Exhibitions, Italy, Pordenone, Zoppola, 06 October 2023
«The whole world is painting, nothing but painting» wrote Tullio Silvestri with his gaze constantly turned to humanity, an attention to life that he fixed on the canvas in the suspension of a moment. “Tullio Silvestri, artist of Europe between Trieste and Friuli” is the title of the first wide-ranging monographic exhibition dedicated to the Venetian artist in the sixty years since his death.
A double exhibition set up in the “Celso e Giovanni Costantini” Civic Art Gallery in Zoppola, where Silvestri lived for thirty years, and in the Civic Museum of Istrian, Fiume and Dalmatian Civilization in Trieste, his adopted city.
A timely survey of public and private collections, supported by an accurate analysis of the sources, has allowed the curators Stefano Aloisi, Elisabetta Borean and Enrico Lucchese to give deserved prominence to the work of Tullio Silvestri, placing him in a non-secondary role in the artistic panorama contemporary. Tullio Silvestri (Venice 1880- Trieste 1963) was a free and eclectic artist, an artistic personality of considerable depth, versed in painting, music and literature who, in the name of a convinced expressive independence, felt free to portray the great poet James Joyce as much as the humble Friulian farmer; a paradigmatic figure with an international scope, in contact with the great culture of the early twentieth century in Trieste and the rest of Italy.
Born in Venice and working first in Trieste and then in Zoppola in Friuli, Tullio Silvestri is known for his friendships with James Joyce, Italo Svevo, and other twentieth-century intellectuals. Appreciated for his monotypes at the Biennials and in numerous exhibitions in Italy and abroad, he was also an easel painter linked to German impressionist painting and the realistic themes admired in his formative years. The title of the exhibition perfectly summarizes Silvestri’s ability to draw on the great European cultural and artistic movements and to restore them in his own personal interpretation. A capacity for vision with which Silvestri gave a contemporary interpretation to a world that was still ancient and fully nineteenth-century such as the rural world that permeated daily life in the Pordenone plain.
Vigorous temperament and restless spirit, exuberant but spontaneous, sincere, son of artists
musicians who traveled the world, Silvestri depicts what he observes daily and finds
inspiration in what surrounds him. With his gaze constantly turned to humanity he faced
various themes such as portraiture, the sacred, work, views and interiors, moments of leisure;
subjects that take the form of an evocative reportage on the life of those small people who so much
stimulated him. He was highly appreciated for his specialization in the monotype technique
he perfected until he achieved notable pictorial effects.
He maintained friendships not only with James Joyce and Italo Svevo but also with many other leading figures in the art and culture of his time; he maintained epistolary relationships, among others, with Mario Praz, Dino Buzzatti, Ugo Ojetti, Giani Stuparich, Antonio Maraini, Giuseppe Marotta, Biagio Marin. After briefly attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, he wandered throughout Europe before returning almost self-taught briefly to Venice and arriving in Trieste in 1906. In 1928 he moved to Rome from where he moved a short distance again to take up residence in the country Friulian di Zoppola which, finally, the artist chose as his definitive homeland. Tullio Silvestri died in Trieste on 28 February 1963. He had an intense life during which he proudly defended his art and painted reality.
A double exhibition set up in the “Celso e Giovanni Costantini” Civic Art Gallery in Zoppola, where Silvestri lived for thirty years, and in the Civic Museum of Istrian, Fiume and Dalmatian Civilization in Trieste, his adopted city.
A timely survey of public and private collections, supported by an accurate analysis of the sources, has allowed the curators Stefano Aloisi, Elisabetta Borean and Enrico Lucchese to give deserved prominence to the work of Tullio Silvestri, placing him in a non-secondary role in the artistic panorama contemporary. Tullio Silvestri (Venice 1880- Trieste 1963) was a free and eclectic artist, an artistic personality of considerable depth, versed in painting, music and literature who, in the name of a convinced expressive independence, felt free to portray the great poet James Joyce as much as the humble Friulian farmer; a paradigmatic figure with an international scope, in contact with the great culture of the early twentieth century in Trieste and the rest of Italy.
Born in Venice and working first in Trieste and then in Zoppola in Friuli, Tullio Silvestri is known for his friendships with James Joyce, Italo Svevo, and other twentieth-century intellectuals. Appreciated for his monotypes at the Biennials and in numerous exhibitions in Italy and abroad, he was also an easel painter linked to German impressionist painting and the realistic themes admired in his formative years. The title of the exhibition perfectly summarizes Silvestri’s ability to draw on the great European cultural and artistic movements and to restore them in his own personal interpretation. A capacity for vision with which Silvestri gave a contemporary interpretation to a world that was still ancient and fully nineteenth-century such as the rural world that permeated daily life in the Pordenone plain.
Vigorous temperament and restless spirit, exuberant but spontaneous, sincere, son of artists
musicians who traveled the world, Silvestri depicts what he observes daily and finds
inspiration in what surrounds him. With his gaze constantly turned to humanity he faced
various themes such as portraiture, the sacred, work, views and interiors, moments of leisure;
subjects that take the form of an evocative reportage on the life of those small people who so much
stimulated him. He was highly appreciated for his specialization in the monotype technique
he perfected until he achieved notable pictorial effects.
He maintained friendships not only with James Joyce and Italo Svevo but also with many other leading figures in the art and culture of his time; he maintained epistolary relationships, among others, with Mario Praz, Dino Buzzatti, Ugo Ojetti, Giani Stuparich, Antonio Maraini, Giuseppe Marotta, Biagio Marin. After briefly attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, he wandered throughout Europe before returning almost self-taught briefly to Venice and arriving in Trieste in 1906. In 1928 he moved to Rome from where he moved a short distance again to take up residence in the country Friulian di Zoppola which, finally, the artist chose as his definitive homeland. Tullio Silvestri died in Trieste on 28 February 1963. He had an intense life during which he proudly defended his art and painted reality.
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