Giuseppe Uncini (Fabriano, 1920 - Trevi 2008)

Uncini was born in Fabriano on January 31, 1929.

He moved to Rome in 1953 where he first frequented Mannucci, Burri, Afro, Capogrossi, Colla and Emilio Villa. His created his first Cement in 1953, which he intended as an self-signifying object, different from traditional representational painting. In 1958, he met Schifano, Lo Savio, Festa and Angeli with whom he exhibited at the La Salita Gallery in the “Roma '60” show. He held his first personal show at the L’Attico Gallery in Rome in 1961, presented by Enrico Crispolti. With Biggi, Carrino, Frascà, Pace and Santoro in 1962, he formed “Gruppo Uno di Roma”, which operated until 1967.

From the beginning, his arduous and sustained progress was unanimously approved. He showed in prestigious avantgarde galleries from Christian Stein in Turin and the Marconi studio in Milan, to the Fumagalli Gallery in Bergamo which kicked off a solid partnership with the Gallery beginning in 1995. His participations in Italian and international collective shows are too numerous to mention. He showed many times at the Venice Biennale in 1966, 1984 and 1989. In 1988, he received the Feltrinelli Prize for Sculpture from the Accademia dei Lincei; the 6th Henry Moore Grand Prix Exhibition from the Hakone Open-Air Museum in Japan in 1989; the President of the Republic Prize in 1995 from the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca. He participated in the show “Scultura del XX secolo” (20th Century Sculpture)at the Fondazione Pomodoro in Milan in 2001 and held his first personal retrospective in Germany at the Städtishe Kunsthalle in Mannheim the same year.
Other significant retrospectives took place at the ZKM Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie of Karlshrue in 2008, at MART in Rovereto up through 2009 and finally the Neue Galerie Gratz am Landesmuseums Joanneum in Gratz.

Uncini died unexpectedly in his home-studio in Trevi at dawn on March 31, 2008.

His relationship with the Fumagalli Gallery began in 1995 when he exhibited a series of Cement Spaces. The gallery produced the Giuseppe Uncini monograph, with text by Giovanni Maria Accame for De Agostini publishing. A new volume was issued in 1999 with text by Annamaria Maggi and Marco Meneguzzo for the Centro Arti Visive ex Peschiera in Pesaro. In 2000, he published the monograph that accompanied the exhibition at Palazzo Fabroni in Pistoia, curated by Bruno Corà. In 2001, for the exhibition at the Stadtische Kunsthalle of Mannheim, in a co-edition with the galleries Christian Stein and Giò Marconi in Milan, he supervised a volume with texts by Manfred Fath, Volker Feierabend and Marco Meneguzzo In 2002, he proposed an jewellery exhibition with a presentation of Ada Masoero.
For the 2008 Arte Fiera Bologna, a volume was presented of the catalogue raisonné by Giuseppe Uncini overseen by the Fumagalli Gallery and the Giuseppe Uncini Works Archives that it manages.