Ulrico Schettini
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Ulrico Schettini | |
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| Born | 23 April 1932 Castrovillari, Italy |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Education | Art Institute of Pesaro |
| Known for | Painting, engraving, stained glass, visual arts |
Ulrico Schettini, also known by the pseudonym Montefiore (Castrovillari, 23 April 1932), is an Italian artist[1].
Active in the fields of painting, engraving, stained glass and visual arts, he has worked mainly in Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States, with a production ranging from frottage to sacred art, from material painting to experiments with refracted light.
Biography
Italian by birth but educated in the Anglosphere, Montefiore lived for many years in the United Kingdom and the United States.[2].
He pursued an artistic education, despite pressure from his parents, who would have preferred him to pursue a career in law. It is remarkable that it was at the Art Institute of Pesaro that he developed a strong friendship with Nanni Valentini, another important figure in post-war Italian art.
As a young student, he first moved to Paris, thanks to a scholarship from the French government, and then to London, where he lived for many years, focusing on his artistic career. Here, he also participated in the movement soon renamed “new-Dada”, with a production oriented towards revisiting certain aspects of Dadaism.
As a visiting professor, he also taught at several universities in the United States[3]. Under the auspices of the Association of American Colleges, he gave lectures, classes and demonstrations at over fifty universities across the country[4].
Upon returning to Italy, he held the chair of Decorative Arts at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts.
In addition to painting, pottery, and sculpture, Montefiore devoted himself to religious art, creating stained decorative windows for both ancient and modern churches. These include the Basilica Sanctuary dedicated to St Joseph of Cupertino and the parish church of Santa Maria della Misericordia[5], both in Osimo (AN). Additionally, during a long stay in Latin America, Montefiore carried out iconographic research on Inca ceramics.
Montefiore has also conducted research and experiments on the phenomenal and expressive aspects of colour: the artist draws on laboratory images to support subsequent subjective aesthetic orientations, a technique further refined with the advent of digital technologies. The author creates multicoloured plates and images, with colours that do not come from pigments or other dyes, but from the phenomenon of polarised and refracted light itself.
Artistic career [6]
In the early 1950s, Montefiore demonstrated that he had absorbed the Cubist language, enriching it with his own plastic values. He then continued his artistic research towards arte informale, which was not figurative but spontaneous, often action painting and textural.
In 1958, he moved to London and continued his research, combining gestural explorations with plastic forms and large symbols. In the mid-1960s, having moved to the United States, the artist opened a studio in New York City and devoted himself to a production that returned to a generalised representation with figures in a period defined as neo-figurative. He assimilated influences from George Segal's pop sculptures, as he had already done in Europe with images taken from Yves Klein and the nascent body art movement. Through the technique of frottage, Ulrico arrived at a representation on canvas of vegetation that appeared almost petrified, fossilised, and then went on to capture representations of human bodies and their clothing.
In the 1970s, a new figurative style flourished, combined with frequent use of the colour white (doves, flowers, clothing, etc.)[7]. However, Montefiore's art is not limited to painting. His interest in experimentation and related applications fuelled his creativity in exploring drawing, bronze sculpture, etching and terracotta.
In 1985, at Palazzo Gallo, the town hall of Castrovillari, Montefiore created a vast mural painting covering approximately 100 m². The artist decorated the four walls of a room in the building with images inspired by the historic battle against Crotone, which ended with the destruction of Sybaris (510 BC).
Montefiore is also credited with several stained glass windows[8], a work of sacred art produced at several artistic glassworks in Milan. Montefiore also conducted a lengthy study on site for the design of a stained glass window, to be commissioned by the Conferencia Episcopal Peruana in Lima, a work that remained unfinished.
Exhibitions
- 1957 International Watercolor Exhibition, 19th Biennial, Trends in Watercolor Today Brooklyn Museum, U.S.A..
- 1958 Giovani artisti italiani[9], La Permanente, Milan.
- 1959 Drian Gallery, London.
- 1960 15e Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, Paris.
- 1960 Contemporary Art Society, Sydney - Australie.
- 1961 26 Young Sculptors, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Londres, 1961[10].
- 1961 "Artists of the London School" at Manchester University, U.K.
- 1963 New Metropol Arts Centre, Folkestone, U.K.
- 1966 First Retrospective Exhibition, Municipal Museum Hull, U.K.
- 1972 «Montefiore au Café Royal», London.
- 1974 Solo exhibition at the Palazzo della Permanente organised by the municipality of Milan.
- 1992 "Art Fence, 99 opere d'artisti di Brera", 99 works by Brera artists, Rotonda della Besana, Milan.
- 2011 "Le opere penitenziali", Penitential works, solo exhibition, Museo del Presente, Rende[11]
References
- ↑ Giani, Stefano (1996). "Biblioteca ISAL. Aggiornamenti. Arte Lombarda". ISAL - Istituto per la storia dell'arte lombarda: 137–140 – via JSTOR.
- ↑ "Schettini, Ulrico – Red Raven Arts".
- ↑ "Ulrico Montefiore Schettini | CAS". contemporaryartsociety.org. Retrieved 2025-09-20.
- ↑ "The Glenville Mercury" (PDF). March 6, 1968.
- ↑ "Comune di Osimo - una mostra nella città".
- ↑ "Ulrico Montefiore Schettini | CAS".
- ↑ "nuova figurazione".
- ↑ "Comune di Osimo".
- ↑ "Giovani artisti italiani".
- ↑ "ICA - Institute of Contemporary Arts". Artist Info. Mar 1950 – Oct 2015. Archived from the original on 29 November 2025. Retrieved 29 November 2025.
- ↑ "Le opere penitenziali".
External links
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