Toti Scialoja

Toti Scialoja , actually: Antonio Scialoja (born December 16, 1914 in Rome , Italy ; † March 1, 1998 ibid), was an Italian painter and poet . He is one of the most important representatives of abstract art after the Second World War .

Antonio Scialoja was born in Rome on December 16, 1914. In the late 1930s he frequented the artistic and literary circles of the Galleria La Cometa in Rome. He gave up his original professional training, law studies, in 1937 and began painting. His first works were expressionist paintings influenced by French painting, especially Chaim Soutine .

In 1939 he exhibited at the 3rd Quadriennale in Rome and two years later, in 1941, he had his first solo exhibition at the Società Amici dell'Arte in Turin . The following year he took part in a group exhibition in the Galleria Lo Zodiaco in Rome, together with Emilio Vedova , Giulio Turcato and Leoncillo Leonardi . Toti Scialoja was an active member of the Italian resistance movement . In 1943 he worked for the theater and created his first stage sets.

In 1945 he co-founded the artist group “ I quattro fuori strada ” together with the artists Giovanni Stradone (1911–1981), Arnoldo Ciarrocchi (1913–2004) and Piero Sadun (1919–1974) . At the end of the 1940s Scialoja moved to Paris and came into contact with the current artistic currents in Europe. He began to experiment with Neo-Cubism , before he turned completely away from Expressionism via Analytical Cubism and from the 1950s only painted abstractly .

His contacts with the artist group “ Origine ”, who turned against the decorative aspects of abstract painting, and his first trip to the USA , where he met the protagonists of American Abstract Expressionism , motivated him to use more color, texture and gestural painting. His first “ Impronte ” was written in 1957; Images created by surface imprints on other images and materials.

" The abstract painting of the movement needs a very broad dimension, because the movement comes not only from the wrist, but from the whole body of the person, needs space that allows movement ... " (Toti Scialoja in an interview in January 1997)

In 1959 Toti Scialoja took part in documenta 2 in Kassel . In 1960 he moved to New York City and from 1961 to 1963 to Paris. After returning to Italy, he exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1964. In addition to painting, Scialoja was also a poet , writer and set designer . He was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and its director for many years. Toti Scialoja died on March 1, 1998 in Rome at the age of 83.

Works in collections and museums in Italy

• MUSEION - Museo d'arte moderna e contemporanea , Bolzano
• Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna , Rome
• MART - Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto , Rovereto

Web links

• Examples of his work