Carlo Ciussi was born in Udine on 25 January 1930. From 1945 to 1949 he attended art school in Venice, where the first post-war Biennale was held in 1948. Here Ciussi had the opportunity to see the works of artists such as Pablo Picasso and Gino Rossi, as well as those of the group of artists in the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti movement. During his last year in the city, he came into contact with the artists Emilio Vedova, Giuseppe Santomaso, Armando Pizzinato, and Lorenzo Viani. From 1949 to 1957 Ciussi had to leave Venice and work at his father’s printing press in Udine. He did not stop painting and indeed created works in a vigorous style characterised by its expressionistic impact and neo-Cubist allusions, but his job did not allow him to paint regularly, though in 1955 one work of his was shown at the 7th Quadriennale d’Arte Contemporanea in Rome. In 1957 he met Lina, who was to become his life companion. In the very early 1960s, Ciussi became an even closer friend of Giuseppe Santomaso, whom he had known during his time in Venice: in 1962, Santomaso joined Ciussi in Udine for a few months, and this gave rise to the Paese Perduto cycle of works. They later went on a trip together to Montenegro, Kosovo, and Macedonia, which was to have a lasting effect on both of them. His return to these places in 1963 inspired his prolific Lettera da Skopje cycle. Thanks in part to Santomaso, in the early 1960s Ciussi came into contact with Giuseppe Marchiori and Afro Basaldella, who were struck by his work and indeed in 1964 it was Afro himself who, as a member of the Sub-commission for the Figurative Arts of the Biennale together with Lucio Fontana, invited him to take part in the Venice Biennale. Here he showed works that were beginning to move away from his more informal style of the previous three years and that revealed the beginnings of his shift towards clean geometrical lines and sign-based scripts. In 1961 Ciussi put on a solo exhibition at the Galleria d’Arte “Il Traghetto” in Venice while in 1962 frequented Italo Furlan and Ermanno Mori’s Galleria Stendhal in Milan and re-establish contact with his friend Sandro Garlatti. In 1964 the contract he was offered by the gallery allowed him to devote himself to painting on a regular basis and to take a studio in Piazza Sant’Alessandro in Milan. That year he met the poet Carlo Invernizzi, who was drawn into the artist’s creative world, and the two of them established a long relationship of friendship and mutual esteem. In 1965 came a solo exhibition at the Galleria Stendhal (with a catalogue containing an essay by Giuseppe Marchiori) and his participation in the 9th Quadriennale d’Arte in Rome. The following year Galleria Stendhal published a catalogue with an essay by Lara Vinca Masini and Ciussi was invited to take part in the Sao Paulo Biennale in Brazil. That year, upon the invitation of the architect Emilio Mattioni, he made a fresco and created two mosaics at the Istituto Malignani in Udine. In 1967 he put on his first solo exhibition at Galerie Paul Facchetti in Paris, and this was followed by a second solo display in 1971, which was also shown in the Zürich gallery. In order to create a number of the works presented on that occasion, Ciussi rented a studio in the Montparnasse district of Paris which, during the war, had belonged to Picasso. With a catalogue containing essays by Giuseppe Marchiori and Michel Seuphor, the exhibition was a great success and photographs of the event were published in Le Monde magazine. In 1968 he had a solo exhibition at the Galleria Stendhal, curated by Gillo Dorfles, and a second one at the Il Cavallino gallery in Venice, curated by Giulio Carlo Argan. In 1970 he left his native Udine and, with Lina, moved to Cividale del Friuli. That year he won the Morgan’s Paint award in Ravenna and made a large painting on the ceiling of Casa Scoccimarro in Milan. In 1971 he won the Sperticano award in Bologna, and the Michetti award in Francavilla al Mare. The first anthological exhibition of his work was held in 1974 at the Palazzo Torriani in Gradisca d’Isonzo. It was curated by Lara Vinca Masini and Charles Spencer and was followed in 1975 by a show in the town halls of Perugia and Spoleto. In the second half of the 1970s, Ciussi’s successful personal artistic investigation of colour as a strategic activity received critical and public acclaim at an anthological exhibition in 1977 at the Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea in Parco Massari, Ferrara, and at a sweeping solo show at the Lorenzelli Arte gallery in Milan in 1980. In the 1980s Carlo Ciussi began to concentrate his artistic speculations on an investigation of signs and traces in painting, but also on sculpture, which in those years, together with environmental works, became an increasingly important part of his artistic studies. When he was invited to the 42nd Venice Biennale in 1986, he showed two sculptures in the open air, and he also showed one of his sculptures in 1988 at the Museo degli artisti exhibition in Morterone. In 1989 he was invited by the architect Gino Valle to create a projecting work for the Banca di Credito Cooperativo Pordenonese in Azzano Decimo, and three years later he made two large works for the Nereo Rocco Stadium in Trieste. In 1994 he made a floor mosaic for the Palasport in Trieste. In the early 1990s he moved back to Udine and took part in important exhibitions including Divina Mania, una poetica bicipite, curated by Elisabeth Bozzi with poetic texts by Carlo Invernizzi, in the town hall of Vignate, a solo exhibition curated by Gillo Dorfles in Santa Maria in Corte, Cividale del Friuli, and later at the Museo Civico d’Arte Contemporanea in Gibellina, and the La pelle dell’arte. Riflessione sulla superficie exhibition curated by Lorenzo Mango, first in the town hall of Morterone and later at the Istituto d’Arte Dosso Dossi in Ferrara. The 1990s brought a further investigation into signs, and the traces that had characterised his work in the previous decade became more rigid and began to fragment and shatter. In these years Ciussi made large freestanding three-dimensional canvases, which were shown in 1997 at the Lorenzelli Arte gallery during the Ciussi. Armonico percorso exhibition. As well as two solo exhibitions in 1993, put on contemporaneously at the Galleria Plurima and at the Galleria Colussa in Udine, Ciussi took part in an exhibition of works from 1960 to 1965, curated by Claudio Cerritelli and organised by the Associazione Culturale Amici di Morterone in the town hall of Vignate. He also had a solo exhibition called La memoria dell’antico in the town hall of Venzone. In 1996 he created a wall and ceiling painting for the Auditorium of the Fantoni plant in Osoppo, designed by the architect Gino Valle, and in 1997 he was invited by Giorgio Bonomi to the Trilogia exhibition at the Centro Espositivo della Rocca Paolina in Perugia, for which Giovanni Maria Accame edited an important monograph entitled Carlo Ciussi 1947-1997. La pittura come urgenza ed emozione, published by Charta, for an anthological exhibition at the Civico Museo Revoltella in Trieste. In 1998 the Esslinger Kunstverein in the Villa Merkel in Esslingen put on a sweeping solo exhibition curated by Christoph Sholl and Tito Maniacco. Thanks in part to his friendship with Carlo Juker, president of the Giuseppe Verdi Symphony Orchestra of Milan, the following year he was able to make some permanent works for the Milan auditorium, and in 2000 he put on a solo exhibition at the Mestna Galerija in Ljubljana. In 2000 he also made a number of works for Termomeccanica in La Spezia: a floor in seminato veneziano reconstituted marble, an iron structure over the building, and a two-ton sculpture for the interior. In the early years of the new millennium he returned to his investigation of geometry and of form as a place of colour. In 2003 he was invited to take part in the exhibition curated by Claudio Cerritelli entitled Tazio Nuvolari. Il mito della velocità, l’arte del movimento at the Casa del Mantegna in Mantua, and in 2004, at the same venue, he showed his works in L’Incanto della pittura. Percorsi dell’arte italiana nel secondo Novecento and in three large solo shows in Milan, which were shown simultaneously in 2005 at the A arte Studio Invernizzi and Lorenzelli Arte galleries, and at the Provincia di Milano, Palazzo Isimbardi. During Miraggi in 2008, A arte Studio Invernizzi showed a large iron sculpture in Piazza della Scala in Milan, which was then installed permanently at the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea all’Aperto in Morterone. In 2007 a great solo exhibition of works from the previous ten years was shown in the historic rooms of the Palazzo dei Sette in Orvieto. In 2009 retrospectives were devoted to him at the Neuer Kunstverein in Aschaffenburg and at the Stadtgalerien in Klagenfurt, and in 2010 he showed his largeformat sculptures on the walls of Castel Pergine. After taking part in the exhibition entitled Temi & Variazioni. Dalla grafia all’azzeramento at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice in 2009, he was invited in 2011 to the Gli irripetibili anni 60. Un dialogo tra Roma e Milano exhibition in the rooms of the historic Palazzo Cipolla in Rome and later at the Palazzo Reale in Milan. In the same year the solo show Carlo Ciussi. Geometrie del divenire inaugurated at Abbazia di Rosazzo and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice invited him to take part to the exhibition Temi & Variazioni. Scrittura e spazio. In 2012 he took part at the exhibition Immagine della Luce. Artisti della contemporaneità internazionale per Villa Clerici at Galleria d’Arte Sacra dei Contemporanei di Villa Clerici in Milan. Carlo Ciussi died in Udine the 23th of April 2012.