Venice, 1907 – Venice, 1990

Giuseppe Santomaso was an Italian painter.

Son of a goldsmith, he immediately revealed a predisposition to painting and began his training first at the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation, then at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, becoming a friend of the sculptor Alberto Viani. Already in 1934 he participated in the XIX Venice Biennale, quickly becoming one of the most important artists on an ongoing basis.

Among the founders of the “New Front of the Arts”, he confronts himself deeply with the European avant-garde. Since the mid-fifties he adheres to the poetics of the informal even if the pictorial act and the gesture never reach the drama and fury typical of this current in his art.

In fact, his works have a structure that tends to balance and harmony of colors and shapes, in which nothing is due to chance. In doing so, it goes beyond the international informal, keeping firm the traditional concept of painting, the result of its very strong link with the artistic past of Venice.

In fact, in Santomaso’s works, there are the typical elements of his city, of his monuments and of the great Venetian painters: light, space, color. The light of his paintings fluctuates as if reflected in the sea of ​​the lagoon, illuminating the lines and shapes that lose the clarity of proportions.

Santomaso studies the stratification of space, looking at the set of squares, streets, alleys of Venice and at the same time the color comes to life and fills with joy. His works are dominated by order and harmony.

His retrospective in 1965-66 is presented at the Kunstverein in Hamburg and then at the Haus am Lützowplatz in Berlin and at the Museum am Ostwall in Dortmund. In 1971 the poetry book On Angle by Ezra Pound was published, with his illustrations. The search for light becomes more and more accentuated, the works are now luminous architectures, although the subtle links with the informal are now outdated.

© GIUSEPPE SANTOMASO, by SIAE 2023