Gio Colucci

1892 - 1974

Gio Colucci, painter, sculptor, ceramist was born in Florence, Italy in 1892. In 1911, he moved to Paris to study architecture at the Fine Art School. Colucci settled in Cairo in 1914 where he worked as an architect. In 1917, he gave up architecture and began painting.

He went to the United States and brought back many canvas. Upon returning to Paris in 1919, Colucci exhibited at the Allard Gallery. In 1921 and 1923, he participated in the Salon d’Automne and in the Salon des Surindépendants with Gleizes, Herbin, Duchamp-Villon.

Colucci also worked on engraving since 1917. In 1924 and 1925, he executed many etchings for books written by Pierre Loti, Barbey d’Aurevilly and Gustave Mirbeau.

Known as "the king of color", throughout allhis different styles and periods of work, sometimes cubist, expressionnist or abstract, he knew how to bring the pleasure of chromatic oppositions. In 1929, Gio Colucci exhibited at the Vavin-Raspail Gallery. He took part in 1939 in the "Groupe Eclectique" with Béothy, Freunlich, Gonzalez, Metsinger and Survage at the Berthe Weill Gallery.

Colucci joined the Foreign Legion in 1940 as a volunteer. Imprisonned, he escaped in 1941. Taking refuge during the war in Provence, he took up pottery making.

Coluccireturned to Paris in 1945 and exhibited his ceramics at the Christofle Gallery. In 1947, he took part in the Salon des Décorateurs in Paris, and in 1952 exhibited his ceramics at the Vallauris Museum in Provence. The same year the Odéon Gallery exhibited his polychromed sculptures which have a total expression of liberty.

In 1954, Colucci participated in the Salon des Indépendants at the Grand Palais Museum where he showed sculptures and ceramics. Gio Colucci participated in the third Biennale dedicated to sculpture in 1955 in Antwerp in Belgium. In 1956, Colucci founded, along with Gino Severini, the Italian School of Arts and in 1959, a retrospective was held at the Juster’s Gallery in New York as well as at the Rodin Museum in Paris. A retrospective of his work is organized in New York in 1963. The Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris exhibited several polychromed wood-based sculptures, ceramics but also painted and sticked Arcopal glass by Colucci.

The artist died in Paris in 1974.