Italo Valenti

Italian painter and collagist, born in Milan. Studied at the Brera Academy in Milan 1932-7, then took an active part in the movement Corrente with Cassinari, Birolli, Fontana, Santomaso and others. Made paintings based on a childhood world of fable and enchantment, with marvellous fairy-tale gardens, fantastic animals, etc., in glowing radiant colours. First one-man exhibition at the Galleria di Corrente, Milan, 1941. His work later became less exuberant and less colourful, especially after his move to Switzerland, near Locarno, in 1953; gradually developed in the second half of the 1950s an abstract, tachiste style, and started in 1959 to make abstract collages out of cut and torn paper. Friendship with Julius Bissier and Ben Nicholson, who lived nearby. Lives at Ascona.

Published in:
Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, p.740

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