"Untitled"

WALTER FUSI

Walter Fusi was born in Udine in 1924, into a Tuscan family originally from Colle di Val d'Elsa. He graduated from the Art Institute of Siena in 1943 and in 1944 enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence where, under the guidance first of Ennio Pozzi and then of Emanuele Cavalli, he began his professional career. His first solo exhibition was held in 1946 in Colle di Val d'Elsa, in the Teatro del Popolo. From then on, his career went from strength to strength. In the 1950s, he moved to Florence, a city where important artistic avant-garde movements, such as MAC, were flourishing at the time. In that context, Walter Fusi worked in a slightly different way, having joined the Informal movement. From the late 1960s, he was in Milan, another hub of contemporary art, where he approached geometric and spatialist experimentation, before moving back to Florence in 1979. These were the years of his definitive artistic maturity, which he defined with a very personal style, a sort of abstraction expressed with freedom and decorative imagination. In the final phase of his life, he returned to his beloved Colle di Val d'Elsa. At home, he rediscovered the pleasure of colouring and painted large, textured surfaces, both individually and in compositions of several canvases; this led to one of his most famous series, Carmina Burana, compositions of large (but also small) assembled canvases. He died at his home in Colle di Val d'Elsa on 15 May 2013 at the age of 89, in his home in Via Nello Salvi. His exhibition history is impressive, with Fusi exhibiting in important solo shows in Italy and abroad, as well as in group and themed exhibitions. He participated in the VIII Quadriennale d'Arte Contemporanea in Rome, the XXV, XXVI and XXVIII Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, the XII, XV and XVI Salon Grands et Jeunes d'Aujuourd'hui, the Salon des Comparaison Grand Palais and the XXXI Salon de la Jeune Sculpture in Paris; the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation in London, Art 94 in Brussels and Constructivism 96 in Caracas.