Biography
After living in several Italian cities, in 1943 he settled in Rome where he exhibited at the Lo Zodiaco Gallery and took part in the 4th Quadrennial. He was initially a partisan and then a member of the Italian Communist Party from 1945 to 1956. During his activity as an artist, Giulio Turcato created works by always adopting new solutions, he experimented with unusual materials such as sands, foam rubber, fluorescent paints and iridescent supports. His contribution to post-war abstract art movements is remarkable. In 1945 he was among the founders of the Art Club and in 1947 of the Forma 1 group: he participated, again in 1947, in the New Front of the Arts and in 1950 he was part of the Otto group. In 1948 he exhibited at the exhibition “Abstract art in Italy”. The following year he was in the Italian delegation for the peace congress in Warsaw; after this trip his “Warsaw Ruins” are born, a fundamental point, together with the “Comizi”, of a little later, of his poetics. In 1958 he had his first personal room at the Venice Biennale, presented by Palma Bucarelli. In 1959 he exhibited at the second edition of Documenta. He was awarded the 1965 Quadriennale and the following year he exhibited the first foam rubber at the Venice Biennale. In the seventies and eighties the exhibition activity intensified, some important anthological exhibitions were organized: in Spoleto in 1973, at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome in 1974, at the National Gallery of Modern Art in 1986, and recently, in 2008, at the Pescara Museum of Modern Art.
He is considered one of the greatest abstract painters of the twentieth century, both in Italy and internationally. This is demonstrated above all by his numerous participations in the Venice Biennale, one of the most important exhibitions relating to contemporary art: his works are present in the Venetian capital in 1942, 1954, 1956, 1958 (Personal room and winner of the National Award), 1966 (Personal room), 1968, 1972 (Personal room), 1982, 1986, 1988, 1993 and one last time in 1995, bringing his participation in the Venetian event to 15.