Turi Simeti

TURI SIMETI Alcamo, 1929

Simeti after studying at Alcamo, in the province of Trapani, studied law in Palermo, then leaving Sicily, to settle in Rome at the end of the fifties. In the capital the artist attended the studios of Tano Festa, Mario Schifano, Giulio Turcato, and Alberto Burri. The meeting with Burri changed his life, because through him he discovered the oval; from then on this shape in relief has become the protagonist of his three-dimensional painting, it gives new visual perceptions, with its monochromatic surface that changes with the light. Simeti, gradually detaching himself from the uniformity of the canvas, came to the realization of works full of depth and movement. In 1963 he participated in the Figurative Arts Exhibition in Rome and Lazio, the Termoli Prize and the Visual Art exhibition held at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, and other important international exhibitions, including Arte Programmata - Aktuel 65 and Weiss auf Weiss in Berne in 1965 and 1966. In 1965 Simeti was invited to exhibit his works in Milan (where he moved in the same year), at Zero Avantgarde, a collective exhibition hosted in the studio of Lucio Fontana, which saw Italian and foreign artists gathered, including the German Group Zero, Hans Haacke, Yayoi Kusama, Agostino Bonalumi, Enrico Castellani and Dadamaino, Yves Klein and Piero Manzoni. Between 1966 and 1969, as Artist in Residence at the invitation of Fairleigh Dickinson University, he lived for long periods in New York, where he created several works; in the early seventies he held personal exhibitions in Bergamo, Verona, Rottweil, Düsseldorf, Oldenburg, Cologne, Munich, also taking part in some collective exhibitions, such as Extension, in the Casa del Mantegna in Mantua. In the eighties, stimulated by Ludovico Corrao’s passion for art, he created a very linear sculpture for Gibellina, a travertino slab instead of the usual canvas (Impronta, stone slab from 1980), where the artist transfers his geometric plasticism. In 1982 he set up a personal exhibition in the Grossetti Studio in Milan and, in the following years, abroad in the Galerie Passmann in Freiburg and the Galerie Wack in Kaiserslautern; in 1983, at Galerie Maier in Kitzbüehl and Galerie Ahrens in Koblenz in 1984, Galeria Paulo Figueiredo de San Paolo and Galerie 44 in Düsseldorf in 1985, then at the Chicago fair, at the Galerie Apicella in Bonn in 1986 and at the Galerie Monochrome by Aachen in 1987. In the 1990s, he exhibited new works in Rio de Janeiro, Biberach, Kaiserslautern, Milan (Vinciana gallery), Bolzano and Trapani, and in 1996 in the Kunstverein of Ludwigsburg and in Erice, with a text in the catalog by Marco Meneguzzo. In 1998 he held a solo show at the Galerie Kain in Basel, followed the following year by other exhibitions in Biberach (again in the Uli Lang gallery), Ladenburg, Mannheim, and by participating in the exhibition “Art in Italy in the 70s” at The Salerniana of Erice. In the following years his personal exhibitions continued in dozens of Italian and foreign galleries.

TURI SIMETI Quattro ovali blu, 1997 Acrylic on shaped canvas 47 1/4 x 39 1/4 in (120 x 100 cm)

ARTURO VERMI Presenza, 1965 Acrylic on canvas 63 x 51 1/4 in (160 x 130 cm)