Ampelio Tettamanti Biography
Ampelio Tettamanti (1914 – 1961) was born in Laveno, on Lake Maggiore in 1914. He moved to Milan, where he attended evening drawing courses in Brera and then, for a few years, a free nude school. During the day he works in a galvanizing plant and as a designer for some decorator painters, dedicating himself to painting. His first exhibition dates back to 1937, at the Brera Academy. In 1942 he participated in the XXIII edition of the Venice Biennale to which he was invited again in 1948 and 1950. In these years the war and the Resistance had a fundamental influence on his painting. Militant in the Italian Communist Party, active designer on wall newspapers and on the pages of "Unità", he is a true figure of an engaged artist. After the war his artistic activity was closely linked to the Milanese group "15 Borgonuovo", born around the figure of Giovanni Fumagalli, and to the Galleria 15 Borgonuovo, opened in the Milanese street of the same name. In 1947 he won third prize at the "Italian Contemporary Art Exhibition" in Geneva. The following year he participated in the V Quadrennial in Rome, where he returned to exhibit again in 1952, 1955 and 1959. In 1956 he was officially invited to China, following a delegation of Italian artists linked to the PCI, including AIigi Sassu, Antonietta Raphaèl Mafai, Agenore Fabbri, Giulio Turcato, Tono Zancanaro. Following this journey his language is renewed: the compositions expand, the definition of the shapes becomes quicker and the application of color becomes full-bodied and precise. In the last period of his life Tettamanti seems to move away from the realist current, now in decline, to dedicate himself to a more fantastic and intimate naturalism. The painter abandons the strictly social topics that had characterized his previous work and paints increasingly intricate woods and brambles, approaching themes that prefigure the tendencies of the Informal. An exhibition of works on paper was held in 1982 at the Civic Center in Piazzale Accursio in Milan under the patronage of the Municipality and a subsequent exhibition of graphics at Bocconi University in 1985. Also in Milan, his works have been exhibited, among others, in group shows at the Poldi Pezzoli Museum, at the Triennale and at the PAC.
