Giampaolo Lazzaro Biography
Gianpaolo Lazzaro (Padua, 4 February 1911 – Milan, 20 December 1977) was an Italian painter, active in the Italian avant-garde from the 1930s to the 1970s. He signed his paintings with the sole name Gianpaolo. After studying in Milan, at the Brera Academy, in 1927, at just 16 years old, he accompanied Francesco Dal Pozzo to Siam (now Thailand), called to teach drawing by the Royal Academy of Bangkok. Here the young artist holds his first exhibition, welcomed by the local press. He spent a year in Siam then returned to Padua. At 18 he exhibited at the XVII Venice Biennale. In 1931 he moved to Milan; he exhibited in several art galleries, including the Gian Ferrari Gallery in 1939 with the painter Filiberto Sbardella. In 1934 he won the competition for the advertising poster of the II Venice Film Festival. In 1945 Gianpaolo returned to Milan and organised, at the Italian-American press club, the first modern contemporary art exhibition, together with Carlo Carrà, Massimo Campigli, Giorgio De Chirico, Filippo de Pisis, Giacomo Manzù, Giuseppe Migneco, Giorgio Morandi and Aligi Sassu. From 1946 to 1956, a coherent series of works made him considered among the precursors: space apparitions, lunar landscapes, suspended bodies, cosmic attractions. In 1949 Carlo Cardazzo, collector, art dealer and publisher of the first Surrealism manifesto, organized a solo show for him at the Galleria del Naviglio. In 1954 Dino Buzzati dedicated a story to him: Brief dialogue between the painter Gianpaolo and an old hermit he met in the Kalahari desert. Since 1957 he has been creating paintings which he calls "Cosmocronache", inserting fragments of reality torn from the pages of newspapers into the dreamlike dimension of his painting. For many years, starting from 1956, he wrote for the Domenica del Corriere, at the invitation of his friend Buzzati, a series of informative articles on the theme "The whys of modern art". He participated in the vital Milanese artistic movement of the 50s and 60s, in contact with its protagonists, such as Enrico Castellani, friend and main collaborator of Piero Manzoni. However, he maintains his distance from the flourishing of currents and manifestos, continuing his path alone. In 1967, in Padua, his hometown, a collective exhibition was organized in which he exhibited with Roberto Crippa, Gianni Dova and Lucio Fontana.
