Giovanni Alicò

(Catania, 1906 - Milano, 1971)

Giovanni Alicò was born in Catania in 1906. Self-taught painter, his approach to art is free from constraints or pre-built tracks. In 1935 he settled first in Naples and then in Milan. In 1942 he was present with a work at the XXIII Venice Biennale, and in the same year, he held his first personal exhibition at the Tornabuoni Gallery in Florence. Six years of activity in Argentina followed, between 1948 and 1953, with three personal exhibitions in Buenos Aires and many participations in group exhibitions in various national salons in the cities of La Rioja, Santa Fè, Mendoza and Rosario. Back in Italy, from the mid-fifties and throughout the following decade there were several personal exhibitions in Catania, Milan, Rome and Como. He was awarded the Suzzara Prize in 1955 with the work Peasant resting, where the painter, released from a cold realistic description and far from the neo-cubism schemes typical of the first post-war period, abandons himself to a painting of luministic suggestion, with large fields of green, of greys, of earths, supported by a dense pictorial material defined by a thick contour line. The painting is currently kept in the Civic Gallery of Contemporary Art in Suzzara. In 1957 he exhibited at the Galleria il Pincio in Piazza del Popolo in Rome, one of the most active realities in the panorama of art exhibitions, where Renato Guttuso and Carla Accardi also exhibited there. He began his artistic career by depicting carts in his painting with the colorful stories of the puppets using preferably flat colors, subsequently introducing delicate, vibrant colors into his palette and concentrating on themes pervaded by a marked spirituality. Favorite subjects are female figures, still lifes and landscapes. In the 1950s Giovanni Alicò brought his style closer to that of Guttuso, in the context of social realism. His attention is towards a synthetic figurative painting, which proceeds by suggestions in the general adherence to the themes of social realism. After 1960, an important poetics made of arabesques and light and chromatic effects and shaded furniture entered his work. Since 1967, anthropomorphic characters have appeared on these backgrounds, sort of ghosts, hovering in the space of the composition. The artist's latest production, on the other hand, is characterized by paintings where signs, repeated geometric shapes and large splashes of color are rendered with intense and vivid colors, reaching outcomes of an informal and material nature. Giovanni Alicò died in Catania in 1971. After his death, an important retrospective was set up at the Palazzo della Borsa in Catania in 1973. Many of his works are present in important private collections in Europe and America and in various art foundations.