Italian artist Turi Simeti dies at 91 in Milan

Turi Simeti, the Italian painter and sculptor known for his monochromatic oval canvases, died in Milan at age 91. Born in Alcamo, Sicily in 1929, he studied law in Palermo before moving to Rome in 1958, where he was influenced by Alberto Burri, Tano Festa, and Mario Schifano. His signature oval form emerged in the 1960s, leading to his inclusion in the landmark 1965 exhibition "Zero Avantgarde" alongside Piero Manzoni, Yayoi Kusama, and Enrico Castellani, later reprised at Galleria Christian Stein in 2013. In 1965 he moved to Milan and held his first solo show at Galerie Wulfengasse in Klagenfurt, followed by exhibitions at Galleria Vismara in Milan and Galleria La Bertesca in Genoa, where he performed "Distruzione di un aliante" (Destruction of a Glider) in 1971. He contributed the work "Impronta" to the Gibellina reconstruction project after the 1976 earthquake, invited by Ludovico Corrao. A two-volume catalogue raisonné was published in 2016 by Archivio Turi Simeti, edited by Antonio Addamiano and Federico Sardella, cataloguing over 1,800 works. His last retrospective, "Turi Simeti. Opere 1960 – 2020", was held at Dep Art in Milan in September 2020. He is survived by his daughter Martina, who runs a gallery in Milan.