Gisella

Meo

Biography

Gisella Meo was born in Treviso in 1936. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice where she met Tancredi with whom she has a relationship that will later influence her work. In the 60s she lived in Africa and made her debut with multi-material and informal works. In 1976 at the Galleria Numero di Fiamma Vigo, Meo had a turning point in the Conceptual field sanctioned by a declaration of Poetics, where she found its perfect module in the “square”.
The interest in FiberArt, large installations and urban animation interventions took over with the following works: Dressing a fountain (Frascati, 1977), The mobile cylinder (Gubbio, 1979), The waves of the square (Venice, Grand Canal, 1980), The human mesh (Royal Palace of Caserta, 1982), Tombknitting (Cerveteri, Etruscan necropolis, 1984-86), Harnessing a tower (Torre di Bagnaia, Viterbo, 2002, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the attack on the Twin Towers).
Another trend to which Meo will devote particular attention is the Book Object. Followed and supported by Mirella Bentivoglio, she is present in the historic exhibition “Materialization of language” at the Venice Biennale in 1978, with Leviatan. She developed a partnership with Bentivoglio that will last a lifetime and which will bear fruit of four-handed works such as the 1981 book Zero Seme. Her ‘object-books’ are kept in the ‘Special Collections’ of the Getty Center in Santa Monica,California, in Washington, in the Icpa Archives of the University of Oxford, in the Mart of Trento and Rovereto, the Ma*Ga of Gallarate, the Museum of Senigallia and in Italian and foreign public and private collections.