Guglielmo Achille Cavellini
| Guglielmo Achille Cavellini | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
11 August 1914 Brescia, Lombardy |
| Died | 20 November 1990 (aged 76) |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Movement | Mail art Performance art Neo-Dada |
Guglielmo Achille Cavellini (11 September 1914 – 20 November 1990), also known as GAC, was an Italian artist and art collector. After an initial activity as a painter, in the 1940s and 1950s he became one of the major collectors of contemporary Italian abstract art, developing a deep relationship of patronage and friendship with the artists. This experience has its pinnacle in the exhibition Modern painters of the Cavellini collection at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome in 1957. In the 1960s Cavellini resumed his activity as an artist, with an ample production spanning from Neo-Dada to performance art to mail art, of which he became one of the prime exponents with the Exhibitions at Home and the Round Trip works. In 1971 he invented autostoricizzazione (self-historicization), upon which he acted to create a deliberate popular history surrounding his existence. He also authored the books Abstract Art (1959), Man painter (1960), Diary of Guglielmo Achille Cavellini (1975), Encounters/Clashes in the Jungle of Art (1977) and Life of a Genius (1989).
Guglielmo Achille Cavellini was born in Brescia on 11 September 1914. His parents were from Tuscany, coming from two small villages over Pontremoli, in the Lunigiana. After the marriage and the birth of their first daughter Adele in 1900, they moved to Switzerland where the father works as a bricklayer, then he started an activity as a hawker in Lombardy. They lived for some time in Arona, on the Lake Maggiore, where in 1911 their son Mario was born. Then they decided to move to Brescia, where they opened a store called Bazar 33. In 1918 Adele died from the Spanish flu. Cavellini studied for nine years at the Cesare Arici Jesuit college. At 16 years he started the Istituto tecnico, but he was forced to interrupt his studies to help his parents in the store. Since his childhood he drew and painted, mainly landscapes. In 1935 he met Lisetta, his first girlfriend and future wife. In 1938 in Cortina d'Ampezzo he befriends the painter Domenico Mucci, who gives him painting lessons.
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