Giancarlo Vitali Museum

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.

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.