Vincenzo Vela Museum dedicates an exhibition to the art of Spartaco Vela, son of renowned sculptor Vincenzo

From November 9, 2024 to April 27, 2025, the Vincenzo Vela Museum in Ligornetto opens its fall season with the exhibition Spartaco Vela. Impressions from Life dedicated to Spartaco Vela (Turin, 1854 - Ligoretto, 1895), a prominent painter and the only son of renowned sculptor Vincenzo Vela and Sabina Dragoni. Going beyond the common label of “son of art,” the exhibition invites the public to discover the figure of the artist who was active between Switzerland and Italy and fully included in the artistic and cultural scene of his time.

For the first time, the museum is exhibiting Spartaco Vela’s pictorial and graphic production almost in its entirety, with a thematic itinerary that reveals its richness. Curated by Antonia Nessi, director of the museum, together with Anita Guglielmetti, scientific assistant, the exhibition is enriched by major loans from public and private collections. The public will also be able to discover original documents, papers and photographs that shed new light on the artist’s personality. Spartaco Vela’s themes align with the main strands of the Lombard school of the second half of the 19th century, such as history painting, portraiture and landscape. In the 1980s, his gaze turned to nature and reality, often inspired by the Ticino landscapes familiar to him. His style, influenced by Lombard naturalism, is expressed in an intense pictorial immediacy with vibrant light effects and a rich and dynamic color palette.

The exhibition restores the intense human and artistic story of Spartaco Vela, interweaving it with the social and cultural context of the time. In his works, the artist’s sensibility captures atmospheres of an era in transition, in which the desire to preserve nature in the face of the transformations of modernity is already manifest. On the occasion of the exhibition, the Vincenzo Vela Museum and Edizioni Casagrande of Bellinzona are publishing a catalog edited by Antonia Nessi, with contributions by scholars such as Sergio Rebora, Paul Müller, Anita Guglielmetti, Giampaolo Baragiola, Flavio Zappa and Giorgio Sassi. The exhibition will also be accompanied by interdisciplinary cultural activities, guided tours and mediation projects designed for a diverse audience.

Notes on the artist

The only son of sculptor Vincenzo Vela and Sabina Vela-Dragoni, Spartaco Vela was born in 1854 in Turin, where he attended primary and technical school. In 1867 the Vela family moved to the villa in Ligornetto, and the young man continued his education under the guidance of the liberal priest Giacomo Perucchi. Although he showed interest in the natural sciences, he was directed by his father toward painting. He enrolled at the Brera Academy in 1869 and was a pupil of Giuseppe Bertini and Mosè Bianchi; in 1873 he received an honorable mention at the School of General and Homeland History, and in 1874 a bronze medal at the School of Nude. In Milan he also attended the atelier of Eleuterio Pagliano. Well integrated in Braidese circles, he is linked by friendship to some fellow students, including Cesare Tallone and Angelo Morbelli. He then opened a studio in Milan, where he settled while maintaining close ties with Ticino. The Brera exhibition of 1878 marked his exhibition debut; in the following years he would occasionally participate in exhibitions in Italy and Switzerland. A member of the Milanese Masonic lodge La Ragione, socially committed, he founded the Ligornetto kindergarten and was the first president of the local mutual aid society (1889-95). Attentive to the preservation of the landscape, in 1890 he published a pamphlet in which he criticized the Monte Generoso rack railway. In 1892 he ties the Ligornetto villa with the collections therein to the Confederation, on condition that it be opened to the public as a museum or school. A large part of his output, including paintings, oil studies and graphic works, is preserved in the collection at the Vela Museum.

Practical information

For info: www.museo-vela.ch

Hours: Tuesday through Friday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Closed Mondays.

Vincenzo Vela Museum dedicates an exhibition to the art of Spartaco Vela, son of renowned sculptor Vincenzo

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