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Turi Simeti

TURI SIMETI

Turi Simeti. Works 1960 - 2020 Dep Art Gallery 8 September–22 December 2020 Milan
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Press Release

Dep Art Gallery joins the cultural buzz during the Milan Art Week to open ”Turi Simeti. Works 1960 - 2020”, a solo show of one of the key figures in the field of non-figurative and volumetric painting.
The exhibition brings together about twenty large-format works from the most representative phases of Simeti’s almost 60 years spanning artistic career, which had its beginnings in the Milanese art scene in 1965: it was indeed in Lucio Fontana’s studio where Simeti exhibited his first everted canvases in the legendary exhibition ”Zero avantgarde” curated by Nanda Vigo.

It is the third solo show of Simeti at the Dep Art Gallery, which has been representing the artist and assuming the role of his archive since 2013.

Thus, the exhibition is part of Dep Art Gallery’s continuous promotion and preservation of Simeti’s body of work, also with the publication of a bilingual catalogue (Italian, English) which includes an updated bio-bibliographical apparatus and an introduction by the curator of the exhibition, Demetrio Paparoni, who gets straight to the heart of Simeti’s poetic: “Turi Simeti conceived the painting as an autonomous object that does not illustrate, does not recount, does not represent. As autonomous objects that protrude into space as high-reliefs, these works can be considered both paintings and sculptures.

They can be either one or the other. They have all the elements that constitute a painting - frame, canvas, colour - and are created to be hung on the wall. However, they are also sculptural because, having body and volume, they transcend the two-dimensionality of the painting. This ambiguity is deliberate and raises questions about the language and nature of art”.

The Dep Art Gallery is excited to open this special exhibition for the public from Tuesday to Sunday, 10.30 am - 7 pm, until December 22 2020. From 22 to 25 April 2021, the gallery will present Simeti’s works at Art Brussel.
Browse more of Turi Simeti’s artworks or contact Teresa Oschmann at art@depart.it for further information.

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About the Artist

Along with artists like Lucio Fontana, Enrico Castellani, Piero Manzoni and Agostino Bonalumi, Turi Simeti played an active role in the Zero art movement of 1960s and 1970s. Still actively creating today, Simeti is considered a true pioneer, a ‘maestro,’ of 20th and 21st Century Italian art. Minimalist in conception, for the last 50 years, Simeti’s work has comprised of dynamic patterns of ovals that dance across the monochromatic surfaces of shaped canvases. This focused combination of color and shape speaks to Simeti’s concern with emphasizing the physical presence of the artwork itself, rather than an expression of the artist’s voice. Just as Fontana helped found Spazialismo with his punctured canvases, for decades Simeti has broken through key tenants of minimalism to explore the play of light on shapes created on monochromatic and tactile canvas surfaces. Simeti’s works exist not as single entities but as an active experience of color and shape, and ultimately a capturing of the dynamism that exists between these two aesthetic elements.

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Also Exhibiting

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Group Exhibition
GROUP EXHIBITION 20 Years Dep Art Gallery 24 June–19 December 2026 Milan
About the Gallery

Opening in Milan in 2006 with Mario Nigro’s solo exhibition Opere di Mario Nigro, Dep Art Gallery presents compelling artworks by modern and contemporary Italian and international artists. The gallery moved into its current location in Via Comelico, a former school with substantial exhibition spaces, in 2015. Dedicated to presenting contemporary Italian art, Dep Art Gallery has also been the Turi Simeti archive centre—archiving the artist’s legacy and producing a catalogue raisonne of artworks on canvas—since 2013.

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Address
Via Comelico, 40
Milan
Italy
Opening Hours
Tuesday - Saturday
10:30am - 7pm
(1)
Milan Via Comelico, 40
Dep Art Gallery contemporary art gallery in Milan Italy
Dep Art Gallery
Via Comelico, 40, Milan, Italy
+39 023 653 5620
http://depart.it

Opening hours
Tuesday - Saturday
10:30am - 7pm
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