Contini Art Gallery

Con ognuno dei miei artisti ho un rapporto bellissimo, un feeling fatto di complicità, ho il piacere di respirare con loro le stesse emozioni...

In gallery: Vetture in vetrina a Venezia

The Contini Art Gallery has the pleasure to invite you at the personal exhibition of Enrico Ghinato hold in the venetian seat in Campo Santo Stefano, San Marco 2765, from the 15th of December 2011 until the 15th of April 2012.

Open every day from 10:30am until 1:00pm and from 2:00am until 7:30pm.

Work of the Month

The Contini Art Gallery is glad to present you the video installation by Fabrizio Plessi, who with a simulation of waterfalls enriches the windows of the entire faҫade of Palazzo Pestrin, located in Calle Larga XXII Marzo,
San Marco 2288, Venice. Inside is hosted a
collective exhibition of international artists,
and solo exhibitions and Fabrizio Plessi
Enzo Fiore.

The exhibition is open every day from 10:30
am until 1:00pm and from 2:00pm until 7:30pm.

Meet the Artist

The Contini Art Gallery invites you to meet the artwork of Igor Mitoraj in the Archeological Park Valle dei templi of Agrigento, from 15th of April 2011 until November 2011.
“Extended to February 15, 2012"

In gallery: Virtual Tour

The Contini Art Gallery has the pleasure to invite you at the personal exhibition of Enrico Ghinato hold in the venetian seat in Campo Santo Stefano, San Marco 2765, from the 15th of December 2011 until the 15th of April 2012.

Open every day from 10:30am until 1:00pm and from 2:00am until 7:30pm.

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Giuseppe Cesetti

Giuseppe Cesetti was born in the city of Tuscania in 1902, a place of Etruscan heritage, land centuries old where time stands still and the natural landscape gives us a sense of the primitive and mythical, of hidden truths. Son of agricultural labourers, Cesetti lives a simple but lonely adolescence, which ultimately gave an indelible mark to his art, a touch that will persevere throughout the many experiences of his life. At sixteen years of age, Cesetti leaves his family and begins his pilgrimage among the beauties and treasures of Italy, travelling the entire peninsula. He observes the work of master painters particularly those where the beauty of nature and poetry of life is manifest. In 1927, he exhibits his work for the first time at Como. He soon leaves for Florence where he collaborates with the Solaria Gallery and several of his designs are published. In 1930, the Santa Trinità Gallery opens his first personal exhibition which is well received. Important collectionists, such as Andreotti, Romano Romanelli, Ottone Rosai, Ugo Ojetti, encourage the exposition by purchasing paintings themselves. Ottone Rosai becomes a lifelong friend. From 1935 to 1937, Cesetti takes up residence in Paris where the artistic movement is particularly vibrant. He makes acquaintances, such as Giorgio de Chirico, Filippo de Pisis and Antonio Aniante. He returns to Italy and in Milan becomes part of group of artists, “Pesce d’oro” (Goldfish) together with Giovanni Scheiwiller, Francesco Messina, Salvatore Quasimodo, Raffale Carrieri, Leonardo Sinisgalli, Arturo Tofanelli , to name a few. He is commissioned by Gio Ponti to design a ceramic floor of huge dimensions for the Italian pavilion of the Universal Art of Paris in 1937. Gino Severini and Massimo Campigli are artists also present at the exhibition. Cesetti’s floor design is widely accepted and is published in the French magazine, "Le décor d'aujourd'hui. In 1939 Cesetti takes the chair of design at the Artistic Lyceum of Venice and in 1941 is nominated head professor of the Art Department of the Academy of Fine Arts (Venice). In 1943, he requests a transfer to the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. In this period Cesetti founds the Galleria del Secolo. At the end of the war, he is nominated by a group of partisans for the liberation to Provincial Deputy of the city of Viterbo. Together with Bonaventura Tecchi, a fellow Deputy, he dedicates his energies to rebuilding the historical patrimony of Tuscania which had been severely damaged by bomb raids. In 1946 by request of special Ministers, Cesetti returns to his chair in Venice and in that same year, he organizes the “La Colomba” award held in two separate pavilions of the Biennale, France and Germany, opportunely renovated for the circumstance. In 1949, he organizes and together with the City Hall of Venice, presides over an important exposition, “50 Years of Art in Italy”, set in the Napoleonic Wing of the Procuratie in San Marco. The “award-Purchase” instituted then for artists is still in use today. From 1955 to 1958 Cesetti makes Paris his home where he initiates an important period of his life. He returns briefly to Venice where he again takes the chair of full professor at the Academy. In 1961, the city of Viterbo hosts an important anthological exhibition of Cesetti’s works with over 100 paintings dating from 1928 to 1961. In 1962, he is transferred to the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, but even before the school years begins, Cesetti is nominated by the Italian Embassy in Paris, with the title of Cultural Attachè for Plastic and Figurative Arts. This position allows him the possibility of increasing the importance of Italian artists living abroad using exhibitions and art publications such as “Contemporary Italian Painting” (1964), “Contemporary Italian Sculpture” ( 1965) “Nine Italian Painters in Paris” (1966). At the same time, Cesetti paints intensely inspired not only by his Paris suroundings, but also by the banks of the Loira, Camargue, Normandy and the Isle of France. Towards the end of 1967, Cesetti returns to Italy and makes his home in Rome, while yet maintaining his atelier in Paris, in rue de Seine. In 1972 following the earthquake which devastated the city of Tuscania, Cesetti by promoting various movements, aids in the renewal of the historical area and its ancient traditions. These initiatives are successful and defend essential values that begin to arouse world interest and which the artist has continuously represented in his works. Returning to his family’s traditions, Cesetti devotes his time to raising pure-breed horses and traditional Maremmanos, a business managed ably by his daughter, Marta. Most of his time however is spent working in his Montebello studio where he can quietly contemplate the four cardinal points, the small strip of the Mediterranean Sea, the Montauto mountains, Amiato, Cimini, and Allumiere and the wide Marta and Fiora valleys, where he spent his childhood and grew into adolescence. It was here that his grandfather, ‘Nonno’ Agostino, expert horse raiser, would take charge of the child and affectionately carry him on horseback rides in the saddle-bow of a gentle Maremmano. From that time of his youth, many years of experience followed, some happy, some sad, but always intense moments lived in absolute honesty and clarity, in regards both to his own conscience and his art. Cesetti’s works of art have been displayed in numerous exhibitions in Italy and abroad, along with artists of grand calibre. They can be found in museums and in many important private collections worldwide. He has been a participant in several occasions at the Biennale of Art in Venice and at the Quadriennale in Rome. He has served as an art critic for the “Ambrosiano” and for the “Gazzetta di Venezia” and has published books of poetry, prose and critical essays. On December 19, 1990, Giuseppe Cesetti died in Tuscania.
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