Giulio Turcato studied in Venice, at secondary schools with an art specialisation and then at a higher level, at the Scuola Libera del Nudo. Here in Venice he taught drawing at the technical school and was able to visit the Biennale, experiencing first-hand the most stimulating artistic events that were happening in Italy. He travelled between Turin, Bologna, Milan and Florence, beginning to exhibit in collective shows in 1932. He moved to Milan in 1937 and had his first personal show, and in 1943, he moved to Rome definitively, exhibiting in several shows and taking part in the Resistance movement. In 1947 he founded the “Forma 1” group with Accardi, Attardi, Consagra, Dorazio, Guerrini and Sanfilippo, signing the “Formalism” manifesto; in the same year he joined the “New Arts Front”. In 1950, encouraged by Lionello Venturi, he joined the “Group of Eight”, along with Afro, Birolli, Corpora, Moreni, Borlotti, Santomaso and Vedova.
In the Fifties he took part in several exhibitions (in Rome, Bologna, Milan, Florence and Venice, where he always has exhibits, sometimes personal shows) and abroad (Paris, Germany). In the following decades - the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties) he continued to take part in prestigious international events (New York, Kassel, London), combining them with trips to the Far East, to Belgium, Morocco, Egypt and Kenya.
From 1960 until the mid-Nineties, he had vaguely neo-Dada experiences, alternating them with others where he used many different materials. In these experiences, the object becomes an integral part of the painting and loses all evocative values; but first and foremost, a common denominator is represented through the meticulous, profound research into nature and into the quality of colour.
If we look for veiled influences in Turcato’s work, we are helped by The Venetian masters of the Fifteen Hundreds, Matisse, Picasso, the irony of Duchamp, Burri’s use of many materials, American Pop culture, Klein’s treatment of colour, the stamp of Mathieu and the hand of Hartung, taken to lyrical heights. But what remains is that sum which is the work and the life of Giulio Turcato, one of the great artists of the last century with an abstract vocation and imaginative mark. He made a fundamental contribution to the rebirth of Italian art, putting it back in a position of importance on the world scene.