Carlo Bevilacqua Biography
Carlo Bevilacqua was born in Fagagna, in the province of Udine, on 28 November 1900. After a few years of studies in Trieste, during which he acquired a solid cultural education, he moved to Cormons to join his family at the time of the outbreak of the WWI. After the war, he began to dedicate himself to the fabric trade, thanks to which he achieved a stable economic position and was able to cultivate his passion for photography. The latter was a constant presence in his life, as demonstrated by the preface he wrote for the photobook Ragazzi. Kinder aus Italien, published in Munich in 1962. Bevilacqua began taking his first photographs in 1942, and over time he refined his technical and artistic training. He has exhibited his works in many cities in Italy, Europe, Asia, America and Australia, receiving wide recognition and prizes, and becoming a member of prestigious photographic associations such as the Subalpine Photographic Society of Turin and La Gondola of Venice. On December 1, 1955, in Spilimbergo, Bevilacqua founded the Friulian Group for a new photography together with Aldo Beltrame, Carlo Bevilacqua, Gianni Borghesan Jano (Giuliano) Borghesan, Toni Del Tin, Fulvio Roiter and Italo Zannier. The Group set itself the goal of promoting documentary photography that was at the same time poetic, capable of capturing the humanity that took place around them. Bevilacqua adopted these ideological positions, but unlike the other members of the Group, he continued to express a more traditional poetics which, while documenting crude moments of everyday life (including the Vajont landslide), always maintained a strong lyrical inspiration. Bevilacqua's photographs have been published in the best international magazines and specialist yearbooks, and his reports have appeared in the Gorizia magazine "Iniziativa Isontina". In 1986, the Gallery of Modern Art in Udine dedicated an exhibition to him curated by Riccardo Toffoletti and Italo Zannier, while in 2011 the Regional Gallery of Contemporary Art "Luigi Spazzapan" in Gradisca dedicated a retrospective to him. Gianni Borghesan Bevilacqua died in Cormons, where he spent most of his life, on 16 February 1988.
