SIMONETTA  JUNG               

Simonetta Jung (Palermo 1917 - Brussels 2005)
​Member of the "Movimento Arte Concreta - Gruppo Spaziale"
"I feel that freedom is the greatest and at the same time the most terrible gift that has been bestowed upon the human being" 
Simonetta Jung

HOMO NOVUS : 1972-1979
"At every great turning point in history, a "new man" has appeared featuring certain special
characteristics which are the result of the changes occured".   Simonetta Jung

"Homo Novus no 15" 1974, acrylic on canvas, 75 x 110 cm
Exhibited at Galleria Nuovo Sagittario, Milan 1976 & Unesco house Paris, 1984
​Price 15.000  Euro

"Homo Novus no 16" 1974, acrylic on canvas, 75 x 110 cm
​Exhibited at Galleria Nuovo Sagittario Milano, 1976
​Price 10.000 Euro

"Homo Novus 20"​ 1974, acrylic on canvas, 80 x 100 cm
Price 10.000 Euro

"Homo Novus no 57" 1976, acrylic on canvas, 50 x 60 cm
​Price : 7.500 Euro

"Homo Novus no 61" 1976, acrylic on canvas, 70 x 80 cm
Price 8.000 Euro

"Homo Novus no 77" 1977, acrylic on canvas, 150 x 107 cm
​Price 35.000 Euro

ELOUNTHA : 1979-1982
Jung paints this cycle on the back of her canvases

"Elountha no 20" 1980, mixed media on canvas, 108 x 90 cm
​Exhibited at the Unesco house in Paris, 1984
​Price 13.000 Euro

"Elountha no 21" 1980, mixed media on canvas, 152 x 118 cm
The Elountha (a village in Crete) series are painted on the back of each canvas
​Price 15.000 Euro​

"Elountha 25" 1980, mixed media on canvas, 72 x 92 cm
​Price 6.500 Euro

ANTHROPOSCOPY : 1982-1984
"This cycle of paintings reflects at the same time a physical and psychological exploration of mankind"

"Anthroposcopy" 1983, mixed media on canvas, 52 x 72 cm
​Exhibited at the Unesco house in Paris, 1984
​Price 5.500 Euro

Simonetta Jung was born in Palermo, Sicily, in 1917. Her father came from Trieste and her mother, Jeannette Duquesne, was a British subject and a member of  an old french family descending from the Marquis Duquesne, Admiral of the french fleet of Louis XIV. The family had gone into exile in England during the reign of Napoleon III. During her studies her favorite subjects were Art History, Philosophy and, above all, Science. Later she took a particular interest in the memoirs of Einstein, who foresaw the possibility that, through the intuition of artists, abstract art would be able to express complex and hard to perceive interstellary relations. With her so called "Forme-Luce" (1949-1956) paintings she held her first personal exhibition in 1954 in Milano, where she met Lucio Fontana, who called her paintings “spatial art”. She became a member of the Movimento Arte Concreta – Gruppo Spaziale. In 1955 she held solo exhibitions in Florence, Venice, Rome and in the famous Duveen-Graham Gallery in Madison Ave, New York. Her work entered into important american collections and museums. Jung creates a second cycle, called "Tensioni Formative" (1958-1971), closely related to abstract expressionism and Cobra. The artist states that the “Forme-Luce” and “Tensioni Formative” series represent the moments “before” and “after” the creation of earth respectively, hereby referring to the theories of Plato. In 1961 Jung paints "Idea Materia no 19 - The Beginning" for the White House after the election of JFK. After moving to San Francisco, the artist starts a new cycle of works entitled "Homo Novus" (1972-1979), symbolizing the human being turning into a robot. By the end of the seventies, she again altered her style, starting the "Elountha” series inspired by the fishing village in Eastern Crete. Although her work has been crystallized in various distinct periods, they are in fact organically linked by a slow natural evolution. Works of Simonetta Jung are found in European and American private collections and museums : Columbia University, NY, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, Stanford University Museum, CA, Brandeis University Museum, MA, The White House, Washington D.C., Nelson-Atkins Gallery of Art, Kansas City, Notre Dame Museum of Art, Southbend (Indiana), Providence College, Massachusets, New Museum, Tel-Aviv etc...
A fine book about Simonetta Jung by art historian Serge Goyens de Heusch was published in 1981.
Main solo exhibitions at Galleria Schettini, Milano, Galleria del Cavallino, Venice and at Galleria Schneider, Roma (1954), Duveen-Graham Gallery, New York (1955), Galerie Veranneman Brussels (1970), Wiles Gallery, San Francisco (1971), Galleria Nuovo Sagittario, Milano (1976), Galerie Armorial (Serge Goyens de Heusch) Brussels (1979), Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas Antwerp (1980), Unesco House Paris (1984), Group 2 Gallery Brussels (1996).

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