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Alberto Sughi Biography
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Alberto Sughi was born in Cesena in 1928. A self-taught painter, by the end of his formative years he had become one of the greatest Italian artists of his generation. He started painting in the early 1950s, choosing realism in the debate between abstract and figurative art in the immediate post-war period. Even from his early works, however, Sughi’s paintings have avoided any attempt at social moralising. They depict moments from daily life with no heroes, allowing Enrico Crispolti, in 1956, to define his work as "existential realism". His artistic expression proceeds, almost always, in thematic cycles, in the manner of film sequences. First of all, there were his so-called "green paintings", devoted to the relationship between man and nature (1971-1973), then the "Supper" cycle (1975-1976), after that the 20 paintings and fifteen studies of "Imagination and memory of the family", dating from the early 1980s; the series "Evening or reflection" started from 1985. His most recent series of large canvases, exhibited in 2000, is entitled "Nocturnal".
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Sughi has taken part in all the most important collective exhibitions of contemporary art, from the International Biennale art exhibition in Venice to the Quadriennale in Rome, as well as various exhibitions that have been held abroad, charting the history of Italian art from the 1970s until today. Italian and foreign museums have held large retrospective exhibitions; among the most significant are the Gallery of Modern Art in Bologna (1977), the Manezh Gallery in Moscow (1978), the Museum of Castel Sant' Angelo in Rome, the Fine Arts Museum in Budapest and the National Gallery in Prague (1986), the Civic Modern Art Gallery in Ferrara (1988), the Casa Masaccio in San Giovanni Valdarno (1990), the Assis Chateaubriand Art Gallery in Sao Paolo in Brazil (1994) and the Civic Museum of San Sepolcro (2003). The artist has taken part in the cycle of exhibitions entitled "The search for identity" in Cagliari, Palermo and Ascoli Piceno (2003-2004), the exhibition "Evil. Exercises in cruel painting" at the Hunting Lodge of Stupinigi, in Turin (2005), and the exhibition "Intimate Portraits from Lotto to Pirandello", at the Regional Archaeological Museum in Aosta (2005) .
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At the end of 2005 and until 21 January 2006, a large retrospective exhibition of Sughi’s work was held at the Palazzo della Pilotta in Parma. The exhibition contained 642 works, including paintings, tempera, drawings, and lithographs, made between 1959 and 2004, and owned by the collections of the Centro Studi ed Archivio della Comunicazione (CSAC) at the University of Parma, including the painting Rimmel, made in 2004.
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In April and May 2006, the modern art gallery in Arezzo held the exhibition il Segno e l'Immagine, consisting of 50 works (all made on paper and then applied to canvas) painted in 2005 and 2006.
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Nominated President of the Quadriennale exhibition in Rome in the nineties, in the year 2000 Sughi received the Michelangelo Prize in Rome. In October 2004 he was made Artist of the month on the Australian site Artquotes.net. His painting La Sete became the cover of the 2004/2005 American biennal poetry magazine, Westbranch, of Bucknell University ( Pennsylvania). In May 2005 NYartsmagazine.com dedicated a full page to Sughi, under the title Ideology and Solitude. At the moment Sughi writes for Absolutearts.com, the arts directory of Columbus ( Ohio), and his monthly blog is devoted to general artistic and social themes. On 28 November 2005 the Italian President, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, awarded him the prestigious Vittorio De Sica Prize.
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| Selected Exhibitions |
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2009
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Calvesi, Maurizio, curator. Retrospective: Dove va l’uomo, Palazzo Sant'Elia. Palermo, Italy
NEW DATES: May 9-August 2, 2009
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2007
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Alberto Sughi, Retrospective Exhibition, Biblioteca Malatestiana, Cesena, Italy
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2004
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From Picasso to Botero, Museo civico di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Arezzo
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2003
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Da Tiziano a DeChirico: La ricerca dell’identita’, From Titian to De Chirico in Search of Identity, Castello di San Michele, Cagliari
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2003
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Museo Civico San Sepolcro
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1999
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ARTissima - Arte Contemporaneo a Torino, n° 6, Turin TO, Italy (Represented by: Rotaross - Novara, Italy)
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1994
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MASP Museu de Arte de São Paulo - São Paulo, Brazil
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1992
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Profili : Dodicesima Quadriennale : Italia 1950-1990 : profili, dialettica, situazioni Palazzo Delle Esposizioni - Rome, Italy
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1991
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Museo delle Arti, Palazzo Bandera, Busto Arsizio
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1990
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Casa Masaccio, San Giovanni Valdarno
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1988
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Palazzo dei Diamanti, Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna, Ferrara,
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1987
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National Gallery - Prague, Czech Republic,
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1986 - 1987
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Museum of Fine Arts (Szépmûvészeti Múzeum) of Budapest
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1986
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Museo di Castel S.Angelo, Rome
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1978
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Central Exhibition Hall “Manezh”, Moscow
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1977
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Museum of Modern Art, Bologna
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1956
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XXVIII Biennial of Venice, Venice
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| Literature |
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2003
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AA.VV ‘Alberto Sughi, La Vita Nuova di Dante’, (Silvana Editoriale, Milan)
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2002
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L. Vaccari ‘Trasformiamo I musei in case chiuse un incontro traAlberto Sughi Vittorio Sgarbi’ in Capital, April
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2000
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C. Ronza ‘Noir: come in un film francese’ in Arte in, March. pp. 39-43
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2000
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D. Themes ‘La lingua e’ in continua evoluzione, intervista ad Alberto Sughi’, November
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1994
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Fabio Magalhaes (ex cat) ‘Alberto Sughi, Tempere 1990 at the MUSEU DE ARTE ASSISS CAHTEAUBRIAND de Sao Paolo’, (Torcular, Milan)
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1992
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Pierre Restany ‘A symphonic destiny’ in Arte in, March-April, pp. 20-23
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1986
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G. Amendola, D. Micacchi, G. Raimondi, A. Sala, A. Sughi, G. Bonini (ex cat) ‘Alberto Sughi. Il gioco dell'apparenza’, (Edizioni dell'Uniclub, Rome)
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1986
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P. Levi con E. Crispolti, F. Ferrarotti, G. Santato, R. Zangheri e S. Zavoli ‘Alberto Sughi’, (Giorgio Mondadori e Associati)
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| Links to further information |
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