THE OVAL OF TURI SIMETI

Turi Simeti was born in Alcamo, in 1929. He left Sicily in '58 and moved to Rome where he began to paint as a self-taught. During these years he stayed for long periods in London, Paris and Basel. In 1965 he was invited to be part of the "Zero Avantgarde" group, which presented itself for the first time in Milan in Lucio Fontana's atelier. In this year he moved from Rome to Milan. From '66 to '69 he stayed for long periods in New York, he was invited as Artist in Residence by Fairleigh Dichinson University. From '69 onwards his works are exhibited in the International Art Fairs: in Cologne with the Rekermann Gallery, Gallery 44, Gallery Ahrens, Gallery Wack, Gallery Mayer; in Basel with the Liatowisch Gallery, E. Wassermann Edition, Ahrens Gallery, Luise Krohn Gallery, Dorothea Van Der Koelen Gallery, Wack Gallery; in Chicago with Gallery 44; in Frankfurt and Bologna with the Milenium Gallery, the Vismara Gallery and the Le Chances de l'Art Gallery. Since 1980 he has a studio in Rio de Janeiro where he spends the winter period and where he has done several solo exhibitions. Lives and works in Milan.

Simeti does not carry out his own artistic operation according to the direction of those who have a value to seek, but according to that of those who already possess a value and want to make subsistence objectively verifiable. In his works there is a magical element, an entire space that originates from the forms and, after having become a plastic value, extends and projects itself outward as a fluid that undoubtedly affects not only consciousness or perception but also stages unconscious or if you want metaphysicians of the receptor. Simeti therefore arrives at an irrational value from a constructive value of the pictorial surface.
[G.Gatti, Simeti between magic and reason, in Turi Simeti, exhibition catalog, Galleria Vismara, Milan, 1966.]


Each work of Simeti is a world apart, as its definition changes and relates from time to time to the variation of the surrounding environment, the stresses caused by the artist, the eye and the perceptive sensitivity of the viewer but above all his ability. of insight. To consider not a single canvas but the becoming of the works, in its totality, from the first to the one that is being born at this moment in the artist's Milanese studio, a powerful and ineffable spectacle appears before our eyes, cloaked by dance of light and shadow, which makes the ovals that press from beneath the canvas vibrate, as if to want to escape from the limited space of the painting, to want to force the limit of the skin of the painting that contains them.
[Ginaluca Ranzi, the emptiness and the spirit of the vague]
 

12.01.2021