For a few more days Italian sculptor Novello Finotti for the first time in Athens

Italian sculptor Novello Finotti is exhibiting for the first time in Athens at the V. & M. Theocharakis Foundation for Fine Arts and Music for a few more days until 3 November.

The exhibition, with the evocative title “Novello Finotti The Sensual Mysticism of Sculpture“, includes more than sixty-five sculptures from his long evolutionary career in white Carrara marble, Portuguese pink marble, Belgian black granite and brass, such as his representative works My Three Loves, 1971, Homage to Kafka, 1972, Valentino, 1977, Juliet’s Little Bed, 1977-82, After Chernobyl, 1986-87, Homage to Sand, 1978, Annunciation, 1978, Federica’s Nests, 1983, Please Don’t Tickle Me, 1991-94, Elevation, 1991-1997, Valentina, 2013, Homage to Juliet, 2014, and others.

As the exhibition’s curator, Takis Mavrotas, notes in the catalogue: His sculptural action, intact and central, is the code of his life. Lyrical and dramatic, but above all a master of copper and marble, his sculpture is aesthetically pleasing, socialises emotions and, with its earthly wisdom, teaches the truth of love and life. (…)

His sculptural world, with an active descriptive mood and unlimited power of freedom, manages to touch the dream by putting his imagination into matter. The subtlety of his use of materials, subtle or cryptic, characterises his work. A work that liberates us from decay and misery. His art reflects his spiritual and artistic anxiety about the nature of the world and the universe. Finotti opens up new paths and illuminates, directly or indirectly, the necessary and the true, the possible and the impossible. His ability to penetrate deeply gives his sculptures a mystical breath. Of course, sculpture requires the synergy of skilled stonemasons to cope with the sheer volume of his work. Their figurative rendering is meticulous, because his aim is always to breathe life into marble, granite or bronze (…).

In 1985, two years before his death, the visionary Alexandros Iolas invited him to his house museum in Agia Paraskevi to create his bust. They worked closely together for many years, promoting Finotti’s sculptural creations in Europe and America with consistency and responsibility. The sculptor, in honour of the memory of the great gallery collector, donated his brass bust, which reflects the psychological intensity of the collector during the period of its creation, with emphasis on its perpetual and rhythmic expression, to the Teloglio Foundation for the Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki”.

Novello Finotti was born in Verona in 1939. At the age of fifteen he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in his home town, while also attending the workshop of the Veronese sculptor Nereo Constantini. When he was almost nineteen, he won first prize at the Assisi Exhibition of Religious Art. He graduated in 1959 and a year later began teaching at the local academy in Verona. He began to exhibit his bronze works and in 1963 he came into contact with the Boncini foundry in Verona. This was followed by a meeting with the famous gallerist Alexander Iola, with whom he began an intense and long-lasting collaboration. In 1964 his sculptures crossed the Pacific Ocean and were exhibited at the Armony Gallery in New York. Two years later, he exhibited at the Venice Biennale. His trip to Greece in 1973 marked an important moment in his artistic career.

In 2014 he exhibited again at the Venice Biennale and then his fame spread to the Far East, where he held solo exhibitions in Seoul in 2015 and in Busan the following year, always in Korea. In 2017 his most important works were exhibited at the 30th Le grandi Mostre nei Sassi exhibition in Matera, in the rocky complex of Madonna delle Virtù (Our Lady of the Virtues) and in San Nicola dei Greci (St Nicholas of the Greeks). In 2001 he completed the imposing decoration of the tomb of Pope John XXIII in St Peter’s Basilica. In 2020 he presented his exhibition “Finotti. The end of the night” at the Teloglio Foundation of Arts in Thessaloniki.

The exhibition in Athens will run until 3 November 2025 and will be accompanied by a catalogue of the same name, containing all the works on display, texts by Takis Mavrotas and Alexandra Goulaki-Boutyra, and extracts from texts by Antonio Paolucci, Rossana Bassaglia, Giorgio di Genova and José Pierre.

Don’t miss the exhibition for a few more days!