Ferruccio Gard Italy, d. 1940

Ferruccio Gard is one of the historicized artists of programmed and kinetic art, which he practices, among the first in Italy, since 1969.

He has participated in seven Venice Biennials (1982, '86, '95, 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2017), in two Architecture Biennials (2016 and 2021) and in the 11th Rome Quadrennial ('86). He was also invited to the most important trend exhibitions, including MACBA, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Buenos Aires and MACLA, the Latin American Contemporary Art Museum of La Plata (Argentina) at the traveling exhibition "Perception and illusion : Programmed Art and Italian Kinetics of the 1970s "(2013-2014) curated by Giovanni Granzotto and Micol Di Veroli.

In 2012 he was invited to GNAM, the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, to the most important exhibition held in Europe to date on programmed, kinetic and optical art (curators Giovanni Granzotto and Mariastella Margozzi).

Among the other most significant acknowledgments in the context of trendy exhibitions, the invitation, in 2008, to the exhibition "Movement as a Message" on international programmed, kinetic and optical art, at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Prague, in scope of the National Triennial of Art of the Czech Republic.

In the same year "Alberto Biasi and the eye in the North East", Mel (Bl), Palazzo delle Contesse and, in 2014, the exhibition "Creative perception in the Northeast, collecting optical and programmed art" (Vittorio Veneto, Palazzo Todesco) .

In 2003 in Trissino (VI), for 25 years the seat of the famous "Trissino National Painting Award", the exhibition "The eye in play. Works between perception and optical ”, edited by Luca Massimo Barbero (other texts in the catalog by Marco Meneguzzo and Elena Forin).

Again in 2011 "Art Science - Color Project", Treviso, Museum of Santa Caterina, curated by Elsa Dezuanni, Giovanni Granzotto and Ennio Pouchard.

Among the other most significant awards, the invitation, in 1988, to "ABSTRACT. Abstract Secessions from the postwar period to 1990 ", the most important exhibition on Italian abstraction to date, curated by Giorgio Cortenova and Filiberto Menna (Verona, Palazzo Forti, Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea; Milan, Palazzo della Permanente; Darmstadt and Frankfurt (Germany): Kunsthalle and Buchmesse).

In 1981 he was among the "Reported Bolaffi", the Italian artists judged to be emerging (Luca Alinari, Bruno Ceccobelli, Mario Ceroli, Omar Galliani, Ferruccio Gard, Giorgio Griffa, Nino Longobardi, Ugo Nespolo, Giulio Paolini, Claudio Parmigiani, Vettor Pisani, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Mauro Reggiani, Emiliano Tadini, Marco Tirelli, Valeriano Trubbiani) by a jury composed of Umbro Apollonio, Giulio Carlo Argan, Achille Bonito Oliva, Giuliano Briganti, Palma Bucarelli, Maurizio Calvesi, Giovanni Carandente, Luigi Carluccio, Enrico Crispolti, Gillo Dorfles, Giuseppe Marchiori, Lara Vinca Masini, Filiberto Menna, Alberico Sala, Antonello Trombadori.

From New York, Miami, Beijing, Osaka, Bogotà and Panamà City to London, Brussels, Thessaloniki (Greece), Argentina (Museums of Còrdoba, Salta, Rìo Cuarto and San Juan), Salzburg and Lienz (Austria), Remagen and Saarlouis ( Germany), has held over 170 solo exhibitions around the world.

In 1997 he created, with the famous glass master Archimede Seguso, paintings-sculptures in Murano glass, exhibited in various exhibitions, from the Palazzo delle Prigioni, in Venice (connected to the Doge's Palace with the famous "Bridge of sighs") in Panama City , at the invitation of the Ministry of Cultural Activities of the Republic of Panama (curator Neslin Arce). Always has Murano, he continued the creation of glass sculptures with Adriano Berengo Fine Art.

Of exceptional importance is the anthology, curated by Gabriella Belli, which the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia dedicated to him in 2015 at Ca 'Pesaro, the International Gallery of Modern Art, as part of a dialogue between a master of Venetian contemporaneity and the 56. Biennale d'Arte and set up in the permanent collection, alongside masterpieces by Klimt, Kandinsky, Chagall, Munch, Rodin, Martini, Medardo Rosso, Mirò, Calder, Arp, De Chirico and other famous masters of modern world art.

The art historian Enzo Di Martino called this exhibition on the Gazzettino "a celebration".

In 2014 he was included in the "Imago Mundi, Map of the new World Art" project of the Luciano Benetton Collection, curated by Luca Beatrice, exhibiting at the exhibition "PRAESTIGIUM ITALIA", at the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation in Turin and at the Cini Foundation in Venice.

In 2011 he was among the artists who officially represented Italy at the 54th Venice International Biennale with an invitation to the Italian National Pavilion (Arsenale di Venezia, curator Vittorio Sgarbi).

At the 54th Venice Biennale, in addition to the Italian National Pavilion, he participated in the collateral event "Cracked Culture? The Quest for Identity in Contemporary Chinese Art ”, a comparison between 13 well-known exponents of the new Chinese art and two Venetian artists, curated by the Guangdong Museum of Art in Guangzhou.

In 2004 the Piedmont Region dedicated to him the anthological exhibition “Ratio picta”, in the Sale Bolaffi of Turin, curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, for the cycle “The living Piedmontese masters”. In 2009, with his exhibition organized by the Italian Cultural Institute, he represented the Veneto Region, designated the Italian Region of the year, at the Italian Republic Day in New York.

In 2019 it celebrated half a century of painting with exhibitions at the Museo del '900 Boncompagni Ludovisi, in Rome, organized by the Polo Museale del Lazio, at the El Chicò Museum in Bogotà, promoted by the Italian Cultural Institute, and with official entry into the prestigious collection of the Farnesina on Italian Contemporary Art, considered the most important in the world.

In Italy, Gard received the first national recognition in 1974 with the invitation to the XII National Quadrennial of the Promotional Society of Fine Arts in Turin, at that time the most important Italian art event after the Venice Biennale and the Quadrennial. From Rome.

In the Eighties he participated in various editions of the prestigious "Salon d 'Automne" at the Grand Palais in Paris, in the "Grands et jeunes d' aujourd'hui" section.

For thirty years (1978-2008) he collaborated, with personal and collective exhibitions, to the neo-constructivist, programmed and kinetic art group "Verification 8 + 1", founded in Mestre by Sara Campesan and inaugurated in 1978 with a solo show of Bruno Munari, author of the Group logo, which mainly brought together Venetian artists active in the research of concrete and structuralist art.

Among the latest exhibitions, in 2020, the personal "Ferruccio Gard Master of Color and Form" at the Cris Contini Contemporary in London and at the Boccara Art in Miami and, in 2021, the one-man show organized at the "Salotto di Milano" by Cris Contini Contemporary, gallery that then collaborated on the anthology in the prestigious Museo del Novecento "Luigi Bailo" in Treviso, organized by the Municipal Department of Culture and the Civic Museums Foundation, and the participation, with the Boccara Art Gallery, in Miami Art Basel week and ( 2022), at Palm Beach Modern + Contemporary.

His works are permanently exhibited in the London and Porto Montenegro offices of Cris Contini Contemporary and in the headquarters of the Boccara Art gallery in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Mexico City, the Principality of Monte-Carlo and Moscow.

Famous critics have written or talked about his art, from Giuseppe Marchiori, founder in Venice, in 1946, of the historic Fronte Nuovo delle Arti, to Pierre Restany, promoter in Paris, in 1961, of Nouveau Realisme, from Umbro Apollonio, Giulio Carlo Argan , Gillo Dorfles, Filiberto Menna, Achille Bonito Oliva, Luca Massimo Barbero, Renato Barilli, Luca Beatrice, Gabriella Belli, Beatrice Buscaroli, Lorenzo Canova, Luciano Caramel, Claudio Cerritelli, Giorgio Cortenova, Bruno D'Amore, Enzo Di Martino, Giovanni Granzotto , Sebastiano Grasso, Guido Perocco, Paolo Rizzi, Marisa Vescovo, Vittorio Sgarbi, Toni Toniato, Tommaso Trini and Alberto Veca, as well as famous painters, from Piero Dorazio to Virgilio Guidi and famous poets and writers, from Andrea Zanzotto and Richard Rognet to Jorge Amado and Paolo Ruffilli.

More reviews from G.M. Accame, Donatella Cannova, Giorgio Di Genova, Virginia Baradel, Monica Busetto, Luca Colombo, Lidia Panzeri, Edoardo Pittalis, Gabriele Simongini and Enrico Tantucci to Paolo Levi, Nadia De Lazzari, Giuseppe Giulietti, Gian Ruggero Manzoni, Renzo Margonari, Luigi Meneghelli, Milena Milani, Angelo Mistrangelo, Floriano De Santi, Veronica Tuzii, Alessandro Zangrando and Myriam Zerbi.

He is considered a master of color and a leader, also in consideration of the many artists who are inspired by him or who even copy him.

His works can be found in important public and private collections, from the Ca 'Pesaro International Museum of Modern Art in Venice to the Satoru Sato Museum in Japan, from the Luigi Bailo Museum of the Twentieth Century in Treviso to the Biscozzi / Rimbaud Foundation Museum for Italian art and European of the twentieth century, in Lecce, the "Florence of the South", pearl of the famous Baroque.

His art has been the subject of various graduate theses at the Ca 'Foscari University of Venice.

Of ancient Franco-Provençal origins, he was born in late December 1940. In love with Venice, he has lived and worked in the City of the Doges since 1973, with a studio on the island of Lido.