Giorgio Celiberti was born in Udine in 1929. He began to paint at very early age, and his official arrival on the Italian artistic scene came about with his participation at the age of nineteen in the 1948 Biennale in Venice, the first to be held after the war. He attended the Liceo Artistico in Venice, and then worked in Emilio Vedova’s studio.
During his first time in the “Serenissima” he made many friends, with his extroverted and generous nature. He shared a study-bedroom at the Pensione Accademia with Tancredi. He spent a great deal of time with Carlo Ciussi, Marco Fantoni and Romeo Parmeggiani, who were all learning their art in Venice at the time.
Following in the footsteps of his uncle Modotto, one of the most important Udinese painters of the 1930s, Celiberti in the early 1950s moved to Paris where he met the leading exponents of French artistic culture. During this period he held many personal exhibitions in Italy and abroad. In 1956 he won a scholarship from Italian Ministry of Education which enabled him to move to the then lively city of Brussels, where he was able to complete his research in avant-garde art.
From 1957 to 1958 he was in London - these were the years of the expressionism of Bacon and Sutherland. A tireless traveler, curios and smitten by a feverish desire for novelty and knowledge, he went to the United States, Mexico, Cuba and Venezuela.
From these experiences and “explorations” he created a repertoire of symbols, images, and techniques which he was reworked in subsequent years: a substratum of emotions and cultural “materials” which have continue to emerge, in different forms, in his work.
On returning home Celiberti settled for a long and profitable time in Rome, where he frequented leading Italian artists. The return to Udine in the mid 1960s enabled the painter to begin reflecting on himself, a process that is ongoing, rich in creative results and still characterized by an all encompassing anxiety to experiment.
In 1965 the artist was emotionally struck by a visit to the prison camp at Terezin near Prague, where thousands of Jewish children, before being killed by the Nazis, had left in short diary notes and in a “booklet” of poems, touching testimonies to their tragedy. This experience gave rise, in the painting of Celiberti, to the Lager series.
In 1975, Anthropomorpich Walls were born of reflectionson the remains of the Porto Necropoli near Fiumicino, of early Christian Rome, of Roman Aquileia and of Longobard Cividale.
The major events Celiberti has been involved in, as well as the Biennale, include the Rome Quadriennale, the Esso Prize, the Burano Prize, Marzotto, Michetti, La Spezia, San Marino, Autostrada del Sole, the International Fiorino Prize, and the new Italian Painting Exhibition in Japan. He has held more than one hundred personal exhibitions. The most important include Paris(1953 and 1982), London (1956), Dallas (1963), New York (1963), Toronto (1976), Vienna (1978), Amsterdam (1979), Nova Gorica (1982), Novo Mesto (1983), Jaffa, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv (1983), Brussels and Strasbourg (1987). Celiberti has also exhibited several times in Bologna, Florence, Genova, Palermo, Rome, Turin, Trieste, Venice, Verona and, of course, Udine.
From the early 1960s the artist specifically devoted himself to sculpture, even though his creative activity was increasingly characterized by an original symbiosis between pictorial and three-dimensional expression. The first works in bronze, in stone, and in clay were dedicated to the “monumental” themes of Horses and Horsemen, followed by an original gallery of fauna: cats, birds, goats. Later his sculpture left behind grandiose monumentality to set up a “private” dialogue with the traces of an ancestral past, seeming to emerge from a collective conscience of which the artist is the inspired spokesman. Connected to the “archeological” theme of his painting, the Splinters and the Stelae were created, recalling remote tombstones engraved with enigmatic hieroglyphic inscriptions; the Bas- reliefs, like artifacts of lost civilizations steeped in a immemorial past. The abstract expressionist language of painting is thus charged with yet more arcane and fabulous resonance in sculpture. Great exhibitions mark this period, starting from the painting anthological held in 1980 at the Galleria Spazzapan in Gradisca d’Isonzo (Gorizia). The following spring saw the exhibition at Villa Simes Contarini at Piazzola sul Brenta (Padua), in whose park great sculptures in bronze, stone and steel were displayed to complement the hundred or so works on show in the house.
The Villa Simes Contarini experience was repeated and developed further in the summer of 1985 in and around the Veneto Villas of Carbonera (Treviso). In the same year Celiberti, at the invitation of the Council and Tourism Board of Trieste, placed huge steel in the main streets and squares of the Giulian capital, while bronze sculptures were on display at San Giusto castle and stone sculptures at Miramare castle. The Trieste exhibition lasted a whole year and was extended and developed in Udine where, from the winter of 1985 until the spring pf 1986, the artist’s sculptures were displayed in the nicest parts of the town centre and in the castel, at the same time as a collection of bronzes, paintings, graphics and polychrome pottery were displayed at the Centro Friulano Arti Plastiche.
Between the late 1980s and the early 1990s prestigious exhibitions continued in Italy and abroad: exhibition at the Fondazione Pagani in Legnano (1987), Anthologicals at Villa Varda di Brugnera in Pordenone, at Palazzo Diamanti in Ferrara, at the Art L. A. in Los Angeles(1989); exhibitions at the Galleria Davico in Turin, Galleria Forni in Bologna, Art London, Art Forum in Dusseldorf, Pares Room in Barcelona, Galleria Giulia in Rome (1990); personal exhibition at Arco Madrid, Gran Palais in Paris, at the September Saloon in Venice, Rotta Gallery in Genova and a new anthological exhibition of sculpture and painting at the Fondazione G. E. Ghirardi of Villa Simes Contarini in Piazzola sul Brenta (1992); Annunciata Gallery in Milan, early frescos in B. S. of Venice, exhibitions of monumental bronze sculptures in Millstatt (1993).
In 1991, Celiberti completed two prestigious public works: Frienship mosaic at Lubjana University and the 880 square meters on the top of the Kawajyu hotel in Shirahama, Japan. In 1994 Celiberti had exhibitions at Palazzo Costanzi, Risiera di San Saba, Trieste and Fiac, Paris. In January 1996 in Conegliano, at Palazzo Sarcinelli, begins the first anthological exhibition, followed by the one at Pergine castle. In 1997 an exhibition of paintings and sculptures in set in Villa Manin at Passariano. The many exhibitions in 1998 he demonstrates the increasing interest in the artist: Celiberti’s sculptures are inserted in the bastions of Treviso walls; Lignano entertains monumental sculptures and Celiberti exposes at the Angel Orenstsanz Foundation of New York, Saint Paul de Vence and Zagreb. On the international scene, Celiberti has exhibitions at Umago, Lubjana, Munich between 1999 and 2000, and in the Giubileum Year he realizes a three- meter cross in Fiumesino Church (Pordenone).
In this last period, many shows take place between Italy and abroad: in 2002 at Ex Ghetto in Vittorio Veneto and in the Saloons at Ex Ateneo in Bergamo; in 2003 Celiberti wins the Sulmona Prize and in the 2004 his birthplace, Udine, dedicates an anthological exhibition at the theatre “Giovanni da Udine”, with a wide exposition of his recent works. In 2005 the “Villa Breda Museum” in Padua will hold an anthological exhibition of works from the First Biennale of 1948 until the most recent productions; monumental sculptures will be display in a cultural route between the most important medieval monuments of Padua. In the same year a Giorgio Celibert’s painting enters to make part of the permanent Rovereto’s Mart collection.
Giorgio Celiberti also participates at the 54th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia 2011 - Arsenale, within the Italian Pavilion, curated by Vittorio Sgarbi, chosen by the intellectual Paolo Maurensig.
On 2012 the exibition at Casa dei Carraresi in Treviso "Affreschi rilevati", in may/june at Malta island and Udine.
From 22/12 to 10/02/2013 the exhibition "Giorgio Celiberti - Sul volo di una farfalla, segni di memorie dai muri di Terezin-bambini nella Shoah" in Cesena at the Municipal Art Gallery - Palazzo del Ridotto.
On 2013 a retrospective at the prestigious halls of Villa Manin in Passariano with sculptures and paintings.
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