São Paulo Exhibition Marks Gastone Novelli's Centenary

The Istituto Italiano di Cultura di San Paolo, in collaboration with the Museo di Arte Contemporanea dell'USP, presents 'A arte deve viver ao sol – GASTONE NOVELLI NO BRASIL' to mark the centenary of the artist's birth. The exhibition, curated by Ana Magalhães and Marco Rinaldi, brings together 29 works by Novelli and runs until October 12 at MAC USP, with free admission. Novelli lived in Brazil from 1948 to 1954, arriving at age 23 after a tumultuous past: born in Vienna in 1925 to an Austrian noblewoman and an Italian military attaché, he fought in the Resistance during WWII, was arrested in 1943, tortured, and sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment. Freed on June 4, 1944, he studied social and political sciences in Florence but had earlier trained in visual arts in Rome. In Brazil, he began his artistic career, teaching painting at MASP in 1953 at the invitation of director Pietro Maria Bardi, who had founded the IAC. He held solo shows at Galeria Domus (1951), Galeria Ambiente and Galeria Tenreiro (1952), and Museu de Arte (1953), and participated in the first São Paulo Biennales (1951, 1953, 1955). The exhibition title comes from a 1952 manifesto by Novelli: 'Art must live in the sun, in the squares, among the people!' Reflecting his commitment to democratizing art through industrial design and mural painting, the show features his early abstract paintings, ceramics, murals, and graphic works, marking his return to São Paulo after seventy years.