Bruno Leti: landscapes of the SoulItalian inspiration in Bruno Leti's work

Date
7 October
06:30pm to 08:00pm

Event overview:

Co.As.It.’s Museo Italiano is honoured to host this exhibition of Bruno Leti’s work revisiting some fifty years of art-making. Leti is represented in major Australian national, state and regional galleries and in public and private collections internationally; his art has been the object of several monographs by leading art historians. Since his emigration from Italy in 1952, Bruno’s Italianness has  grown as an essential component of his artistic inspiration, nurtured by his childhood memories, by his studies in art history, by his frequent journeys to his native country and by an ongoing engagement with Italian art and literature. Leti has travelled and worked widely in Europe, America and Asia, drawing inspiration from very diverse natural and cultural landscapes. Bruno describes himself as an Australian artist and indeed the multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism to which Bruno has made a signal contribution in the world of art, are by now quintessentially Australian traits.

 

The exhibition will be launched by Sir James Gobbo.

Guest speaker Professor Sasha Grishin (Australian National University) will introduce the exhibition.

 

The artist

Bruno Leti was from childhood exposed to the beauty of his native medieval hilltop town of Roccantica, just north of Rome. Abiding memories of the Italian landscape recur in the work of Leti; a deep relationship with the Australian landscape also characterises his work, as well as artistic responses to other places. Always familiar with Rome, Bruno was often the guest of relatives in Arezzo where his aunt would take him to the Church of San Francesco to pray and to admire Piero della Francesca’s frescoes of the Legend of the True Cross. After living in Clonbinane and Broadford in regional Victoria with his family, Bruno moved to Melbourne to study fine arts at the University of Melbourne. Further study was undertaken at Monash University and RMIT University, where Bruno was an early member of the cutting edge printmaking school, together with fellow Italian Australian artist George Baldessin. In 1967-1969 Bruno spent two years travelling and teaching in Italy, Europe and Canada. It was during this period that he held his first solo exhibition, inaugurated by an ageing Giorgio De Chirico at the Galleria Il Babuino in Rome. During subsequent stays in Italy Bruno frequented other masters of Italian modernism including Marino Marini, Emilio Vedova and Mimmo Paladino. In the 1980s and 1990s Bruno worked for extended periods in Milan in the printmaking atelier Grafica-Uno run by Giorgio Upiglio and collaborated with the New York based artist and printer Raphael Fodde. Leti’s keen interest in literature is also reflected in the Italian influences on his work. These include Dante Alighieri, Giacomo Leopardi, Eugenio Montale, Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco.

 

Bruno Leti’s works are included in the collections of several major national and international galleries and museums such as the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC (USA), the Parliament House Collection in Canberra, the Museum of Modern Art in Kamakura (Japan), the Biblioteca Comunale in Milan (Italy).

 

Free Event

Launch: Tuesday 7 October at 6.30pm.

Launch: Tuesday 7 October at 6.30pm

Exhibition: from 7 October  to end of year

Tuesday to Friday: 10am – 5pm

Saturdy: 12noon – 5pm

Where:  Museo Italiano, Co.As.It., 199 Faraday Street, Carlton 3053

RSVP for

opening event:     [email protected]; (03)9349 9021