Gastone Biggi

Gastone Biggi (1925 - 2014) was born on February 12, 1925 in Rome in the Rione Monti from a copyist and painter father. He graduated from the Liceo Artistico in Rome, where he will teach art subjects in different locations, until 1984.

1943-1949

At the age of eighteen he was called to arms and during the German occupation in Rome he was taken by the Germans from a religious institution where he had hidden. Brought to the Cassino front, he finds himself involved in the violent fighting of May 1944. Prisoner of the German army, he is first forced to work as a servant on the artillery pieces of the German troops, then he is sentenced to death by the war court for attempting the leak. At the last moment the sentence was commuted to prison, but in the meantime he was tortured by the Germans. He manages to escape and adventurously reach the capital. Following his injuries, he is hospitalized at the C.R.I. in Alto Adige and Valtellina where on the interest of some friends he is pushed to paint. The first expressionist tests are made in dark colors and are strongly influenced by the painful war experience. After leaving the hospital for good in 1948, he made his first trip abroad to Switzerland. He returns to Rome where he begins a long series of drawings and oil works on social issues. He is interested in music and the study of Giotto's works, known during a trip to Assisi. In 1949 Mario Michele Sinibaldi, his convinced admirer and first collector together with the musicologist Riccardo Milano, introduced him to the Galleria Fiorani, where he held two personal exhibitions with works inspired by musical compositions (especially Bach). On this occasion he met Giorgio De Chirico and several emerging painters of the Roman School. During the Roman exhibitions he presents the painting The Unknowns, which will make Biggi come up with the idea of coining the term Abstract Realism to define his painting of him.

1950-1959

He participates in the Michetti Award with the work Periferia, of social inspiration, for which he receives a recommendation from the critic Ugo Moretti. He continues to design by privileging the values of the line and seeking the utmost formal essentiality by coining the works of this "essentialist" phase. In 1951, after visiting Basel and Zurich, he made his first trip to Paris, where he systematically intertwined study and painting. He met Igor Strawinsky during his first concert in Rome, he attended the artists of the Portonaccio School (including Armando Buratti, Marcello Muccini and Renzo Vespignani), painters with whom he formed the Group 56 and exhibited at the Galleria La Finestra in 1957. In 1952 realizes the sets for Aristophanes' "The birds" at the Teatro delle Maschere in Rome. Encouraged by Irene Brin and Gaspero Del Corso, he exhibits works with a pointillist technique characterized by the vibratility of the sign at the gallery, the Obelisk in Rome. He began his commitment as a teacher at school. He creates a series of works inspired by urban realities, accentuating the significant chromatic and formal data in declared contrast with the directives of the leftist culture, which will lead him to the systematic exclusion from official exhibitions. Meanwhile, 1957 marks the watershed between the last Giotto-inspired works of social realism and the adhesion to the informal current through Le Cancellate and I Racconti, Le Lettere e Le Sabbie of 1958.

1960-1969

In 1960 the RAI dedicated a radio broadcast to him for the Ultimo quarter column, edited by Giovanni Artieri and Renato Giani, entitled Gastone Biggi and the Vespa, the means with which the artist traveled all over Italy, going in 1967 up to Berlin. The painter made contact with the authors of Forma 1 (Piero Dorazio, Toti Scialoja, Giulio Turcato, Achille Perilli), met the art historians Giulio Carlo Argan, Palma Bucarelli, Lionello Venturi and Nello Ponente. He is awarded prizes and teaching assignments (he teaches Advertising Design at the Armando Diaz school in Rome). He resumes his travels in France, abandons the Informal and returns to form with the Continuous signs, abolishing color and painting only with black and white. He alternates his activity as an art writer and musicologist with painting, dedicating himself to the theorization of his pictorial research which now stands on a precise and reasoned line. In 1962 with the artists Nato Frascà, Nicola Carrino, Achille Pace, Pasquale Santoro and Giuseppe Uncini he founded Group 1 with Giulio Carlo Argan as promoter. With them he exhibited for the first time at Il Quadrante in Florence and at the Galleria Rotta in Genoa, while the following year he exhibited his first abstract works at what would later become the Roman Biennale. Biggi while maintaining his specificity, will work more and more intensively with Gruppo Uno which had become closer to contemporary music composers (Karlheinz Stockhausen, Muzio Clementi, Luciano Berio) and to some members of Gruppo 63, the Italian avant-garde literary movement established in Palermo in 1963, (Edoardo Sanguineti, Alfredo Giuliani, Nanni Balestrini, Antonio Porta and Cesare Vivaldi). After participating in various international exhibitions with Gruppo Uno (New Delhi, Nijigata in Japan, Hamhel and Munich in Germany) and the collaboration in the drafting of the group's second manifesto (the Poetics of perception) in 1965, he dissociated himself from the companions with whom he had been called to exhibit at the Venice Biennale. He participates in the IX National Roman Quadrennial and in 1966 he begins to work on the Variables series, and returns, after years of black and white, to color. He participates in important group exhibitions in the United States, in Baltimore and Chesterthow and travels to Europe: Germany, France, Austria, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, Russia. He paints four large canvases for the Collevalenza sanctuary (Todi) commissioned by the great Spanish architect Julio Garcia Lafuente. He won the Finmare Prize (Michetti Prize) in 1967. He forms a fruitful relationship with Rosario Assunto and Goffredo Petrassi.

1970-1979

In the early seventies Biggi participates in numerous exhibitions in Italy and abroad, continues to devote himself to writing and music, his great passions, and collaborates with some newspapers (L'Umanità) and various magazines. He returns to color in the series of polychrome Variables, in the Tangentials made only of poor colors, in the Rhythms and in the Heavens. In 1971, called by Guido Ballo, he collaborated in the drafting of the Almanac of the Poets, thus approaching the Milanese pictorial context. He participates in the exhibition Writing-painting with Schifano, Angeli, Festa, Kounellis, Twombly and Novelli, at the Contini Gallery in Rome. In 1972 he exhibited in Venezuela, in London, in Madrid and proposed anthological exhibitions in Turin, Rome, Milan, Verona. In 1973 he participated in the 10th Quadrennial in Rome, where Palma Bucarelli bought three major works for the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome and for the Municipal Gallery in Rome, which are supplied in their respective locations. He wins the First Prize in Termoli. In 1976 he was dean of the Art School of Ravenna, where he also held an important series of critical interventions. In 1977 he begins to paint the large-scale Rhythms series, still in black and white, which will continue for over two years, in 1978 he begins the Cieli series and moves to Marina di Ravenna. With the Heavens he takes full color again, charged with the use of pastels and waxes. He will develop this theme for a few years, exhibiting a lot and gaining a great consensus from the public and critics, especially in Central and Northern Europe.

1960-1969

In 1960 the RAI dedicated a radio broadcast to him for the Ultimo quarter column, edited by Giovanni Artieri and Renato Giani, entitled Gastone Biggi and the Vespa, the means with which the artist traveled all over Italy, going in 1967 up to Berlin. The painter made contact with the authors of Forma 1 (Piero Dorazio, Toti Scialoja, Giulio Turcato, Achille Perilli), met the art historians Giulio Carlo Argan, Palma Bucarelli, Lionello Venturi and Nello Ponente. He is awarded prizes and teaching assignments (he teaches Advertising Design at the Armando Diaz school in Rome). He resumes his travels in France, abandons the Informal and returns to form with the Continuous signs, abolishing color and painting only with black and white. He alternates his activity as an art writer and musicologist with painting, dedicating himself to the theorization of his pictorial research which now stands on a precise and reasoned line. In 1962 with the artists Nato Frascà, Nicola Carrino, Achille Pace, Pasquale Santoro and Giuseppe Uncini he founded Group 1 with Giulio Carlo Argan as promoter. With them he exhibited for the first time at Il Quadrante in Florence and at the Galleria Rotta in Genoa, while the following year he exhibited his first abstract works at what would later become the Roman Biennale. Biggi while maintaining his specificity, will work more and more intensively with Gruppo Uno which had become closer to contemporary music composers (Karlheinz Stockhausen, Muzio Clementi, Luciano Berio) and to some members of Gruppo 63, the Italian avant-garde literary movement established in Palermo in 1963, (Edoardo Sanguineti, Alfredo Giuliani, Nanni Balestrini, Antonio Porta and Cesare Vivaldi). After participating in various international exhibitions with Gruppo Uno (New Delhi, Nijigata in Japan, Hamhel and Munich in Germany) and the collaboration in the drafting of the group's second manifesto (the Poetics of perception) in 1965, he dissociated himself from the companions with whom he had been called to exhibit at the Venice Biennale. He participates in the IX National Roman Quadrennial and in 1966 he begins to work on the Variables series, and returns, after years of black and white, to color. He participates in important group exhibitions in the United States, in Baltimore and Chesterthow and travels to Europe: Germany, France, Austria, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, Russia. He paints four large canvases for the Collevalenza sanctuary (Todi) commissioned by the great Spanish architect Julio Garcia Lafuente. He won the Finmare Prize (Michetti Prize) in 1967. He forms a fruitful relationship with Rosario Assunto and Goffredo Petrassi.

1970-1979

In the early seventies Biggi participates in numerous exhibitions in Italy and abroad, continues to devote himself to writing and music, his great passions, and collaborates with some newspapers (L'Umanità) and various magazines. He returns to color in the series of polychrome Variables, in the Tangentials made only of poor colors, in the Rhythms and in the Heavens. In 1971, called by Guido Ballo, he collaborated in the drafting of the Almanac of the Poets, thus approaching the Milanese pictorial context. He participates in the exhibition Writing-painting with Schifano, Angeli, Festa, Kounellis, Twombly and Novelli, at the Contini Gallery in Rome. In 1972 he exhibited in Venezuela, in London, in Madrid and proposed anthological exhibitions in Turin, Rome, Milan, Verona. In 1973 he participated in the 10th Quadrennial in Rome, where Palma Bucarelli bought three major works for the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome and for the Municipal Gallery in Rome, which are supplied in their respective locations. He wins the First Prize in Termoli. In 1976 he was dean of the Art School of Ravenna, where he also held an important series of critical interventions. In 1977 he begins to paint the large-scale Rhythms series, still in black and white, which will continue for over two years, in 1978 he begins the Cieli series and moves to Marina di Ravenna. With the Heavens he takes full color again, charged with the use of pastels and waxes. He will develop this theme for a few years, exhibiting a lot and gaining a great consensus from the public and critics, especially in Central and Northern Europe.

1980-1989

In 1980 he returned to Rome where he began his exhibition collaboration with the Editalia gallery, where he met Fausto Melotti and Mauro Reggiani, and with the Palazzo delle Esposizioni. In 1981 he exhibited the first Cieli at the Spatia gallery in Bolzano, alongside which the Second Skies, as an evolution of that first series, and published a series of poems dedicated to Schubert and Vienna for the magazine “Literatur und Kritik” in Salzburg. After a long trip to France, in search of inspiration from the Romanesque and Gothic (he has a strong passion for Chartres stained glass), he begins to paint I Giorni, works of great spontaneity and immediacy, which in 1983 he will exhibit in Bolzano, Bari and Naples. In 1984 he moved from Rome to the Sienese countryside, to Valacchio, and left teaching. From this biographical experience a new aesthetic vision will develop, evident in the new version of the Skies and in the subsequent cycle of I Campi, from 1985, where the warp of signs and colors tends to reflect the innumerable vibrations of light, to portray the emotions that the artist tries. After three years of stay in Siena, he returns to Lazio and moves to Genzano di Roma, where the series of Songs of Memory begins, a perfect synthesis between the abstraction of the idea and the reality of vision and memory. The thirst for knowledge and novelty will lead him to travel extensively and to undertake the first of four trips to America, where he is especially struck by the splendor of the skyscrapers of Manhattan and the black harshness of the suburbs of the New York suburbs. From the American experience he derives the American Suite and New York-New York. He participates in the Rome 60s review curated by Maurizio Calvesi.

1990-1999

From the move to Milan in 1990 and from the suggestions of the American experience, the cycle of Le Luci was born, and then moved on to the Tabule, where the background is the true protagonist of the painting. After traveling to Ireland and Spain, in 1992 he moved to Verona, where he was inspired for the composition of the Constellations. In the autumn of that same year he moved to Langhirano in the province of Parma with the painter Giorgio Kiaris (his assistant and collaborator) with whom he organized exhibitions, debates and lessons. In March 1995 he began working on the Icons series, where he resumed the use of sand and sawdust in a solemn, almost hieratic way. At the same time, the Padano Year project takes shape, reflecting the moods, lights, passions of the Emilian land where he lives. The same feelings that are also at the basis of the creation of the four great paintings dedicated to the seasons. In 1996 he won the 1st Sulmona Prize for painting. After a parenthesis inspired by the surrounding environment, the Diaries series begins where the intent is to re-establish the necessary contacts so that the work does not remain embalmed, but also follows the social issues, so dear to this artist.

1980-1989

In 1980 he returned to Rome where he began his exhibition collaboration with the Editalia gallery, where he met Fausto Melotti and Mauro Reggiani, and with the Palazzo delle Esposizioni. In 1981 he exhibited the first Cieli at the Spatia gallery in Bolzano, alongside which the Second Skies, as an evolution of that first series, and published a series of poems dedicated to Schubert and Vienna for the magazine “Literatur und Kritik” in Salzburg. After a long trip to France, in search of inspiration from the Romanesque and Gothic (he has a strong passion for Chartres stained glass), he begins to paint I Giorni, works of great spontaneity and immediacy, which in 1983 he will exhibit in Bolzano, Bari and Naples. In 1984 he moved from Rome to the Sienese countryside, to Valacchio, and left teaching. From this biographical experience a new aesthetic vision will develop, evident in the new version of the Skies and in the subsequent cycle of I Campi, from 1985, where the warp of signs and colors tends to reflect the innumerable vibrations of light, to portray the emotions that the artist tries. After three years of stay in Siena, he returns to Lazio and moves to Genzano di Roma, where the series of Songs of Memory begins, a perfect synthesis between the abstraction of the idea and the reality of vision and memory. The thirst for knowledge and novelty will lead him to travel extensively and to undertake the first of four trips to America, where he is especially struck by the splendor of the skyscrapers of Manhattan and the black harshness of the suburbs of the New York suburbs. From the American experience he derives the American Suite and New York-New York. He participates in the Rome 60s review curated by Maurizio Calvesi.

1990-1999

From the move to Milan in 1990 and from the suggestions of the American experience, the cycle of Le Luci was born, and then moved on to the Tabule, where the background is the true protagonist of the painting. After traveling to Ireland and Spain, in 1992 he moved to Verona, where he was inspired for the composition of the Constellations. In the autumn of that same year he moved to Langhirano in the province of Parma with the painter Giorgio Kiaris (his assistant and collaborator) with whom he organized exhibitions, debates and lessons. In March 1995 he began working on the Icons series, where he resumed the use of sand and sawdust in a solemn, almost hieratic way. At the same time, the Padano Year project takes shape, reflecting the moods, lights, passions of the Emilian land where he lives. The same feelings that are also at the basis of the creation of the four great paintings dedicated to the seasons. In 1996 he won the 1st Sulmona Prize for painting. After a parenthesis inspired by the surrounding environment, the Diaries series begins where the intent is to re-establish the necessary contacts so that the work does not remain embalmed, but also follows the social issues, so dear to this artist.

2000-2013

If the new millennium opens with the series of Cosmocromie (2000-2004), the artist continues with the cycle Events - War and Peace (2005-2006), Events - New York 2 (2006), Ayron (2007- 2008), Puntocromie (2008-2009), New York 3 (2010-2012), Fleurs (2009-2011) and Scores (2011-2013). In 2004, the art historian Carlo Arturo Quintavalle paid tribute to Biggi's long work with a catalog raisonné published by Skira and an anthological exhibition of graphic works and paintings at the hall of the Stables of the Pilotta palace in Parma. Numerous publications on the artist's work and various exhibitions in Europe follow. In 2006 he starred in Giorgio Kiaris' short film entitled Art in Progress, which reprises Gastone Biggi while he paints a work from the “War and Peace” cycle, inspired by the game of football. The short film was selected for the Bergamo International Film Festival of that year. In 2008 the painter inaugurates an anthological exhibition on the occasion of his 60 years of painting, “Biggi 1948-2008”, at the Casa del Pane in Milan. The artist intensifies the exhibition activity with participation in 2009 at the 53rd Venice Biennale, then in Palermo, China at the headquarters of the Urban Planning Exhibition Center in Shanghai, Spoleto and at the Withebox Art Center in New York.

2014

He dies in the Red House of Tordenaso on the Parma hills. The following year the Gastone Biggi Foundation was founded and in 2018 the Catalog Raisonné of the paintings was published by Skira Editore, edited by Arturo Carlo Quintavalle and Gloria Bianchino.