solo show carlo zinelli art basel paris
art basel paris 2024
Included in the collections of the MoMA, the Centre Pompidou and the Collection de l’Art Brut, and exhibited at the Giardini during the 2013 Venice Biennale, Carlo Zinelli (1916-1974) passed away 50 years ago. The occasion to pay tribute to a man who, alongside Bill Traylor, Henry Darger and Martín Ramírez, has entered the international pantheon of Art Brut.
His institutional recognition, unexpected at the start of his life (at the age of thirty, he was permanently committed to the San Giacomo hospital in Verona), began with Jean Dubuffet, who very soon included him in his collection, at the roots of Art Brut. André Breton followed his lead, both men admiring a beauty that, in Dubuffet’s words, “will be convulsive, or won’t be at all”.
Committed at 31 years old after participating in the Spanish Civil War, Carlo Zinelli is now seen as a major figure of art brut. Like tales illustrating episodes of his life before his internment, his iterative and dislocated drawings in which perspective is abandoned and replaced by interstitial writings aligned with the concept of “modernity”. Honored in many international exhibitions, Carlo Zinelli was exhibited in the Giardini at the 2013 Venice Biennale and we are pleased to present his work at Art Basel Paris 2024. Many of his works were donated to the Centre Pompidou in 2021.