Exhibition: ‘Like the First Day’ – Works by Giorgio Celiberti

Giorgio Celiberti was born in Udine in 1929 and began painting at a very young age.

At just nineteen, he took part in the 1948 Venice Biennale.

After graduating from art high school, he worked in Emilio Vedova’s studio and shared the Venetian art scene with Tancredi Parmeggiani.

In the 1950s, he moved to Paris, where he came into contact with the leading currents of the European avant-garde.

He later lived in Brussels on a scholarship from Italy’s Ministry of Education, and then moved to London during a period shaped by the expressionism of Francis Bacon and Graham Sutherland. His restless spirit also took him on journeys throughout the Americas and the Caribbean, including Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, and the United States, where he absorbed a wide range of international influences.

After spending time in Rome, he returned to Udine in the mid-1960s, beginning a new phase in his artistic research. In 1965, a visit to the Terezín concentration camp became a defining moment in his career: the graffiti and poems created by deported Jewish children became a central theme in his artistic vision.

Alongside painting, Celiberti developed an equally significant body of sculpture, working in bronze, aluminum, stone, ceramics, and glass. His work often features animals and archaic figures – horses, horsemen, goats, birds, and cats – alongside symbolic forms such as steles, fragments, and bas-reliefs that evoke ancient civilizations.

Throughout his career, he participated in the Venice Biennale and the Rome Quadriennale on numerous occasions, received numerous awards, and mounted more than 200 solo exhibitions in Italy and abroad, in cities including New York, Paris, London, Barcelona, Madrid, and Brussels.

Among his monumental works is an 800-square-meter fresco created between 1989 and 1991 at the convention center of Hotel Kawakyu in Japan. In 2011, he donated a large stele to the Terezín Fortress Memorial.

In subsequent years, his work entered major collections, including the Würth Museum, MART – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, and the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome. In recent years, he has continued to exhibit and create installations in Italy and abroad.

In 2025, one of his steles was acquired by the European Parliament for its permanent collection in Brussels. That same year, he was received by Pope Leo XIV, to whom he presented a sculpture inspired by the Cross of Jerusalem. In 2026, he participated in the Venice Biennale for the sixth time, exhibiting alongside his namesake grandson, who was making his Biennale debut.

He lives and works in Udine.

www.giorgioceliberti.com