Rago Auctions

Born in Venice in 1907, Giuseppe Santomaso was predisposed to creativity, his father was a master goldsmith and Santomaso’s proximity to art-making influenced his own distinct craft from a young age. Under the study of Venetian painter Luigi Scarpa Croce, he showed early artistic promise with a talent for drawing. His interest in drawing and illustration continued into adolescence when, at the mere age of 18, Santomaso exhibited his work for the first time at Ca 'Pesaro for the Bevilacqua la Masa Foundation.

Santomaso attended the Accademia di Belle Arti from 1932 to 1934. Influenced by the avant-garde, Impressionist, and Fauvist movements, he began his work in graphics in 1938.

That same year, Santomaso joined the Corrente di Vita movement, a cross-disciplinary band of creatives and intellectuals. The movement’s artists valued work with moral and humane backings, in direct opposition to the rampant fascist ideals that invaded Europe at the time.

Santomaso traveled to Paris in 1939 for his first solo show at the Galerie Rive Gauche. In 1943 he exhibited at the Quadriennale of Rome, and then in 1945 illustrated for Paul Éluard’s book of poems, Grand Air. The following year, the artist’s political involvement broadened when he became a founding member of the anti-fascist group Fronte Nuovo delle Arti, marking a shift in his work towards the abstraction of Arte Informale.

From 1954 to 1974, Santomaso taught painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, the very institution where his own artistic endeavors had bloomed. After the dissolution of Fronte Nuovo delle Arti, Santomaso took a position in the Group of Eight, a company of artists who continued to further the abstract art movement.

Santomaso’s work has been shown extensively across the globe–he exhibited at the Documenta in Kassel (1955, 1959, and 1964), the Biennial of São Paulo (1961), the Tokyo Biennial (1967) and the Venice Biennial (thirteen times beginning in 1948). He had a solo exhibition at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona in 1979 and retrospectives at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and Brussels in 1960, Hamburg and Berlin in 1965 and 1966, Venice in 1982, and Locarno in 1990. Giuseppe Santomaso’s contributions to the many spheres of the art world are still observed and revered today.