Giulio Turcato valuation
Signed Forma 1, painted political abstraction, and made surfaces out of foam rubber and sand.
Giulio Turcato was born in Mantua in 1912 and was one of the signatories of Forma 1 in Rome in 1947, the manifesto that argued for abstraction against the realism the Italian left demanded — a position that took some courage from painters who were themselves communists.
What a work by Giulio Turcato is worth
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Bio
Giulio Turcato was born in Mantua in 1912 and was one of the signatories of Forma 1 in Rome in 1947, the manifesto that argued for abstraction against the realism the Italian left demanded — a position that took some courage from painters who were themselves communists. His work stayed political in subject while remaining abstract in language: Comizi, the meeting paintings, reduce a political rally to a field of red flags. From the 1960s he built physical surfaces from foam rubber, sand, tar and metallic pigment, and made the Superfici lunari. He died in Rome in 1995.
An Italian market with growing international attention as post-war Italian abstraction is reassessed. The Comizi and the works of the late 1940s and 1950s lead. The foam rubber and mixed-material surfaces of the 1960s onwards are the significant conservation problem: polyurethane foam degrades, discolours and crumbles with age, and there is no straightforward remedy, so condition and storage history bear heavily on value. Works on paper and prints are numerous. The Archivio Giulio Turcato in Rome handles attribution.
Venice, Muzio and the Nuova Secessione
Turcato studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice in the early 1930s, then moved to Milan and in 1937 worked for the architect Giovanni Muzio. In 1946 he signed the manifesto of the Nuova Secessione Artistica Italiana, and the following year he was a founding member of Forma 1.
He died in Rome in January 1995. The Archivio Giulio Turcato documents his work, and a work's date and materials should be checked against its records before a sale.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
