Giancarlo Bargoni Biography
Giancarlo Bargoni was born in Genoa in 1936. After attending the Barabino Art School in the same city from 1954 to 1958, he conducted extensive research on informal painting, in particular on the works of De Kooning and Fautrier. He made sketches for Massine's ballets on Manessier's costumes and fabrics in Nervi and became friends with the collector Andrea Denini. From 1960 to 1961 he stayed in Spain where he frequented artists and critics, becoming friends with JECirlot with whom he then maintained a long correspondence. In Ravenna, in 1961 and 1962, he studied the mosaic technique which then greatly influenced his subsequent work. Additionally, he frequented Sonia Delaunay's studio in Paris and participated in printmaking courses at Stanley Hayter's Atelier 17. In the years from 1962 to 1975, Bargoni founded the Tempo 3 Group with Genoese friends, proposing a different language that is an alternative and at the same time inclusive way of the informal and the basic structure of geometric abstractionism. From 1974 to 1980, he recognized himself in the "Painting-Painting" group, in which artists analyzed and broke down the structural elements of the painting. Bargoni was very interested in the expressive possibilities of colour, which he experimented with on different materials and with various techniques (tempera, pastels, watercolours). Since 1991, Bargoni began collaborating with several galleries in Europe, including Protée (Paris and Toulouse), Horizon (Marseille), Heseler (Munich) and Ulla Sommers (Dusseldorf). He opened a studio in Castell'Arquato (Piacenza), the town of origin of his family. In 2000, he created a large white marble sculpture for the Prospero Verani Foundation, installed in the gardens of the new headquarters in Fiorenzuola d'Arda (Piacenza). In 2011, he presented a series of watercolors painted and dedicated to Tozeur at the Galleria Dondolando Arte in Martignana Po (CR), together with his recent oil works. He opened a new large studio in Castell'Arquato. In the years from 2012 to 2013, Bargoni dedicated himself above all to the creation of large works for the personal exhibition at the Galerie Protée in Paris scheduled for 23 May 2013 and the one organized by the Conseil Général d'Eure-et-Loir at Les Archives Départementales in Chartres in September 2013. In 2021, Bargoni regularly organizes oil painting Master Stages at his large studio in Castell'Arquato, convinced that "painting together" is an irreplaceable way to continue and animate a shared passion.
