Vittorio Miele

Works

Vittorio Miele exhibited in Galleria Gagliardi from 1994 to 1999.

Vittorio Miele (1926-1999)

The distinctive quality of the way of see of Vittorio Miele, an artist of delicate sentiments, however not less intense, he surprises and withholds us with his images and landscapes in the imaginative space of along opera interval divided between his personal lived experience and a noble visible language that poetically speaks with a "low voice", consolidating fleeing impressions in a formal way. This artist's paintings come from a sentimental impulse and conclude with a note of simple style and colour that generate deep vibrating effects. He goes back to his memories, personal and collective and it is for this that the images representing permanent love for travelling, places and people come out through his brush.

Bibliografia
Colomo G., Nuovissimo dizionario dei pittori, poeti, scrittori, artisti dei nostri giorni, Firenze, Nuova Europa, 1975.
Studi meridionali, Anno 5, fasc. 1 (Gennaio-Marzo 1972)
Trombadori D., Vittorio Miele: il poeta del silenzio / presentazione di Duccio Trombadori, Boville Ernica, 2000. 
Vittorio Miele, Fondazione Umberto Mastroianni, 2009
Varone G., Scritti di Michele Rosa, Sora, Expo, 2010, pp. 213, 214. 
Zani R., Vittorio Miele: le opere inedite della testimonianza - Museo Archeologico Nazionale G. Carettoni di Cassino, 14 giugno - 5 luglio 2015, Cassino?, 2015.  
Nuovi Orizzonti, rivista mensile di arte, anno V, N. 2, Napoli, Nello Punzo editore, febbraio 1966.

He lived through the tragic experience of the battle of Montecassino battaglia di Montecassino  in which he saw his father and sister die and his mother die of her wounds. After the end of the conflict he moved to Urbino where he began his artistic career. In 1958  he took part in the "Mostra Nazionale Città di Mantova", while his first personal exhibition took place in Frosinone in 1966, at the "La Saletta" gallery, a meeting place and forum for painters from Ciociaria and the Upper Terra di Lavoro.   In 1967 his work Meriggio won an award at the "Avis" art exhibition in Jesi. Two years later, in 1969, with the work Il Dolore (Pain) he received the 2nd prize at the International Painting Exhibition of Piervert (France) and, in the same year, with the work Case di Ciociaria he won the first prize at the IV Rassegna Nazionale Arti Figurative in Rome.

In the seventies he took part in exhibitions in San Marino (a personal exhibition at the Ridotto del Teatro Titano in 1971), in Japan (1972, Gallery "2000" in Tokyo, for a collective exhibition in which works by De Chirico, Gentili, Campigli, Greco, Cantatore also took part), in Jugoslavia (1973, Art Pavilion in Sarajevo), Canada (1974, he exhibited at la Place Bonaventure in Montréal, at Titanus Inc. of Willowdale, at the Hilton Hotel and at the Fine Arts Gallery of Toronto), United States of America (1976, exhibition of oils and tempera at the Mondello Interiors Gallery of Birmingham). He also exhibited at the Forsythe Gallery in Ann Arbor, the Charter Arts in Farmington, the Coach House Gallery in Detroit and other prestigious museums.

After many other exhibitions in Italy, at the end of the seventies, he was invited to the State Art Colony of Počitelj in Jugoslavia, an experience that he retraces in a series of stupendous pastels. Thirty-five years after the destruction of Cassino, Vittorio Miele commemorated that anniversary with "Testimonianza", an artistic itinerary with the crudest images that had remained in the master's mind.

In 1991 he exhibited at the Europen Parliament.

After many other exhibitions (including in 1987 at the "Galleria Il Trittico" in Rome and in 1994 a personal exhibition at the "Galleria Gagliardi" in San Gimignano, Vittorio Miele died in his home town of Cassino on 18 November 1999.

In 2009, the Umberto Mastroianni Foundation and the City of Frosinone, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his death, dedicated a solo exhibition to him, which was an extraordinary success with the public and critics. A similar initiative was also taken by the "Galleria Gagliardi" in San Gimignano.    In 2015, during the events linked to the commemoration of the destruction of Montecassino, Cassino remembered him with an exhibition in the "G. Carettoni" Archaeological Museum dedicated to unpublished works relating to the Battle.

A friend of Umberto MastroianniAlfredo BonazziKolja Mićević and Pietro Annigoni, defined by Duccio Trombadori as "the poet of silence", Miele remains one of the most profound and significant Italian artists of the last century. Some of his works are currently on display at the  Umberto Mastroianni Foundation in Arpino.

In Frosinone, the city where he lived for many years of his life, a state-run nursery school has been dedicated to him.

In January 2020 the Vittorio Miele Donation was inaugurated at theUniversity of Studi di Cassino e del Lazio Meridionale. Twenty years after the painter's death, his family donated thirty paintings and graphics made in the mid-1980s to the University. The collection is part of the "Testimony" series, the artistic documentation of a human experience that saw Miele as a direct witness and protagonist of the war events that devastated the city and the Abbey in 1944. The catalogue contains a critical essay by Marcello Carlino.

Archivio Vittorio Miele, su archiviovittoriomiele.wordpress.com.

Vittorio Miele. Il poeta del silenzio - dal sito www.menteantica.it, su menteantica.it. URL consultato il 19 giugno 2007 (archiviato dall'url originale il 10 dicembre 2006).

Sito dedicato a Vittorio Miele, su wix.com.

Fotografie dal sito della Galleria Gagliardi di San Gimignano, su galleriagagliardi.com. URL consultato il 19 giugno 2007 (archiviato dall'url originale il 1º maggio 2005).

La Pittura in Ciociaria, su web.tiscalinet.it.

Comune di Cassino, su comune.cassino.fr.it. URL consultato il 29 agosto 2017 (archiviato dall'url originale il 30 agosto 2017).

Alessio Porcu, su alessioporcu.it.

Rivista Segno, su rivistasegno.eu.

Latium adiectum, su latiumadiectum.it.

Vittorio Miele was born in Cassino (Fr) in 1926. These were the years before the terror. The war was just around the corner, even in that corner of rural tranquillity made up of wheat and toil.

Vittorio Miele has survived, perhaps involuntarily, that universe of terror. After the war he went north and discovered new "passions", those that perhaps the irremediability of human folly had taken away from him. In Urbino he attended painting courses and participated intensely in the city's artistic life.

In 1958 he took part in the National Exhibition of the City of Mantua. That same year he held his first Marguttiana. Then, in 1966, his first personal exhibition in Frosinone. The following year, with his work Meriggio, he was awarded a prize at the Avis art exhibition in Jesi.

Vittorio Miele's pictorial and human maturation followed in parallel the intersection of ever-living relationships with the greatest exponents of 1960s culture. However, his canvases did not betray his predilection for the great masters of Impressionism. In 1969, with the work Il Dolore (Pain), he was awarded second prize at the International Painting Exhibition in Piervert, France, and in the same year he won first prize at the IV Rassegna Nazionale Arti Figurative in Rome with the work Case di Ciociaria (Houses of Ciociaria).

In 1971 he was in San Marino with a personal exhibition at the Ridotto del Teatro Titano. With a group of valid artists he founded the Association of Artists from Ciociaria. This was the beginning of an intense activity of collaboration with artists and cultural structures, especially international ones. Vittorio Miele's first non-European engagement took place in 1972, when some of his works were chosen, together with those of De Chirico, Campigli, Gentili, Greco and Cantatore, for a collective exhibition at the "2000" Gallery in Tokyo, specialised in the diffusion of contemporary art in Japan.

Again in 1973 he was present at the Sarajevo Art Pavilion. In 1974, his first experience overseas, in Canada, where he exhibited his works at the Place Bonaventure in Montreal, at the Titanus Inc. in Willowdale, at the Hilton Hotel and at the Fine Arts Gallery in Toronto. The positive American experience was repeated in 1976 when the Mondello Interiors Gallery of Birmingham held a large exhibition of oils and temperas. He also exhibited at the Forsythe Gallery in Ann Arbor, the Charter Arts in Farmington, the Coach House Gallery in Detroit and other important museums.

On his return to Italy, enriched above all by the critical acclaim he received in America, he immediately resumed contacts with the major Italian gallery owners. Among the many appointments in those years it is worth mentioning the personal exhibition at the "Nuova Scaligera" in Verona. After the Italian parenthesis, in 1977 he left again, this time for completely different countries. He was invited to Yugoslavia, as a guest of the State Art Colony of Pocitelij.

After this new and positive experience, he returned to Italy, where a few years later he realised a project he had been pondering for decades, that of returning to his home town with a very special exhibition. On the thirty-fifth anniversary of the destruction of Cassino, the master dedicates the historical exhibition "Testimonianza" to his hometown and to those who lived through those tragic wartime events, an artistic itinerary with chilling images in which he re-proposes those tragic days.

For eight months, the exhibition will be visited by thousands of people, including delegations, including governmental delegations, from Poland, England, the United States and France. This exhibition was the first step towards a thaw with his city. During this period, he met the master Pietro Annigoni, who was working on the frescoes of the vault of the Abbey of Montecassino. It was the Florentine artist himself who presented in the catalogue the vast anthology that the Municipality of Cassino would dedicate to Miele the following year: over two hundred works that marked the Ciociaria painter's artistic and human journey from 1950 to 1980.

But in the very last days of the exhibition, almost as a sign of the painful return to his origins, the artist felt the first symptoms of the serious illness that would keep him inactive for a long time. With difficulty, and with the courage of his will, he exorcises the pain and anguish. This is how his 'clearest' works were created, as if ironically reopening the struggle with time. In the last years of his life he still exhibited in personal and collective exhibitions, among which we remember: 1984 Provincial Administration of Frosinone, anthological exhibition; 1987 Galleria Il Trittico of Rome, 1989 Palazzo Gottifredi of Alatri; 1991 European Parliament; 1994 personal exhibition at the Galleria Gagliardi of San Gimignano and in 1998 the last important appointment with an exhibition of his most recent works in the Palazzo dell'Unione Industriale of Frosinone.

After many months of lucid suffering, he died in Cassino on 18 November 1999.

On the tenth anniversary of his death in 2009, the Umberto Mastroianni Foundation, chaired by Massimo Struffi, dedicated a solo exhibition to him at the Villa Comunale in Frosinone and a book (Vittorio Miele, Fondazione Mastroianni, 2009). Another exhibition will be held the same year at Galleria Gagliardi in San Gimignano.

 taken (with some modifications) from menteantica.it

DISEGNI
San Gimignano
From 10/10/09 to 02/11/09
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LA NUOVA METAFISICA DI VITTORIO MIELE
FROSINONE
From 04/10/2009 to 24/10/2009
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MEMORIE
San Gimignano
From 19/02/2005 to 12/03/2005
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VITTORIO MIELE
San Gimignano
From 26/03/1994 to 14/04/1994
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