Porta d'Egitto

Giulio Turcato’s works often recount his numerous travels. This painting is one of a series commenced in 1964, when he visited Egypt, a country that greatly influenced his work on time. Turcato’s abstract art was more guided by reason in this period, focusing less on the instinctive eloquence of sign and more on
the evocative power of pigment. The exploration of the expressive potential of pure colour undertaken in the early 1960s can be discerned in the compositional schema of the canvas exhibited here: a homogeneous chromatic expanse with bands of colour at the edges and a single graphic mark recalling the stylized form of the gate of Aswan or the pyramids, congealed in the centre to emanate the mysterious allure of a suggested geometric shape or wild fantasy. (Transl. by Paul Metcalfe per Scriptum, Roma)