The Giancarlo Vitali Museum project stems from the idea of redeveloping and restoring spaces with a strong historical connotation and urbanistic centrality to the town, with the aim of paying homage to an artist who made his birthplace the main theme of his figurative poetics, exporting it to a high degree of national and international interest.
The occasion is given by the donation of a considerable number of works by the Vitali family to the Municipality of Bellano and to the ArchiViVitali ETS Association with the aim of establishing a permanent home for the study and conservation of these works, setting up a conservation intervention and renovating ‘what remains’ of Palazzo Lorla, commonly known as ‘Il Circolo dei Lavoratori’ (the Workers’ Club) and the spaces connected to it, a place that is considered the soul of the village and that preserves the signs of a millenary stratification as well as being, together with the town hall and the bishop’s house, among the oldest buildings in the village.
The new project restores visibility to architectural elements that surprisingly reappear as signs of a path that connects different residential portions and old commercial spaces, bringing to the surface styles and historical testimonies that surprisingly redesign a trace of a path, of rediscovery and new narration.
Giancarlo Vitali
Born in Bellano in 1929, Giancarlo Vitali lived all his life in his hometown. At a very young age he showed a great predisposition for drawing and colours and, completely self-taught, at only eighteen he exhibited his first work at the Angelicum in Milan. Two years later, in 1949 he participated in the Biennale with two sacred art works that were highly praised by Carlo Carrà. Although having won a scholarship, his humble fisherman family, could not afford to send him to study at the Brera Academy in Milan. Vitali worked incessantly but always remained on the margins of the art scene. Then suddenly there was a radical change.
Despite having lived a reserved life, in 1983 when he was well into his fifties, Vitali was discovered by Giovanni Testori, one of the greatest Italian critics and authors, who wrote an enthusiastic article about him on the Corriere della Sera national newspaper and then curated his rapid ascent with a first major solo exhibition in Milan. After that, many other important exhibitions and commissions followed in Italy and abroad, leading to the major retrospective Time Out promoted by the City of Milan and set up in four prestigious venues. This particular exhibition explored all aspects of Vitali’s work: painting, etching and drawing: a great event celebrating one of the most talented contemporary artists. Vitali died July 25, 2018.
