nature. Giovanni Alicò died in Catania in 1971. After his death, a major retrospective exhibition was held at the Palazzo della Borsa in Catania in 1973. Many of his works are in important private collections in Europe and America and in various art foundations.