From October 10 to December 20, Tornabuoni Art gallery has the honour of presenting a never-before-seen exhibition of the Italian artist Turi Simeti in France. The gallery, that defends and promotes Italian artists of the second half of the 20th Century, is organizing in close collaboration with Turi Simeti, his first retrospective in France.

The exhibition will bring together thirty important artworks of the artist’s career. This selection exhibits the artist’s will to break away from the flatness of the surface of the canvas using marginal elements, recurrent or opposed arrangements of shapes, playing with depth and movement, always in search of an aesthetic balance.

Turi Simeti was born in 1929 in Alcamo and after studying veterinary medicine in Bologna and law in Palermo, settled in Rome in 1958 where he frequented Alberto Burri’s workshop. It is then he started painting, staying for long periods in London, Paris and Basel where he was immersed in the international questioning of the foundations of art and pictorial traditions. The artistic language he developed evolves around the concept of the canvas-object, where the canvas is freed from its role of mere support.

In the beginning of the 60s and following in Agostino Bonalumi and Enrico Castellani’s footsteps, Turi Simeti created the Legni Ovali (Oval Woods) and Cartoni Neri (Black Cardboards). His rationality and rigour transpire through the combination of monochrome and a threedimensional geometric form that would become his signature, the ellipse.

Since 1963, Turi Simeti has participated in numerous European exhibitions: Arte Visuale in Florence, Nouvelle Tendance 3 in Zagreb, Arte Programmata - Aktuel 65 and Weiss auf Weiss in Bern in 1965 and 1966. He moved to Milan in 1965 and was invited to participate in the ZERO Avantgarde project at Lucio Fontana’s studio where he held an important and active role during the 60s and 70s.

His first solo exhibition took place the same year at the Wulfengasse gallery in Klagenfurt, Austria. His work then evolved into a new vision of art and space that would bring him to create his first shaped canvases at the end of the 60s.

In 1971, as part of a general protest movement in the art world, he created the performance Distruzione di un aliante (Destruction of a glider) at the Galleria La Bertesca in Genoa. In 1980 the Pinacoteca Comunale di Macerata dedicated an exhibition to him. The same year, he set up a workshop in Rio de Janeiro that enabled him to exhibit in Brazil. His work is present in a great number of prestigious public and private collections.

Since the 90s, Simeti has developed an aesthetic language focusing his research into dynamism and movement through the exploration of colour and form. He is considered today to be one of the pioneers of the second half of the century’s Italian artists. He works in his Milanese studio.

Tornabuoni Arte was founded in 1981 by Roberto Casamonti and is specialized in Italian art of the second half of the 20th Century. It established exhibition spaces in Milan in 1995, Portofino in 2001, Forte Dei Marmi in 2004 and on October 1st 2009 in Paris, 16 avenue Matignon in the 8th district. 

Tornabuoni Art in Paris presents the work of Fontana, Castellani, Manzoni, Dorazio, Bonalumi, Dadamaino and Boetti together with the major protagonists of the Italian Novecento such as De Chirico, Morandi, Balla, Severeni and Sironi. The gallery also proposes works of essential artists of the 20th Century such as Picasso, Mirò, Kandinsky, Hartung, Poliakoff, Dubuffet, Lam, Matta, Christo, Wesselmann, Warhol and Basquiat.

Since inaugurating its Parisian space in 2009 with an exhibition dedicated to Lucio Fontana, Tornabuoni Art has organized numerous monographic exhibitions, always in close consultation with the artists or the foundations that represent them. The gallery has shown the works of Alighiero Boetti (2010), Arnaldo Pomodoro (2011), Enrico Castellani (2011), Mimmo Rotella (2012), Giuseppe Capogrossi (2013), Dadamaino (2013) and in 2014 presented an exceptional exhibition Lucio Fontana, rediscovery of a masterpiece in parallel with the retrospective at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Viille de Paris.

Besides these solo shows, the gallery also presents group shows such as The Monochrome Under Pressure (2012), Bianco Italia (2013) or Between Sign and Writing: a path through Italian art (2014), brought together by different curators who are given carte blanche, each show offering a unique approach to the gallery’s collection. The gallery has added a touch of contemporary art to the family tradition and love for Italian art in particular with the artist Francesca Pasquali.

Tornabuoni Art participates in major French art fairs such as the FIAC and the Biennale des Antiquaires in Paris but is also present at big international events such as TEFAF in Maastricht, Art Basel Miami Beach, Art Basel Hong Kong, Artefiera in Bologna and ArtInternational in Istanbul.

The gallery wishes to offer a new visibility to the artists it represents with its soon to be opened exhibition space in the area of Mayfair, London, an important meeting point for the European and American art market.

Many museums have come to the gallery for expertise and guidance and with its experience and thorough knowledge of the work of the artists it represents, the gallery has established itself as advisor for both private and public collections.