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BIOGRAPHY
The
second of three sons, Guido Moretti was born on 12 August 1947 at 20 Via
Gramsci, Gardone V.T. His
father Luigi was a carpenter and used part of the hallway of the house
as his workroom. Later,
thanks to the care and cooperation of his wife Rosa Betinazzi, that
Moretti the carpenter was able to set up his own furniture factory.
Having grown up surrounded by wood, Guido was always fascinated
by the substance: “You
breathe it, it gets inside you. The
colours ... the smells! I’ve
still got the smell of glue in my blood.”
He much preferred his father’s carpenter’s shop to school
desks, and let his imagination run wild playing with wood and
plaster: thus his first
sculptures, or “pitotini”, took shape.
After primary school at Gardone V.T., he attended the first year
of technical school. In
1959 his elder brother Giorgio was sent to the Artigianelli Institute,
in Brescia, and Guido, showing an inborn need to get away from it all,
was perfectly happy to follow in his footsteps.
College was not a pleasant experience, but the school enabled him
to develop his skills.
Guido then went back to Gardone V.T., where he
enrolled at the Zanardelli Technical Institute – but just for one year.
The following summer was successfully devoted to revising for the
entrance exam for the junior section of the Brescia Technical Institute
(ITIS), which was separate from the main school and was set up that year
in his village. He
completed the senior section, however, at the main school in Brescia.
There, under the guidance of Cesare Scariolo, he discovered and was
captivated by the beauty of analytical geometry.
Once
he had earned his diploma, his need of freedom and new cultural horizons
led him to enrol at the Faculty of Engineering at Padua University, in
1967. His first work - in
plasticine – dates beck to this period.
It was actually a faithful reproduction of a sculpture of a dead
partisan, which he had seen at the Exhibition of Bronzes in the Palazzo
della Ragione. He was to do
the same thing a few years later at Lumezzane with a sculpture by Vitto
Piotti.
In 1969, having successfully completed the first two years of
university, the ever-restless Guido, who was considering teaching as a
career, switched to the Faculty of Physics and moved to Milan.
Here he set up family, and his daughter Chiara was born in 1971.
For a year Guido acted as secretary in a secondary school as well
as continuing his studies at university.
During this time in Milan his sculpting output increased:
Bust of his Wife Silvia, Head of his
Daughter Chiara, Self-Awareness, Copy of Manzù and Difficult
Meeting.
In 1973 he settled in Brescia, where his
artistic activity continued with Bodies in Harmony, Solitude and
Incommunicability. On 12th
December of the same year he graduated in Physics.
In January 1974 he was offered his first post as yearly supply
teacher at the San Sebastiano State Secondary
School in Lumezzane. In
1974-75 he taught at the Manerbio and Gardone V.T. branches of ITIS
Castelli and in 1975-76 he taught at the Rovato section of the Calini
Scientific School.
He became involved with the Loggetta artistic group and followed various
courses in drawing and ceramics. When
the group was broken up Guido, along with Mario Raineri, Mario Rivetti,
Giuseppe Giori, Maria Grazia Filetto and Giuliana Montanari and other
artists, set up the Moretto group which ran the gallery of the same name.
The art critics Luciano Spiazzi followed the society’s
activities with care and devotion.
Guido organised and attended fresco and drawing courses held by
Gianni Parziale.
His
first attempt to move away from figurative art occurred during this
period with his egg sculptures, which analysed the relationship between
positive and negative.
In 1976, following the breakdown of his marriage,
Guido moved to Bovezzo where he still lives today.
In 1979 he met
Graziella Malgaretti. In
1981 he taught at both the Pastori and Gambara schools in Brescia, then
at the Moretto School and finally at ITIS Castelli, where he stayed
until 1991.
With Tribute to Freud in 1981 he concluded his
figurative phase, which had helped him so much in his search for himself. From then on, as he puts it:
“Sculpting means rejoicing, playing”.
Evidence of the sculptor’s new artistic phase, in the form of
stratifications, was exhibited in the A.A.B. Gallery, Brescia, in 1985.
Guido
and Graziella were married in 1986. His creativity knew no bounds:
from stratifications he moved on to rotations (The Golden Sphere,
Birth of the Cube) followed by orthogonal intersections (Quark, Softened
Sinusoid, Square Spiral). In
the meantime Raffaele was born in 1989 and Guido created Maternity.
In 1990 at an exhibition in the Nanni Gallery, Bologna, Guido met art
critic Giorgio Ruggeri, who encouraged him in his work and offered him
valuable advice.
1991 saw the start of a fruitful and stimulating collaboration with
Armando and Wanna Nizzi’s Sincron Cultural Centre in Brescia.
Another significant meeting for Guido was with the late Romano Piccichè
at the VII Italian Salon of Contemporary Art in Florence in 1997.
In August 1993 the critic published a lengthy interview in
Giornale di Sicilia.
In December 1995 the magazine Brescia
Ricerche put him on the cover of their twelfth issue, and in June
1996 they published his article Sculpture by Separation - Avant-Garde
Computer Science and Technology at the Service of Sculpture.
Since 1996 he has worked with Anna Canali’s Milan gallery Arte
Struktura.
Guido
Moretti now lives and works in
Nuvolera, just outside Brescia.
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