On the thirtieth anniversary of the artist’s death, Martina Caruso, his niece, who had a close relationship with Turcato and the archive, and Giuliani Adrienne Drake, curator of the Foundation, conceived this exhibition, respecting the artist’s research and asking why Turcato’s work remains so important in this historical moment and why it remains a reference point for so many artists and curators. Various works from different series center on one theme: monochrome, which is faithful to his exploration of color but also of material. The exhibition was intended to reflect this theme, and even the brochure was conceived as a narrative, with five reproduced works, leaving some sections blank.
Giulio Turcato, “Giallo pelle,” 1961, oil, mixed media, and collage on jute canvas, 110 x 132 cm. Photo courtesy of the Giuliani Foundation, Rome
Turcato looked at the world from above, from space – that was the era of space missions – from the depths of the sea, through a microscope, always offering us a vision unique to him while engaging with the artists of the time. In 1947, with Carla Accardi, Ugo Attardi, Pietro Consagra, Piero Dorazio, Mino Guerrini, Achille Perilli and Antonio Sanfilippo, he founded the FORMA 1 group. In 1962, with his first trip to New York, he entered into a dialogue with the New Dada experiments of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns on materials, and then with the monochrome research of Robert Ryman and the experiments, in Italy, of Alberto Burri and Enrico Castellani.
Giulio Turcato, “Superficie lunare”, 1968, oil, mixed media on foam rubber. 29 x 62 cm. Photo courtesy of the Giuliani Foundation, Rome
I begin my discussion of the exhibition with Oltre lo spettro (Beyond the Spectrum) from 1971, when Turcato, following the American moon landing, was interested in the space race, in the idea of what could be seen from above. The spectrum is what is seen on the base of the work, and here he is already using sand, and amaranth is the color closest to his sensibility (later studied by scientists). The color of this painting enters into a dialogue with Mario Schifano’s monochromes, which are entirely focused on material color, and opens up to a metaphysical dimension. The 1968 work titled Arcipelago (Archipelago) clearly demonstrates one interpretation we can give to these conformations. Furthermore, following a hospital stay, he was able to see bacteria invisible to the human eye under a microscope, recreating this life in his paintings. Thus, thanks to the lens of the macroscopic, Turcato translates a world seen from the other side, from another dimension. Sometimes there is a splash of color that accentuates and emphasizes the underlying color.
Giulio Turcato, “Oltre lo spettro”, 1971, olio, tecnica mista su tela, 120 x 160 cm. Ph courtesy Fondazione Giuliani, Roma
Marino (1972) is an extraordinary work, measuring one meter by three, whose proportions alone speak to its theme and capture it like a vision of the sea, bringing us back to his interest in the underwater research being conducted at the time. This is followed by a room focused on iridescence, featuring works that play on fluorescence. Cangiante giallo (Iridescent Yellow) dates from 1986 and compares with the canvas Cangiante bianco (Iridescent White) from 1976 as a variation on the theme of color. In this series, the pigments react to light and movement, and some even become visible in the darkness: the color is layered until it becomes almost immaterial, becoming only chromatic vibration. Another type of exploration is that of Superficie lunare (Lunar Surface) from 1968, oil and mixed media on foam rubber. There is the recovery of materials but also the idea of an extraterrestrial landscape and a connection to Lucio Fontana’s space explorations.
Giulio Turcato, “Cangiante giallo”, 1986, oil and mixed media on canvas, 18 x 24 cm. Photo courtesy of the Giuliani Foundation, Rome
The artist has spent nearly thirty years researching color and matter as tools of knowledge and discovery, painting and texture. Not a quest for spiritual purity as with other artists, but a pulsating field of possibility, a living body, hollowed-out surfaces, phosphorescent powders, pills, coins, carbon paper. Everyday materials, from plants to minerals, from ruins to bacteria. Political commitment and incessant formal experimentation are his fundamental guiding principles. In Giallo Pelle (1961), there’s an interest in the women of the people glimpsed during his travels, carrying only painting materials and tools. An artist who never stopped searching, experimenting and always looking ahead. Ultimately, an exhibition to ponder.
Info:
Giulio Turcato
11/10/2025 – 31/01/2026
Fondazione Giuliani
via G.Bianchi n. 1, Roma
fondazionegiuliani.org
Emanuele Magri teaches History of Art in Milan. Since 2007 he has been writing abroad for Juliet art Magazine. Since the 1970s he has dealt with writing and visual arts. He created taxonomically defined worlds, in which he experimented with the self-referentiality of language, such as “La Setta delle S’arte” in which ritual clothes are made starting from words with multiple meanings, the “Treaty of genetic art” in which a series of plants is obtained from grafts of human organs, eyes, hands, mouths, etc., and the project “Fandonia”, a city where everything is double and hybrid.
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