Giuseppe Martinelli Biography
Giuseppe Martinelli (Viareggio, 19 January 1930 – Milan, 15 July 2016) was an Italian painter. His first solo exhibition was in his hometown in 1953, and in the same year he won the Viareggio Prize. In 1956 he moved to Milan, sharing a studio in via Procaccini with Scapaticci, Ferroni, Banchieri and Luporini; in 1958 he exhibited at the Pagani gallery in Milan, with a presentation by Mario De Micheli. In 1959 he won the purchase prize at the Golfo della Spezia painting prize with a work that became part of the collection of the Modern and Contemporary Art Center of La Spezia, he won ex aequo (with Nikos Kessanlis) the V Modigliani Prize, with the 'boys in the water' and finally won the Suzzara Prize, with the work Construction of the house. In 1963 he exhibited in Rome at the Penelope gallery, presented again by De Micheli, and the following year he won the Ramazzotti Prize with the painting Child in the Flowerbed, which became part of the Ramazzotti collection. In the same year he participated in two collective exhibitions of international scope organized by the Rome Quadrennial: Contemporary Italian Paintings, held in Melbourne (Australia) and Peintures italiennes d'aujourd'hui, a traveling exhibition with stops in Damascus, Ankara, Tehran and Tunis. In 1965-66 he exhibited at the IX National Art Quadrennial in Rome. In 1976 he again won the Suzzara Prize. An exponent of existential realism, in his activity in Milan he combined Tuscan landscape painting with the tradition of Lombard naturalism. He was touched by the informal current but also adhered to an expressionist figurative style. His works are preserved in the Museo della Permanente in Milan, in the Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo in Brescia and in the MAGI '900.
