Exhibitions, Italy, Salerno, 25 August 2019
Retrospective Exhibition
From 30 January to 31 March 2024
SANDRO BONGIANI CONTEMPORARY ART
The Retrospective exhibition of Giovanni Leto, organized by the Bongiani Art Museum Collection of Salerno and curated by Sandro Bongiani, is made up of the most representative "pictorial" works created from 1961 to 2023: from the works of the training period to the works on canvas of the following years, from three-dimensional interventions on the works of the last period of work.
Sandro Bongiani Arte Contemporanea is pleased to present, on Tuesday 30 January 2024 at 6.00 pm, the Giovanni Leto retrospective entitled "Giovanni Leto, the hidden essence of things", 1961/2023, curated by Sandro Bongiani. The Retrospective exhibition is organized by the Bongiani Art Museum Collection of Salerno and consists of over 70 of the most representative "pictorial" works created from 1961 to 2023; from the works of the training period to the works on canvas of the following years, from the three-dimensional interventions in the form of installations to the works of the last period of work.
The research of the young Giovanni Leto, after the brief formal figurative parenthesis that began in 1961, evolved starting from 1972 towards an investigation that welcomed the use of poor common waste materials reused and worthily readmitted to a new life in painting. 1985 is the year in which Leto created his first Horizons which already anticipated his own original vision towards a new spatiality. In the 90s his "weltanschauung" was already defined in an original way with a conception of the world that transcends the merely representative data to insinuate itself among the dark folds of reflection and memory, with a absorbed and solitary proceeding that led him to today to be a significant interpreter of reality and life.
They are works made up of tight horizontal stratifications marked by a compositional structure linked between essence and materiality, which in the following years characterized in a personal way his artistic research devoted to the obsessive investigation of the use of materials and towards a deliberately aniconic representation of language, appropriately recreated using printed newspaper rolled up like a braided cord that conceals hidden glimmers of events that have occurred and stories of existences that have become suspended presences of an absorbed proceeding beyond a dark horizon, effectively embodying the imminent tension of energy as the essence of being in the world.
As Sandro Bongiani writes in his critical text: "His is definitely a shrewd evocation through traces and interweavings of meaning and matter, with the past full of hidden moods that emerges energetically and is reconciled with the present to recreate unknown and obscure emotions, delivering a new sense of existing in a becoming beyond a logical dimension and also condensing as a final act in the transmutation and change between presence and space and between materiality and chromatic application. It seems like a strange imaginative spell renewed for a long time and characterized in the first decade of 2000 with the twisting of the paper which has become a rope and also a barrier, a wall and even a "shroud of memory" which now suddenly re-emerges from nothing to place itself among glimmers of open space. horizon and towards an infinity that is still distant and difficult to scrutinize” [...].
At the end of the 1920s, there was the creation of particular three-dimensional papers such as the large installation "Corpus temporis" of 2019 and at the same time, the use in an "essential" way of a few elements of rolled paper joined together with newspaper, which starting since 2020 they have invaded the empty space of the canvas, stretching and leavening on large layers of color, grafting fragments and moments of a mental nature that suggest in the provisional state the essence of unknown landscapes of the soul, (self-portraits, animal larvae, fragments of hidden things ), reborn after a collective catastrophe and now delivered to the present in a delicate and painful creative synthesis that only great artists like Leto still know how to recreate.
The exhibition itinerary, specifically chosen by the curator for the spaces of Sandro Bongiani Arte Contemporanea, proceeds backwards from his last three-dimensional work entitled "tappeti" of 2023 - located at the beginning of the retrospective itinerary - until proceeding to the initial work entitled ” “Altofonte” of 1961.
Biography
Giovanni Leto was born in Monreale (Palermo) in 1946. He attended Pictorial Decoration at the State Institute of Art and Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo. His pictorial research has always been based on an acute interest in materials, first placing in an informal context, then delving into the tactile value of the various materials used.
The artist's CV is dotted with an extensive bibliography and a substantial list of personal and collective exhibitions that have taken place in Italy and abroad: Paris, Berlin, Sydney, Stockholm, Helsingborg, Baghdad and New York. His works appear in various museums and public and private collections: at the Renato Guttuso Museum - Villa Cattolica in Bagheria (PA; in the Pinacoteca d'Arte Contemporanea of Sulmona (AQ); at the Bargellini Museum in Pieve di Cento (BO); at the Orestiadi Foundation – Ludovico Corrao in Gibellina (TP) at the Bilotti Museum in Rome; at the Riso Museum – Regional Museum Center of Palermo; at the Museum – Ezio Pagano in Bagheria, at the Civic Art Gallery of Contemporary Art in Marsala, at the Civic Gallery of San Felice Sul Panaro , at the Civic Museum of Contemporary Art of Messina, at the "F. Carbone" Civic Museum in Godrano, at the Contemporary Art Museum of Rende. He currently lives and works in Bagheria.
He thanks the Giovanni Leto Archive of Bagheria for allowing the realization of this important event which summarizes over 60 years of assiduous work (1961-2023). carried out by the Sicilian artist.
SALERNO / Sandro Bongiani Vrspace
Opening January 30, 2024 h. 6pm
EVENT: from 30 January 2024 to 31 March 2024
TITLE: Giovanni Leto, the hidden essence of things - 1961/2023
PLACE: Sandro Bongiani Vrspace
CURATORS: Sandro Bongiani
ADDRESS: Via S. Calenda 105/D - Salerno
HOURS: every day from 00.00 to 24.00
TELEPHONE FOR INFORMATION: +39 3937380225
EMAIL INFO: bongianimuseum@gmail.com
OFFICIAL SITE: https://www.sandrobongianivrspace.it/
From 30 January to 31 March 2024
SANDRO BONGIANI CONTEMPORARY ART
The Retrospective exhibition of Giovanni Leto, organized by the Bongiani Art Museum Collection of Salerno and curated by Sandro Bongiani, is made up of the most representative "pictorial" works created from 1961 to 2023: from the works of the training period to the works on canvas of the following years, from three-dimensional interventions on the works of the last period of work.
Sandro Bongiani Arte Contemporanea is pleased to present, on Tuesday 30 January 2024 at 6.00 pm, the Giovanni Leto retrospective entitled "Giovanni Leto, the hidden essence of things", 1961/2023, curated by Sandro Bongiani. The Retrospective exhibition is organized by the Bongiani Art Museum Collection of Salerno and consists of over 70 of the most representative "pictorial" works created from 1961 to 2023; from the works of the training period to the works on canvas of the following years, from the three-dimensional interventions in the form of installations to the works of the last period of work.
The research of the young Giovanni Leto, after the brief formal figurative parenthesis that began in 1961, evolved starting from 1972 towards an investigation that welcomed the use of poor common waste materials reused and worthily readmitted to a new life in painting. 1985 is the year in which Leto created his first Horizons which already anticipated his own original vision towards a new spatiality. In the 90s his "weltanschauung" was already defined in an original way with a conception of the world that transcends the merely representative data to insinuate itself among the dark folds of reflection and memory, with a absorbed and solitary proceeding that led him to today to be a significant interpreter of reality and life.
They are works made up of tight horizontal stratifications marked by a compositional structure linked between essence and materiality, which in the following years characterized in a personal way his artistic research devoted to the obsessive investigation of the use of materials and towards a deliberately aniconic representation of language, appropriately recreated using printed newspaper rolled up like a braided cord that conceals hidden glimmers of events that have occurred and stories of existences that have become suspended presences of an absorbed proceeding beyond a dark horizon, effectively embodying the imminent tension of energy as the essence of being in the world.
As Sandro Bongiani writes in his critical text: "His is definitely a shrewd evocation through traces and interweavings of meaning and matter, with the past full of hidden moods that emerges energetically and is reconciled with the present to recreate unknown and obscure emotions, delivering a new sense of existing in a becoming beyond a logical dimension and also condensing as a final act in the transmutation and change between presence and space and between materiality and chromatic application. It seems like a strange imaginative spell renewed for a long time and characterized in the first decade of 2000 with the twisting of the paper which has become a rope and also a barrier, a wall and even a "shroud of memory" which now suddenly re-emerges from nothing to place itself among glimmers of open space. horizon and towards an infinity that is still distant and difficult to scrutinize” [...].
At the end of the 1920s, there was the creation of particular three-dimensional papers such as the large installation "Corpus temporis" of 2019 and at the same time, the use in an "essential" way of a few elements of rolled paper joined together with newspaper, which starting since 2020 they have invaded the empty space of the canvas, stretching and leavening on large layers of color, grafting fragments and moments of a mental nature that suggest in the provisional state the essence of unknown landscapes of the soul, (self-portraits, animal larvae, fragments of hidden things ), reborn after a collective catastrophe and now delivered to the present in a delicate and painful creative synthesis that only great artists like Leto still know how to recreate.
The exhibition itinerary, specifically chosen by the curator for the spaces of Sandro Bongiani Arte Contemporanea, proceeds backwards from his last three-dimensional work entitled "tappeti" of 2023 - located at the beginning of the retrospective itinerary - until proceeding to the initial work entitled ” “Altofonte” of 1961.
Biography
Giovanni Leto was born in Monreale (Palermo) in 1946. He attended Pictorial Decoration at the State Institute of Art and Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo. His pictorial research has always been based on an acute interest in materials, first placing in an informal context, then delving into the tactile value of the various materials used.
The artist's CV is dotted with an extensive bibliography and a substantial list of personal and collective exhibitions that have taken place in Italy and abroad: Paris, Berlin, Sydney, Stockholm, Helsingborg, Baghdad and New York. His works appear in various museums and public and private collections: at the Renato Guttuso Museum - Villa Cattolica in Bagheria (PA; in the Pinacoteca d'Arte Contemporanea of Sulmona (AQ); at the Bargellini Museum in Pieve di Cento (BO); at the Orestiadi Foundation – Ludovico Corrao in Gibellina (TP) at the Bilotti Museum in Rome; at the Riso Museum – Regional Museum Center of Palermo; at the Museum – Ezio Pagano in Bagheria, at the Civic Art Gallery of Contemporary Art in Marsala, at the Civic Gallery of San Felice Sul Panaro , at the Civic Museum of Contemporary Art of Messina, at the "F. Carbone" Civic Museum in Godrano, at the Contemporary Art Museum of Rende. He currently lives and works in Bagheria.
He thanks the Giovanni Leto Archive of Bagheria for allowing the realization of this important event which summarizes over 60 years of assiduous work (1961-2023). carried out by the Sicilian artist.
SALERNO / Sandro Bongiani Vrspace
Opening January 30, 2024 h. 6pm
EVENT: from 30 January 2024 to 31 March 2024
TITLE: Giovanni Leto, the hidden essence of things - 1961/2023
PLACE: Sandro Bongiani Vrspace
CURATORS: Sandro Bongiani
ADDRESS: Via S. Calenda 105/D - Salerno
HOURS: every day from 00.00 to 24.00
TELEPHONE FOR INFORMATION: +39 3937380225
EMAIL INFO: bongianimuseum@gmail.com
OFFICIAL SITE: https://www.sandrobongianivrspace.it/
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