A Conversation Between Giuseppe Iannaccone and Alberto Salvadori Alberto Salvadori

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Italy 1920-1945

A New Figurative Art and Narrative of the Self Design Concept Particular thanks to Photographic Credits Studio Mousse Giuseppe Iannaccone Alessandro Barca, Romina © 2017. De Agostini Picture Note to the reader Bettega, Viviana Birolli, Arianna Library/Scala, Firenze: p. 129 Editorial Coordination Catalogue Editors Borroni, Italo Carli, Stefano © 2017. Scala. Foto Art Resource/ Emma Cavazzini Alberto Salvadori Carluccio, Claudio Centimeri, Scala, Firenze/John Bigelow Rischa Paterlini The first volume on the Collezione Giuseppe Iannaccone covers the works Copy Editor Giulia Centonze, Paolo Colonna, Taylor: p. 133 Anna Albano Texts by Caterina Corni, Marcello © 2017. Foto Scala, Firenze: produced in the period 1920–45, personally chosen by the collector and Giuseppe Iannaccone Francone, Paolo Frassetto, pp. 160 left, 178 left, 182 right, Layout Alberto Salvadori Elisabetta Galasso, Alessandro 194 left, 258 top, 294 left purchased up to the date of 30 November 2016. The reconstruction of Giorgia Dalla Pietà Rischa Paterlini Guerrini, Giovanni Lettini, © 2017. Foto Scala, Firenze/ every detail was made possible by the extensive, scholarly records kept Iconographic Research Fabio Benzi Martino Mascherpa, Matteo Fondo Edifici di Culto - Ministero Paola Lamanna Giorgina Bertolino Mattei, Riccardo Mavelli, dell’Interno: p. 306 ever since the first purchase in 1992. The collection was built up spe- Paola Bonani Oblò Architetti, Claudia Santrolli, © 2017. Foto Scala, Firenze/ First published in Italy in 2017 by Fabrizio D’Amico Beppe Sarno, Maura Sarno, Luciano Romano - su concessione cifically as a homogeneous group of works essentially representing the Skira editore S.p.A. Flavio Fergonzi Violante Spinelli, the Studio del Ministero dei Beni e delle course of artistic developments from 1920 to 1945 outside the canons of Palazzo Casati Stampa Lorella Giudici Legale avvocato Giuseppe Attività Culturali e del Turismo: via Torino 61 Mattia Patti Iannaccone e Associati, p. 198 right the Novecento Italiano movement and the “return to order”. The first part 20123 Milano Elena Pontiggia Marco Vianello, Bernabò Visconti © 2017. Foto Scala, Firenze Italy Carlo Sisi di Modrone, the Gabinetto - su concessione del Ministero of the book is devoted to Giuseppe Iannaccone and his personal vision of www.skira.net Scientifico Letterario G.P. dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali Technical Entries by Vieusseux in the persons of Gloria e del Turismo: pp. 121, 125, the history of art, describing the life and the decisions that characterize © 2017 Collezione Giuseppe Rischa Paterlini [R.P.] Manghetti and Fabio Desideri 304, 312 Iannaccone Alessandra Acocella [A.A.] the collection with the greatest possible fidelity. Flavio Fergonzi then pre- for kind permission to consult © Archivio Fotografico e © 2017 The authors for their texts Dario Moalli [D.M.] precious, unpublished material, Mediateca MART: p. 164 © 2017 Skira editore, Milano Elena Pontiggia [E.P.] sents the twenty-five years in question with a study that puts forward and and Silvia Somaschini for her © Foto Musei Vaticani: p. 302 © Giuseppe Capogrossi, Felice Caterina Toschi [C.T.] invaluable work and research © RMN-Grand Palais (musée examines twelve critical themes for Italian art. This is followed by essays Casorati, Giorgio de Chirico, List of Works, Exhibitions, for the book A Loving Hunt, d’Orsay) / René-Gabriel Ojéda/ Filippo de Pisis, Otto Dix, Renato Bibliography edited by use of which was made also distr. Alinari: p. 322 right meticulously analyzing the cultural, historical and artistic events of the Guttuso, Carlo Levi, Umberto Rischa Paterlini for the present updated work. Association des Amis du Petit Lilloni, Giorgio Morandi, Fausto period 1920–45 by scholars who have explored and studied the collection Palais, Genève. Studio Peter Pirandello, Aligi Sassu, Alberto Critical Chronology 1920–1945* * The critical chronology covers Schälchli, Zürich: p. 101 Savinio by SIAE 2017 edited by in depth. The descriptions of the works appear in alphabetical order and the period from 1920 to 1945, Galleria d’Arte Moderna Ricci © Succession Picasso by SIAE Alessandra Acocella during which the works of the Oddi, Piacenza: p. 258 bottom outline their history, any remaining gaps being due to the impossibility of 2017 Caterina Toschi Collezione Giuseppe Iannaccone MONDADORI PORTFOLIO/ All rights reserved under Curatorial Assistant were produced. Political events, Electa/Sergio Anelli: p. 236 obtaining further information. international copyright Dario Moalli biographical data and information bottom left These entries are separated by tipped-in pages on special paper glued by conventions. on exhibitions, prizes and Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam: Stagiaire No part of this book may be publications regarding the artists p. 166 left Maria Chiara Ghilardi hand telling how the works came to enter the collection and/or discussing reproduced or utilized in any concerned appear alongside form or by any means, electronic Press Office a critical anthology on the works the collector’s relationship with the artists or with people playing a key or mechanical, including Lara Facco P.& C. to outline the history of an artistic photocopying, recording, or any movement at variance with the part in building up the collection. The rich critical apparatus comprises Photographs of the Collection information storage and retrieval cultural policy of the Fascist Paolo Vandrasch a list of the works with all the technical data required for the purposes system, without permission in regime in a complex, vital creative writing from the publisher. period of twentieth-century of historical reconstruction; a critical chronology of the period 1920–45 Italian art. Printed and bound in Italy. including events in Italy’s political and social history, biographical data, First edition The content of the critical chronology was selected by ISBN: 978-88-572-3503-5 information on exhibitions, prizes and publications regarding the artists Alessandra Acocella for the years Distributed in USA, Canada, 1920–33 and Caterina Toschi concerned and a critical anthology for each work; a list in chronological Central & South America by for 1934–45. Rizzoli International Publications, order of exhibitions featuring the works; and a bibliography by artist in Inc., 300 Park Avenue South, New alphabetical order including books, newspapers, periodicals and exhibi- York, NY 10010, USA. Distributed elsewhere in the world tion catalogues. by Thames and Hudson Ltd., 181A High Holborn, London WC1V 7QX, United Kingdom. Alberto Salvadori Rischa Paterlini contents

11 DIALOGUES 115 The Universe in a Leaf. Rosai and De Pisis 13 Artists as Friends carlo sisi giuseppe iannaccone 125 The Painting of Reality. 19 A Conversation between Giuseppe The Shift to Realism in the Roman Iannaccone and Alberto Salvadori Painting of the Thirties alberto salvadori fabio benzi

39 Tireless Passion or Sublime Madness? 135 Animating the Painting rischa paterlini with Vibrations of Life: the School of Via Cavour, 1927–33 paola bonani 53 ESSAYS 143 The Brief Transit of Scipione 55 Twelve Critical Themes for Italian Art fabrizio d amico between the Two World Wars ’ flavio fergonzi 151 THE COLLECTION 77 Garbari: a Master elena pontiggia 339 LIST OF WORKS rischa paterlini 81 Lilloni, De Rocchi and Del Bon: the Chiaristi in the Collezione Giuseppe Iannaccone 363 CRITICAL CHRONOLOGY 1920-1945 lorella giudici alessandra acocella, caterina toschi 89 Reality and Utopia. The Birolli Paintings in the Collezione Giuseppe Iannaccone 389 EXHIBITIONS rischa paterlini elena pontiggia

401 BIBLIOGRAPHY 97 The Painting of the Corrente Group: rischa paterlini between Colour and Reality mattia patti

105 The Six Painters of Turin: European and Modern. Themes, Exhibitions and Paintings through a Collection giorgina bertolino DIALOGUES Artists as Friends giuseppe iannaccone

I obviously did not live in Italy between the two world wars. Nor have I been personally acquainted with any of the artists in my collection except for Aligi Sassu and Ernesto Treccani. I feel, however, that I could certainly have taken part in their meetings and their impassioned discussions about art, the meaning of truth in painting, the use of colour or the urgent need to go beyond official academic painting. It is as though I knew them all just as I know my friends, their characters, their strengths and weaknesses, no more and no less, and this make me reflect on it. I know, for example, what Renato Birolli felt on his arrival in Milan from the Veneto region: a wild desire to devour the city with his love, a city that he knew would not fail to give him immense joy. Milan was a big city for someone from a small town such as Verona must have been back then. As we know, however, and as I know from personal experience, Milan welcomes you with open arms, Milan encourages you, Milan is a dream to be lived with your eyes wide open. So it was for the young Birolli. Milan was a wonderful fairytale that gave him the joy of being an artist, freedom in art, freedom in painting. There it was that the university district soon became his splendid, fabulous model, that Via Colombo, then peripheral with respect to the city centre, became a little earthly paradise in his fantastic landscapes. I fell in love with Birolli straight away for his ability to capture reality through the magnifying glass of poetry. In any case, how sad it would be to live our lives only as a mere relationship with reality without the sublimation that we alone, in our innermost depths, can see in things and still more in people. Though obviously unable to paint, I can live in symbiosis with Birolli because we share the same approach to reality. Think of the Lambro park. You may wonder why we should be talking about a rundown place on the outskirts of Milan. Now look at Birolli’s I poeti [The Poets] and La nuova Ecumene [The New Ecumene]. Pure poetry! The setting of both works is, however, the Lambro park, as revisited through the poetic vision of an artist. This is the magic of art, the magic of true artists: the ability to see things that we common mortals could never imagine. Like Birolli, Arnaldo Badodi is another that I seem to know with his unassuming character, reserved but extraordinarily sensitive. He loved women but not perhaps as you might think. He was no Casanova. He loved the female mind even more than the female body. You may well

13 GIUSEPPE IANNACCONE ARTISTS AS FRIENDS ask how I know this, whether I have read things about him or his letters people but still make the presence of human emotion absolute clear to from the front. I have certainly read the little that has been written but the viewer in every brushstroke. The Strada con casa rossa, for exam- the point is rather that the works themselves tell you everything about ple, communicates Mafai’s love for every corner of Rome, his passionate an artist. This is true also and indeed especially for Badodi. Look at his character, his delight in a new, instinctive kind of painting not fettered L’armadio [The Wardrobe] (1938), an extraordinary work! How much by the set canons of official rhetoric. InTramonto sul Lungotevere the love for femininity and respect for womankind there is in those hanging river sets the blood of love for life flowing. The passionate character of clothes, how much tenderness in the dress that seems to crawl on the the three members of the School of Via Cavour is a unique and unrepeat- floor. And then there are the prostitutes. In their works of those years, able gift for the history of art as a whole, not only Italian art. No one had my artists unashamedly told the truth about life and what Italians repainted like that before and no one has since. ally did, which means that they also depicted brothels. Just look at the It is almost as though I were there too, sitting with the three of them on way Badodi presents his prostitute in Ragazza [Young Woman] (1941) as one of those evenings on the big terrace of Mafai’s apartment. An impro- a girl with her head resting on a book. Badodi sees the prostitute as a vised supper with Mafai and Scipione making spaghetti, red wine from gentle creature who has, for some reason that we have no right to judge, the Castelli, Antonietta wondering whether Scipione is to be considered turned her back on normal life and suffers because of it. In his Il circo a permanent feature of her married life with Mafai. Talk about art and [The Circus] (1941), where we see a host of people laughing at Pierrot their new painting, warm, free and spontaneous. Then, slightly tipsy, and a girl, Badodi explores with great sensitivity the mental state of Mario and Gino set off to see Rome, their model, to observe the colours whoever faces the world with spontaneity and simplicity, showing how of evening, the last gleams of light, the warm colours of the rooftops, their fate is often to be derided and humiliated by society. and imagine their glow in painting. Rome was as sensual as the imagina- You should know that this young man was so sensitive and self-effacing tions of the two friends. Scipione in particular was intent on experienc- that one evening he said goodbye to his friends of the Corrente group as ing everything that was most exciting in life, and Rome seemed to have though it were just a day like any other: “Well, it’s getting late. I’m off. been made just for him. The Eternal City was certainly very enticing and Bye.” The day after he left for the Russian front, never to return. How extraordinarily exciting. Rome had the same temperament as the two can we not think of his crowded Milanese Caffè [Café] (1940), where friends but especially Scipione. Piazza Navona was transfigured in his every figure has a vacant stare, each one is wrapped up in loneliness, a eyes. The statues came to life as flesh and blood and joined in the fun. solitude underscored by the one empty chair in the centre of the paint- For Mafai, the Tiber was a flow of passion and warmth, all the human ing. Who is missing? Arnaldo Badodi, who set off unobtrusively, with- feeling he had within him, whereas for Scipione it ran with blood, blood out letting it weigh on anyone, to go to die for us all in the war in Russia. polluted by the illness that was to end his life. In both cases, however, it Anyone who doubts this can look at the back of the work and find him was a matter of human feeling, pure humanity alone. there, poor Arnaldo, in Il suicidio del pittore [The Painter’s Suicide], a Mafai and Scipione loved each other with a love that can only be un- prescient work painted in 1937, when he certainly had no idea of what derstood by someone who has had a true friend, a really special friend. fate had in store for him. During those walks by night they talked about art and exhibitions, about As you can see, I know him well. Arnaldo Badodi could be a friend of scaling the mountain of success, something of which they were both mine. I know him intimately and admire him for his goodness and sen- absolutely certain, especially Scipione. They also talked about their fu- sitivity. ture, but one thing was certain: that they would in any case experience In the same way, I feel very close to the three friends Raphaël, Mafai it together. In their eyes, Rome was beautiful and quite poetic but small, and Scipione. I regard them as three great artists for their extraordinary too small for people with their explosive thirst for life. They wanted to ability to capture human beings and human feelings with warm, lyrical travel, to go to America, South America and Cuba, to make new discov- expressionism in every painting. Their landscapes, especially from the eries in art and life. They thought of becoming a single artist with just period 1928−30, are ablaze with human warmth and emotion. Mafai’s one name for both of them: Bomaf. And so they talked about everything Strada con casa rossa [Street with Red House] (1928; a view also painted openly and unashamedly, as true friends can. About women, love and by Raphaël in a work now in the Pinacoteca di Brera), Raphaël’s Veduta prostitutes, about life and their belief that all the emotions were there dalla terrazza di via Cavour [View from the Terrace in Via Cavour] (1929; to be experienced with no exceptions. Art is truth, however, and so their a scene also painted by Mafai) and Mafai’s Tramonto sul Lungotevere thoughts, experiences, fears, joys and sorrows all ended up on canvas. [Sunset on the Lungotevere] (1929; a perspective also painted by Scipione had a fixation with sex. Perhaps because sex told him that he Scipione) are examples of how an artist can paint a landscape with no was healthy, he was alive, he had defeated that “beast” of illness that

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14 15 GIUSEPPE IANNACCONE TESTATINA –ARTISTS SULLA COLLEZIONE AS FRIENDS tormented him. He loved having sex all the time, especially with prosti- This is true. On the other hand, however, I feel emotionally involved in tutes, and so he painted prostitutes in the streets in the centre of Rome. that period. Moreover, it is often precisely in the moments of greatest Rome was desecrated but to their mind it was real life that desecrated suffering that human beings in general and artists in particular express the rhetorical views every day. The two friends painted real life and thus their feelings with the greatest depth. Those twenty years between the desecrated official art regardless of the consequences this would have two world wars were an unrepeatable period in which a group of artists for their careers. In any case, they knew they would always be together, wonderfully captured a whole catalogue of the most intriguing aspects for better or worse. of human beings. And as people are always the same, it is also contem- They studied a great deal. They thought that while you certainly might porary humankind that my artists depicted. not agree with official art, you must in any case have great respect for the history of art. They spent long days in the library, always together. Mafai compared them to cards from the same deck to be shuffled at will. It was only the beginning. They were ready to tell a wonderful tale of art, humanity and truth. Two fantastic, unrepeatable artists! And then one evening, while they were walking through Rome and talking about their plans, Scipione started to cough more than usual and coughed up blood in his handkerchief. He wanted to go home straight away. He said goodbye to Mafai and asked him not to accompany him. He did not want his friend to see him like that. Mafai watched him as he walked away, stopping every so often to cough, and embraced him with his eyes. From then on there was no more talk of travels, no more South America, no more Cuba, no more anything. Scipione was ill. They stayed in Rome, always together. Scipione knew he was doomed to die young but that did not stop him from painting. When common mortals know they are going to die, they despair, they weep, they think only of themselves and the treatment needed to soothe the pain. But not Scipione. He was a poet, a great poet, and illness led him to write some of the finest pages of his art, pages that will live on among the finest and most important in the history of the art of the last century. What about Mafai? Mafai stood by him and went with him to Collepardo, a small town in the province of Frosinone where Scipione went to convalesce in moments of respite. He was with him in his plans for shows in Rome, where they were admired by illustrious critics like Roberto Longhi, who recognized them together with Antonietta Raphaël as key figures in the new chapter of Italian painting. The two friends’ great human feeling is to be found, believe me, in their paintings. It is a central element of their art and in any case the crucial reason for my immense passion for their work. And I could also speak to you about the great poetry and humanity of Guttuso, Pirandello, Rosai and all the rest of my artists, because humanity, poetry, colour and expressionism are my constant focal points. I hope I have succeeded in explaining the meaning of this collection of mine. It is a mirror of the human mind, a mirror of the emotions of Italy during a period of turmoil, a time when the desire to rebuild the country ran up against the violence and suffering of Fascism and war. You may say that this has nothing to do with me, that I was not alive then.

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16 17 A Conversation between Giuseppe Iannaccone and Alberto Salvadori alberto salvadori

ALBERTO SALVADORI The first question is perhaps the one that many people ask on meeting you. Why does someone become a collector or simply develop a passion for art? In this initial phase, I would also like to know about your education, your intellectual formation, the passions of your youth and why art sometimes appears immediately and sometimes later.

GIUSEPPE IANNACCONE I think I grew up like so many other youngsters. Dad was a state employee and the family was never well-off. Money was always a problem because there were four children. My mother didn’t work for many years and Dad’s wages were the only income. She took care of us, three boys, very attached to one another. I have one brother exactly a year younger than me and the other less than two years older. We really stuck together. Then my sister was born ten years later. I liked playing football and going around with friends. We had a great sense of duty drilled into us by Dad, who was very strict and insisted on us doing well at school. It was in any case our own intelligence that told us that if you wanted to do something in life, you had to make a real effort. Dad taught us the value of education. He said that you could only get on by studying, and he was right.

AS Did you study not only to make your way socially but also as a form of freedom?

GI Studying was work, I thought it was the most important thing. I suffered from terrible anxiety in my youth because of my great ambition to be a lawyer. I was afraid of failing because I had no friends or contacts in the field, so afraid that I decided on my own initiative, against my father’s wishes, to enrol at university in the law faculty and start work with a law firm at the same time. This anxiety, which I have always had, meant a lot of stress in my professional life too, stress that devoured me but was also accompanied by a bit of good fortune arising out of my studies. I studied very hard and did so well in the exams that I was offered opportunities that seldom come the way of a 27-year-old. So I dealt with important and delicate cases from the start and — being so young — I was terrified of making a mistake. When I went out in the evening with friends I was a real bore talking about work. At a certain point I really needed to get away from it all and art helped me so much.

19 ALBERTO SALVADORI A CONVERSATION BETWEEN GIUSEPPE IANNACCONE AND ALBERTO SALVADORI

AS This is what I wanted to know, how art became GI I’ve always maintained this relationship of mine with books. For exam- part of your everyday life and the role it has played. ple, I went to Florence recently and found a bookshop that is still organized in this way. I bought yet another copy of Santini on Ottone Rosai. I GI Art has always been my greatest relaxation. As I explained in my first find these books so precious that I often buy a number of copies because book, it helped me to get through a very difficult period early in my ca- I don’t want to spoil them. I’ve got three copies each of Fagiolo dell’Arco reer and is still today my great passion. on Scipione and Santini on Rosai.

AS Is there any precise reason why you bought your AS What came next in building up your collection? first work?

GI My studies led me to wonder why Sironi should have such a reputa- GI I bought for myself was by Bonichi, Claudio Bonichi, the Sirena ferita tion. I love these artists, of course, but I couldn’t understand why people [Wounded Mermaid]. didn’t think just a bit about the fact that art should be freedom. Art gives you this total freedom from constraints and also from hiding yourself in AS What year was that? some way. What is art if not immediacy and ultimately truth? How can people fail to take these things into consideration? Sironi was a great GI It was painted in 1987 but I remember buying it a couple of years lat- artist but he was under constraints in his relationship with Margherita er, 1989 was the year, I believe. I bought it because I liked it so much. It Sarfatti, and this too prevented me from liking him much. And so I be- shows a faun, a man in a mask pulling a mermaid struck by a harpoon gan to take an interest in the post-Novecento or anti-Novecento paint- out of the lagoon in Venice. Some say that he has just killed her but I’ve ers, who I really loved. Apart from Scipione, someone I never thought I always thought of him as rescuing her. I still have that painting and will would be able to afford, as I said before, there was Birolli. I was crazy never part with it because it was my first. I bought it because I liked it and about Birolli. I just can’t understand why he is not regarded as one of the perhaps also because Bonichi was Scipione’s nephew. greatest artists of the twentieth century. I saw photographs of his Tassì rosso [Red Taxi] [W. NO. 11] and Periferia [Outskirts] [W. NO. 10] in books on art AS Did you already know that? history, and found his works the most heartrending of all. There was Guttuso, Sassu with his battles, and Mafai, I was mad about Mafai too. GI I certainly did. At that time, wanting a Scipione for me was like wanting And so got the idea of bringing these artists and personalities together, a Picasso would be today. He was a distant peak, and so I thought… starting with the Corrente group because it was the most accessible for me, if for no other reason than the fact that I was in Milan. Not that I AS Who did you buy it from? Do you remember? ever stopped thinking about the Romans, I always had them in mind. I thought that I would be happy if I could just get something for each of GI Yes, I bought it from Alfredo Paglione, who had the Galleria 32 in Brera at the time but then moved to Via Appiani and reopened it as the Galleria them, one painting for each artist. One thing must be made clear, how- Appiani Arte 32. I can say that the collection of works from the thirties ever. The painting had to be a masterpiece and produced in the period of is something I always had in mind. My relationship with art is one that the artist’s greatest poetic inspiration. And so the Mafai had to be from developed and still develops essentially through books, which I bought 1929, the Birolli from 1931−32, the Lilloni from no later than 1929−30, all the time, especially at the beginning. I remember going to the Hoepli and so on. As always in the life of a collector, things happen that cause bookshop. I recall a gigantic bookcase full of books in alphabetical order, you to miss out on works that are masterpieces. I remember being shown where it was possible to find so many wonderful things. What I’m telling a Lilloni of 1939, a cloud, a poem. Splendid though it was, I decided that you is unthinkable today because no one has books like that any more, it was the wrong year, a late work, and turned it down. I’d buy it a thou- and I don’t think anyone’s even interested in looking for them. sand times over today if I could turn the clock back. I’ve altered these rigid ideas a bit since but without ever going chronologically beyond the AS I understand perfectly because just yesterday, by end of the war. I still think about that Lilloni. chance, I found a first edition of the Antirinascimento Anyway, it was with these reflections on art that the idea of the collec- by Eugenio Battisti. I’d been after it for ages and tion was born and I bought the first Sassu. It is no coincidence that I came across it in a bookshop. They didn’t even bought a painting of a prostitute dated 1941 [W. NO. 76], the height of the know they had it. Corrente period. Yes, a prostitute. There’s no shame in recounting the

20 21 ALBERTO SALVADORI A CONVERSATION BETWEEN GIUSEPPE IANNACCONE AND ALBERTO SALVADORI reality of these stories, which are the facts of life, not only then but also structure of the collection was created, she displayed great appreciation today and always. and consideration, and so a certain relationship began between us. In the case of Pirandello, for example, she sold me something very important AS Did you share these ideas and this passion with and assisted me when I bought something else of equal importance. After anyone at the time? A collector often has “travelling that our relationship was different. Another dealer who certainly helped companions”, people who follow the same path for me in seeking out works with intelligence is Giulio Tega, the only one able a certain period, sometimes separating and some- to understand what I was really looking for. He was not one of those deal- times staying together… ers who called you up and offered works that made no sense in relation to your collection. If he called you, it was because he had the right piece. I GI Mine was a very personal obsession. I’d be lying if I said I’d shared it bought several things from Giulio. with anyone. It’s something I simply couldn’t do. You’re an art lover and an expert on art and so you understand immediately, but I couldn’t even AS Thinking about the collection as a whole, I see explain it to the gallery owners. I remember telling them about my passion you as a two-headed Janus, looking at the twenties for Mafai, Scipione and Raphaël, and my idea of a collection, and being with great pleasure and then at the contemporary offered some work of Magical Realism or Novecento Italiano. Whereupon scene with equally great pleasure but through differ- I would say, “Well, I obviously haven’t made myself clear.” In actual fact, ent eyes and perhaps with different feeling. I seem they completely failed to understand. It was just beyond them. to perceive something in both cases, namely that the choice made as regards artists is linked very close- AS Claudia Gianferrari was the only one. ly to the emotional aspects you have been talking about. The collection, above all the historical sec- GI Claudia understood it all in a matter of minutes or even seconds, but tion, is one born very much out of sentiment in the she had a very different culture. Claudia was the one who said, “You noble sense of the word. and I have the same passion, constructed in just the same way but with different tastes.” GI Yes, certainly. Like digging inside yourself. In a certain sense I would even like to say that the character of some artists of the thirties seems so AS This is something that interests me. Great collec- similar to mine. tors have often been closely associated with great dealers capable of empathy even when their tastes AS They are artists full of suffering and of life at the differ and perhaps do not correspond at all. same time. They hunger for something that is in their soul, not so much in a material dimension of things as GI My relationship with Claudia started when I had already built up most in the spiritual and sentimental one. Listening to you of the collection. talk about all your path as a collector, I am struck by the thought of how much art is life and life is art. AS So it was not a commercial relationship? That’s interesting. GI Yes, very much so, in the sense that the artists of the thirties in the collection are the ones most like me. So are the contemporary artists, but it’s GI No, it’s a personal relationship. I met Claudia straight away, at the be- as though those of the thirties had put down firm roots inside me, as if we ginning of my passion, but found her a bit intimidating, which was not the were completely one. I have, luckily, never suffered such anguish as Scipione case with the other dealers. I had the impression that I was talking non- did, knowing that he was to die so young, but I certainly share some of his sense when we spoke about art, not only because of her vast culture but feelings, like his yearning to devour the world, humanity, friendship, sex also because she let it weigh on you. When she showed you an urban scene and love too. I won’t conceal the fact that I was very moved when I read by Sironi costing 500 million lire or masterpieces by De Pisis, you didn’t some things he wrote about his relationship with Mafai, a relationship of have the courage to say that what you really loved was the Birolli of 1932. great and deep friendship. I have read some passages from a letter to Falqui If you’d had the courage to say so, she would have understood because she in which he talks about a drawing [FIG. 14, P. 50] of two men side by side and the loved it too, but I didn’t have the self-confidence at the time. When the meaning of that drawing. And when he explains in a letter to Mafai why

22 23 ALBERTO SALVADORI A CONVERSATION BETWEEN GIUSEPPE IANNACCONE AND ALBERTO SALVADORI their arms are crossed, why their feet and legs are crossed, he is talking important paintings. But right now I have only masterpieces in mind. In about his relationship with Mafai. He doesn’t say so explicitly but the letter speaking here and now about my artists, I am only thinking of master- is very clear in that sense. Then he also wrote to tell his dealer to give the pieces that are not in museums. While I obviously admire and respect drawing [FIG. 13, P. 50] to Mafai but not to make him pay for it. A hundred lire, the ones in museums, they will never be mine. But I can assure you that the sum he would have got by selling the work, was a lot for Scipione in that I have others in mind. There is something I wanted to tell you that I have moment. It was the fee for a month in the sanatorium and he was waiting for never said in any of the conversations I have had about my collection. So Falqui to sell the drawings so that he could pay it. This is the sacred nature many people have seen my collection, not only the works of the thirties of friendship, something truly immense compared to which all the rest is but also the contemporary section, and what I am about to tell you is ac- nothing. This is something I can only find in art. tually something said by a man who had seen the contemporary work, but it holds also and in fact even more for the thirties. He said, “You sense a AS In the case of the collection of works from 1920 to certain degree of melancholy in these paintings, which is a constant fea- 1945, a sense of a limit emerges that may exist in real ture.” I answered, “It’s true, You’re right about that.” Then I went home life, a sense of something finite. While the search — and thought a lot about it, and continued to do so in the days that fol- the “loving hunt”, to quote the title of the previous lowed. If you look melancholy up in a dictionary, you’ll find it talks about book on the collection — can continue, this collec- being depressed and basically sad. I am neither sad nor depressed. I am a tion can be described as finite in the sense that the man full of joy and also of great enthusiasm. But then I always say that the works of these artists, of this period, will run out at a collection is like me, so how can I say that it is melancholy if I am not sad? certain point, both because you already own many of There is probably some truth in it, but you have to understand the true the masterpieces and because they are in museums. sense of melancholy. I feel as you do when you contemplate something What is the relationship with a collection that has wonderful. If you contemplate the sea at night, you are not sad but you do this sense of being finite with respect to the relation- perhaps feel a bit melancholy. But you see something sublime that helps ship of many collections that exist and are non-finite you to dig into yourself and look for an image, something to heal an old in the sense that they are fed internally? wound perhaps. Well, the collection is melancholy in this sense and I am a bit melancholy too. But I’m not depressed, not unhappy, not at all sad. GI While you were asking this question, the images of a whole series of works that I would like to have for this collection were running through AS I think that what you’re saying is very important my head. It is therefore not finished in my mind and I do not think my life and I’d like to talk a bit more about melancholy, which will be long enough for me to do everything I still want to. In the sense has always been part of life for those who love and live that this collection of the thirties can still be strengthened a great deal. I with and for art. The great art historian Wittkower have other works in mind as regards Mafai, as regards Birolli, even though wrote a wonderful book called Born Under Saturn I have ten, Scipione and Guttuso. Because I love them and so, how can you about those of a saturnine disposition. Melancholy ever have enough? It’s impossible. This goes for Pirandello too and Rosai, was and is the vital lymph of people who not only have who wrote pages of extraordinary humanity. I do not feel that it is finite. a feeling for art but live it to the full. In this sense, I re- I have to be sincere, Alberto. I just don’t feel that it is. gard it as a very important and noble interpretive key. Artists have always been attributed with this type of AS All this also gives you a sense of great freedom. character historically, and so the fact that a collector The fact that there is no feeling of something that can feel it or have this sensation, or that others can can end, but rather a flame that will always burn, can recognize it in him, makes me think about how art is in any case bring a degree of satisfaction. All in all, something that goes far beyond the aspect of posses- you already have many of the masterpieces of these sion, far beyond the aspect of cataloguing, far beyond artists. Where’s the limit? the stereotype of the collector, and about how art is your life. This is what melancholy is. GI Well, one thing I can tell you is that I won’t go on ad infinitum just to have more works by each artist. I only want absolute masterpieces that GI But then, when this man — who was by no means the first — said that can bear comparison with what I already have. I could not take any less there was a bit of melancholy in the collection, he may not have wanted

24 25 ALBERTO SALVADORI A CONVERSATION BETWEEN GIUSEPPE IANNACCONE AND ALBERTO SALVADORI to say that it resembled me. When I buy a painting, I buy a part of myself. make me feel emotions even stronger than those I have already felt. And so I know that this is how it is, but I am not sad. Melancholy must not be they are two things that feed one another: art feeds the work and the work confused with sadness. feeds art. Also at the intellectual level. Mine is a collection that speaks exclusively about humanity because both the works of the thirties and the AS But it does not mean sadness. I see it instead as a contemporary works place man at the centre of art, mankind and its needs great compliment. at the centre of art. My work, which has unquestionably always been the same in some way since I began, is increasingly concerned with personal GI Sometimes I wallow in melancholy, which has at times human features defence, defence increasingly bound up with humanity. It is no coincidence that are not the ones I would like. When I walk out of a meeting during that in recent years I have taken a lot more penal cases, because there you which I have seen and experienced human aspects and characteristics are defending people and it is something extraordinary. And so I must say that I would have preferred not to, I feel melancholy and think about it for that art has been decisive. Decisive not in the choice of my profession, a long time. I stop to reflect on the human element that displeased me and which came long before, but certainly in the way I approach it. that forced me in that meeting to adopt an attitude that I would have preferred not to but that was necessary in a situation I found distasteful. But AS Decisive therefore also in the reciprocal quality? that is melancholy with a touch of sadness, whereas what I feel on looking at one of my paintings by Scipione has no element of sadness at all. GI In the quality of how you do it. There is an immense humanity that cannot be sad because the ability to grasp what is most beautiful in man cannot be cloaked in sadness. When AS But is yours a humanistic vision of life? Of mutual you succeed in understanding something wonderful, like what I told you fulfilment and sharing? before about Scipione’s extraordinary feeling of true friendship for Mafai, you can’t be sad. I am not sad when I look at that drawing by Scipione. GI I think so, in the sense that you asked me at the beginning whether I shared the choice of this collection of mine with anyone. Now you know AS Now you are lawyer of great reputation. You have that I had it inside me. But in those years, which you, Alberto, certainly experience and a career. You are a collector also in the remember, the collectors laughed at it. This is the truth, there’s no point sense that you now have a history behind you and a in denying it. People laughed to the thought of me buying a Birolli of the future in front of you. What I wonder is how important thirties and not his L’incendio delle cinque terre [Fire in the Cinque Terre]. your work has been for your art so far and whether art People laughed at me for buying Guttuso and not Afro. And so it was a can be or has been equally important for your work. choice made in solitude for no one else. As I said to myself then and still do now, if that is art, then I’ll go and see it in museums, because I am not GI Let me start by saying that there are answers at different levels. The insensitive, but I won’t be a collector. I adore post-war Afro, I adore the most superficial is to say that I am happy and fortunate because I have two L’incendio delle cinque terre, I adore Fontana, I am crazy about Manzoni, wonderful things, art and work, and I cannot do without either of them. but I go and see them in museums. I could have bought Fontana. I have But if you dig a bit deeper, you find that art has been crucial for my work bought so much Scipione, so much Guttuso, I could have bought Fontana because it has given me an extraordinary sense of security. It has given too. Where’s the problem? But if you ask me if there is a search for hu- me great serenity in addressing the most complex situations, accepting the manism, then yes, certainly yes, it’s so obvious that I don’t even have to greatest challenges and facing the greatest difficulties with enthusiasm. ask myself the question. And then, who knows what the story is? We all You can face a challenge with the great anxiety of knowing that you cannot have our own, fortunately! And fortunately that’s the way it is, otherwise make a mistake or with great joy, saying that you do not want to make a we would all want the same women, we would want all the same paintings. mistake. Today I address my work with the enthusiasm and joy that I have Instead, fortunately, we are all different. always had since childhood at the idea of putting on my gown. I do not want to sound rhetorical, but this is the truth and the truth must be told. I have AS Is there a reason why the historical collection is done the only thing I wanted to do in life, and today I do it with that joy but kept at home or at least in a private context? also with the enthusiasm of looking forward to a new challenge. I am sixty years old and have no desire to think about the past. I want an assignment GI Here too I could give you a simple answer and say that I put the first tomorrow that will put me to the test even more than in the past, that will works up at home and therefore…

26 27 ALBERTO SALVADORI A CONVERSATION BETWEEN GIUSEPPE IANNACCONE AND ALBERTO SALVADORI

AS But since you are not as simple person… GI It is a painting you have to dig into. If you look at it closely, it’s as though it were not painted but carved, incised. The face is hollowed out GI That is the most intimate part. I need to see those works in the mo- as though the artist wanted to get inside the man, which is exactly what ments when things are less hectic. I have prepared so many cases in the I always try to do in my work. To get inside things and present them for midst of those paintings that you could never even imagine it. what they are. People can be saved if you look at the details of things. If you examine the details of things, even the apparently negative events AS Which brings us back to the question I asked have positive elements, which are the ones that lead to acquittals and are about how important art has been in this sense. not to be underestimated. It is precisely the elements that you find deep inside humanity that get people acquitted, if you can show and demon- GI I have been through so many trials with those paintings. I remember strate them. perfectly defending Peppino Prisco before the professional order of lawyers. Prisco was our president and I defended him both in court and be- AS You are able to read what is apparently unclear. fore the order, and when I prepared the arguments to put before the order, I looked at those paintings all the time. I must have them at home. GI So, you see, even if art does not regard the results of my work, it does As Alessia could tell you if she were here, I once got up in the middle of regard the way I do it. the night to go and look at the background of a painting by Scipione for a missing piece. There was a piece of his Profeta in vista di Gerusalemme AS I believe that true collectors are those that fol- [Prophet in Sight of Jerusalem] [W. NO. 81] that seemed to be missing, namely low their own path in terms of identity, character the vision of the afterlife, which had to be somewhere in the painting. I and emotion, and are detached from certain results found it in the sky. There’s a face in the sky, almost imperceptible, I don’t or objectives as regards financial considerations or know if you have ever noticed it. I woke up — you have to believe me — with reputation. The collection and your sense of belong- the certainty that the painting had to contain the element that was missing to this project have no limit, and I therefore think ing in my mind, the vision of the afterlife, of a face waiting for him, and I that the objective in every case is to achieve another found it. Alessia came and asked if I was going out of my mind. I turned objective, with the result that another immediately the light on and said, “It must be there.” I examined the painting and said, opens up. It is interesting also in this sense to exam- “Look, there it is. There’s a face, a face in the middle of the bloodstained ine the formation of a collection and how it is built sky, a face waiting for poor Scipione.” This is how looking at those works up as an organic whole. leads me to see and think beyond the given facts. GI That is so. The collection is a unique story. I have realized so many AS Looking at Rosai’s L’intagliatore [The Wood times that this question of unity is crucial for me. Whenever anyone has Carver] [W. NO. 69] and thinking about criminal proceed- spoken of holding an exhibition of this collection of mine, the idea is ings? always — given the number of paintings, a hundred works all in all — to show a selection. “What do you mean, a selection?” I say, “You can’t GI Well, I spent an entire night before buying Rosai’s L’intagliatore be- leave anyone out.” I think about it then, of course, and I understand it cause I had spoken about that extraordinary painting to someone for when someone says, “Look, you’ve got eight Badodis, what do you care whom I have great esteem and who, in some way, advised me against it about showing all eight? You’ve got eleven Birollis, why do you have to as unsuitable for the collection. I spent an entire night reading Santini show all ten?” But I can’t leave anyone out. If I have chosen them it is and other books on Rosai, and I understood this wonderful story of his because they are part of this one discourse and so they can’t be exclud- relationship with his father and how he wanted to make it something no- ed. And then, it’s impossible to slight one of these paintings. They must ble and save the carpenter’s shop from bankruptcy. It is all there in the all be together. description of that title, because it is not his father but “the wood carver”, the memory of his father. Those closed eyes are the only sign of his death. AS What is the influence of the collection on your The Arno is only just suggested. family life in terms of emotions, sharing, relation- ships? How much of this latent emotionality is trans- AS It is a painting so laden with gravitas. mitted to them?

28 29 ALBERTO SALVADORI A CONVERSATION BETWEEN GIUSEPPE IANNACCONE AND ALBERTO SALVADORI

GI I am my paintings and my paintings are me. The collection is part of AS The catalogue contains studies and a critical ap- our life together. When I first met Alessia, she had a completely different paratus addressing the collection in art-historical and approach to things. I would never have believed that she could adapt so critical and analytical terms. This examination of the totally and fit into this situation. collection by experts must, however, necessarily take It struck me the other evening when we went to see a show about into consideration its creator. Without going back to Caravaggio in Liguria. While we were driving back, she asked me a lot of the whys and wherefores of the collection, I’d like you questions about my paintings of the thirties. She wanted me to explain to tell me in your own words what it is that strikes you the meaning of the works in the collection one by one. I was really struck about the Chiarismo movement in Lombardy, why you by this because I realized that after so many years of life with these love Birolli so much and feel so close to him, and so on paintings, surrounded by these paintings, their atmosphere has condi- for all the other artists involved. tioned her. Now she is curious about them and also trying to understand in detail what I love in every one of them. And believe me, her attitude GI Well, there are two things about the collection to which I attach equal at first was completely different. How much did they cost? How much weight. One corresponds to the content, which is to some extent what we are they worth? Why are you throwing all that money down the drain? spoke about before. By content I mean that type of expressionism and that And so on. type of realism, which are indispensable for me in the work of art. This has been a key element of the collection all the way through. The second is per- AS But you see the strength of art, how powerful it haps prior in temporal terms and regards colour. Colour for me is a way of is, how it can change your vision of life, how much it expressing content. In this sense, Birolli was definitely right to say that col- can help you. our together with distortion, but especially colour, can also describe reality. This is what has a decisive weight in the early years of the collection, essen- GI This is all in the title of the first book: “the soul’s crutch”. It’s true, tially the works of 1928 and 1929. Together with the Six Painters of Turin, art is a point of support. And then obviously, with passing of the years, the Lombard Chiaristi were the first to break away from the chiaroscuro it increasingly becomes a central element, more than a point of support. of Novecento, from a predictable way of painting. In some respects, they were the first to express themselves through colour. I am obviously talking AS I’d like to know how curious you are, in life too. about the Chiarismo, but if you tell a story, as I have tried to tell it to myself, you have to tell it from the beginning, and this really begins with the Six of GI Very curious indeed. I’d say that curiosity is one of the fundamental Turin. Then of course this use of colour is developed by Del Bon, Lilloni and elements. Consider my work alone. Being curious in my work is above De Rocchi in their own way. When Birolli takes it up, colour is handled by all necessary, because if you want to understand all the ins and outs of a master in the sense that it takes on extraordinary characteristics, impor- a case, which can be an endless story stretching over years, if you don’t tance and quality. It’s not by chance that I have so many works by Birolli. penetrate all the details then you cannot master it. I was born curious. It’s I wanted to collect all the aspects of his ability to describe reality through my natural approach to things. Just think, it’s thanks to curiosity that I’ve colour. What I mean is that when Birolli painted the Tassì rosso [W. NO. 11], he built up most of my collection. I have studied the location of works scien- did not only paint a view of the Milan suburbs − what was then peripheral tifically, Rischa can bear witness. Once we were talking about a painting but is now the university precinct in the city centre − but achieved some- by Scipione and I said, “I know where it is and I may be able to buy it.” I thing extraordinary, using colour to capture the joy of living in Milan. He made some telephone calls and we went to Turin and got it. Curiosity has captured the determination to play a leading role in a city that was to play a a fundamental role in this research of mine as in my life. If you’re curious, central part not only in the future of his life but in the future of Italy. Sironi you’re never satisfied, everything is just another stage. Everything is a was sad to leave the countryside and felt anxiety on moving to Milan, nor stage, you feel that you still have things to do. I also have to tell you that could he be anything but sad, because someone forced to look to the past of something very odd happens in the collection. Before I achieve a result, I art cannot be happy. In this painting, Birolli looks instead to the future, not always think it is the decisive one, that I could almost stop at this point. to the past, and expresses it in those colours. Those colours tell us about The moment after, I know that I have to start again, that there is still a this, about a desire to paint in freedom, and freedom is accompanied by joy long way to go. It is in fact the result achieved that stimulates me to go on while coercion is always accompanied by suffering. Birolli is free. He looks looking and so I understand that it is never-ending. I used to fool myself at the city with joy, and it is here that colour becomes fundamental. And but now I know it will never end. so you see how colour says so many things that accompany the element of

30 31 ALBERTO SALVADORI A CONVERSATION BETWEEN GIUSEPPE IANNACCONE AND ALBERTO SALVADORI realism that must coexist in a painting if I am to choose it. This is the rea- in my opinion, he has nothing to do with the movement and is instead son for the first section including the Six of Turin, Chiarismo and Corrente part and parcel of the thinking that animates my collection. He has noth- as well as the romanticism of the School of Via Cavour. ing to do with Novecento because he never complied with their precepts. He always went his own way but, in doing so, he expressed his humanity AS Where colour is something very different, how- with great passion in his painting. For me, he belongs by right in a col- ever. lection that has expressionism, realism and humanity as its fulcrum, its common denominator. GI Colour is something else there. While it has a strong accent here and is I’ll tell you something else too. Rosai takes the collection back to a truly crucial element in the description of reality in lyrical terms, there 1920−22, and this is no coincidence. I do not have an opening date, a colour is one of the elements of romanticism, a characteristic feature of sort of absolute watershed, for the collection. For every artist, I have the School of Via Cavour. looked for the dawn of the expressionism, realism and romanticism that is my primary interest. And so, while I saw the new elements in Birolli AS Form and colour are, however, two extraordinary in the late twenties and early thirties, the earliest paintings admitted by elements of the masterpieces by Guttuso in your right to my collection date instead from the early twenties with Rosai. possession. If the Lombardi Chiaristi awakened in 1929, then the first paintings by them are of 1929. If the Six of Turin were born substantially in 1929, the GI Yes, absolutely. Guttuso is the element of balance. It is no coincidence first paintings of theirs to be found in the collection will be of 1929. In that Guttuso was in Rome first and then Milan. The choice of his works the case of Rosai, that kind of expressionism instead dates back to 1920. is calibrated in the sense that, given my deep love for Rome and Milan, I He had already arrived there, and so he produced some absolute master- need the slightly Mafai-esque romanticism of the Natura morta con garo- pieces in the period 1920−22, which I have tracked down and bought for fani e frutta [Still Life with Carnations and Fruit] [W. NO. 36] and the Ritratto the collection. di Mimise [Portrait of Mimise] [W. NO. 37] as well as the still-lifes of 1940−41 [W. NOS. 39, 40] more closely connected with Corrente and Milan, where col- AS Thinking about your expression “someone who ours of Guttuso become different, bolder and less romantic. While a sort went his own way”, another figure that did so and of academic and pictorial rivalry can be discerned between the two paint- that we have associated with Rosai is De Pisis. It was ers, there is no doubt to my mind that Birolli influences Guttuso to some Arcangeli that first drew the parallel. They seem to degree. Consider La finestra blu [The Blue Window] [W. NO. 39] still life and be so far apart but there is in reality something that how the colour changes to become very bright. Guttuso was in no way they share. inferior to Birolli artistically. Guttuso is a combination of these two realities, the Roman School and the Corrente movement, and it is no coinci- GI To my mind, De Pisis went his own way. I am not an art critic. I have not dence that he played such a leading role in those years with his content of followed De Pisis back as far as Rosai because my De Pisis was born a bit expressionism and colour. later, so to speak, in the sense that he first painted in a way that was very close to tradition, albeit with his own personality and as a great artist. AS He succeeds, as it were, in maintaining his own It is when he began that jagged, fragmented painting with that striving independence in terms of balance between form and to dig down into the content that he became my De Pisis. The De Pisis expression. who was no longer ashamed to admit his homosexuality, who did not love women and therefore did not paint a beautiful female nude but a young GI Yes, absolutely. I see him as a leading figure of those years and he is sailor. This is the De Pisis I love, this is the De Pisis who went his own way. unquestionably a leading figure in the collection. And I have plucked him in the moment when he began to give me those emotions and the kind of realism I sought. AS What about Rosai? AS This I think is another important phrase that GI Ottone Rosai is someone who went his own way. You can’t pin him has emerged in our dialogue: the truth of the man. down to any school. Remember that I bought Rosai even though I knew I think that many of the painters in your collection he had taken part in the first exhibition of Novecento. I did so because, have this in their painting.

32 33 ALBERTO SALVADORI A CONVERSATION BETWEEN GIUSEPPE IANNACCONE AND ALBERTO SALVADORI

GI It is the search for human emotion that gives me great comfort. All my to evolve, to have points of reference, deeper reflection and support for artists have this content of a great search for emotion, all of them. In my your existence without anyone around you understanding or being able view, Ziveri is classified as belonging to the Roman School because he to spy on you. Others may think that I am obsessed. Why have one, two, was a Roman, he lived in Rome and he probably frequented those Roman three, four, ten Birollis? Why can I never get enough of Scipione? I now artists to some extent, but he was really someone who went his own way. have nine works, five paintings and four drawings. Some might think, Ziveri was completely independent and undertook an exploration that “You’ve already got some Scipione, why go on?” You are the only one that was all his own. Why did I want him in the collection? Because Ziveri was understands all this. You alone know that you are still missing a piece of a man of great human content. He was not only a very gifted painter but that soul, a piece of that construction. Scipione is now over with yet. also and in particular an investigator and an explorer of the human psyche. This causes me to regard him as one of the truly extraordinary artists AS What do you feel when your works are shown in of those years. Who knows why he should be so underrated? Who knows major public exhibitions and you see others looking why he is mentioned so little in the critical appraisals of those years? at them?

AS That is the good fortune and misfortune of art- GI Well, I’m happy of course, because the collection for me is a creature that ists. He may soon emerge at the centre of new stud- I saw growing in years when people looked down on me to some extent and ies and interests. These are the ups and downs of didn’t trust my judgement. I’m happy for the collection and for these art- history. I find this human truth so intriguing be- ists, who have so many merits to my eyes, and if others recognize this, I’m cause I believe, without wishing to exaggerate, that happy for them too. I think they have been somewhat neglected. I remem- collecting is an epic undertaking in the etymological ber the great emotion I felt when Vittorio Sgarbi, then head of the Milan de- sense of the term, the sense of constructing a story, partment of culture, came to see the collection. He phoned me first because a narrative, with overtones that are also fantastic he had heard about it and wanted to come and see for himself. As soon as and extraordinary. The story of every collection in- he had, he told me that he wanted to hold an exhibition on Corrente, which cludes something that goes beyond the everyday re- he did at Palazzo Reale with fifty works, twenty-six of which were mine. ality of history and micro-history. At the same time, It was not an exhibition of my collection but I can honestly say that the there is also a sense of a vain endeavour, as there is finest paintings there were mine. The thing that really moved me was to never any end to collecting. You never attain that see, at the inauguration with the entrance still closed, an endless queue on sense of completion, of definitive satisfaction. This the steps of Palazzo Reale, all waiting eagerly to see the show. It was some- also makes me think of how much collectors like thing extraordinary. I remember a friend there with me saying, “Just think, you invest in the pursuit of their truth, how much Giuseppe, they have all come see your paintings.” It made me so happy. this effort is temporarily repaid by the works and how this steers you towards certain figures, certain AS And when you saw these people in the rooms? personalities, certain artists. GI They were all gazing in admiration and making comments. GI What I can tell you is that this pursuit is undertaken solely out of human interest. I have really no interest whatsoever in making investments, AS I’d like to know whether you saw your paintings which is almost crazy because I am not a rich man in the sense that I live through different eyes in that situation, whether you on what I earn. I arrived at the point of always spending it all on my paint- felt protective towards them, in the way that you can ings. I went to very edge of the precipice every time I bought a painting. I feel, with the due distance, about people dear to you never had any further savings, especially for the collection of the thirties, exposed to public attention. Collectors often feel the central core of which was built up in years when my professional life the need to shield their works. was not what it is now. It was and still is an agonizing pursuit of human feeling, and the wonderful thing is that the collection enables you to look GI When I see them, I always think they are the most beautiful of all. I for things that you alone can see. It is something very personal. Even if have the impression that my view is coloured by affection, and so they people visit it, they cannot see what you see. There is always a physical look the best to me. And then there’s the joy of seeing people look at relationship between you and the collection, which enables you to grow, them and comment on them with great admiration, as happened with

34 35 ALBERTO SALVADORI A CONVERSATION BETWEEN GIUSEPPE IANNACCONE AND ALBERTO SALVADORI

Birolli’s paintings La nuova Ecumene [The New Ecumene] [W. NO. 13] and AS All right, because the part that interested me I poeti [The Poets] [W. NO. 14]. At the same time, there is some apprehen- most is when you said that you believe the works will sion. It always scares me a bit to see people crowd around the paintings. always be kept together. Every time I go to an exhibition including works from the collection, I am always slightly on edge when they are shown in narrow corridors GI Yes, I’m sure of that. rather than small rooms. AS I see it as an identity that cannot be divided. AS You feel very protective. GI The collection will always be together and nobody will ever commit the GI Yes, because so many people have no respect. It terrifies me. crime of breaking it up. I cannot think of it ending up in the hands of someone so heartless as to divide it. It is impossible, completely impossible. AS What idea do you have of the collection? In the sense that when we look at a work of art, we know AS Has your family absorbed this passion from you? deep down that it will live on and we will not. There is a sense of impermanence about the human being GI Well, I don’t think I can say that. I believe that Tommaso really loves that does not exist in the great work of art. this collection of works from the thirties but I couldn’t tell you why he does, whether he appreciates it in depth or whether it is instead a sort of GI The first reflection is that it is all so beautiful. These paintings go so transference, in the sense that in loving me and seeing the love with which well together and it has been such a long, hard struggle to gather them I built it up, he transfers some of the love he has for me to it. Perhaps he all, nearly thirty years, that I can rule out any possibility of them being could tell you. What is certain is that Tommaso will have the greatest re- split up. I can be certain that they will always remain together. I know spect for this collection, of this I am sure, completely sure. that my children, and especially Tommaso the eldest, will always watch over the collection and keep it intact. If you ask me whether I would like AS Because some collectors have their own vision. to see it in a museum some day, well, yes, I certainly would like to see it The collection is part of their life and then, whatever in a museum. But the collection is so dear to me that it is not a decision will be will be. I ever want to take. I prefer to leave that to my son, because it must be guaranteed that the collection will be placed on permanent display, GI Well, I’ll tell you something else. A close friend once told me that I should permanently accessible to the public, that it will be treated with the due find a home for the collection and not place this burden on Tommaso’s respect and returned immediately if it is not, if the latest head of the shoulders, that I should sell it at the right moment. I understand that this department of culture should decide to put it in storage, for example. If advice is the result of a rational assessment but it is not what I think and that happened, the collection would have to be returned to my family. not what I feel. I feel that the collection must remain intact and I would Unfortunately, I have very little confidence in the institutions, an atti- never have the strength to sell it. Moreover, it is an important part of my tude that has become deeply rooted in the course of my life devoted to life and I want my son to have it. In the end, you can leave a son many art. I have seen so many examples of superficiality, rash decisions and things. You can leave him property and wealth, but if you leave him part choices made with no love for art or for culture that I could not accept of yourself, you leave him something more. And so I will leave him this any such proposal today. I would happily lend it to an intelligent museum because I am sure he will appreciate it. capable of respecting it, but I wonder whether such a thing is practicable in Italy. If one day these conditions are met, then Tommaso will say: The conditions are right, I know that Dad wanted to do this and I’m in charge now so I will go ahead. In that sense, he will be the one to take the decision. Because in the end, for all his love for me and therefore for the collection, he does not share my anguish over every work, every painting, over placing one beside another, and he will therefore have more serenity in assessing the situation and deciding whether the conditions are right for this to happen.

36 37 Tireless Passion or Sublime Madness? rischa paterlini

If I create a solid work tomorrow, the collector buying it will have to undertake a serious revision of the collection and his brain. It is in this sense that I understand the vitality of the new painting: it makes you think; it stimulates and refreshes the mind. I thank you, because after all I need to live, but these are thoughts and I prefer to stint on the provisions a bit rather than sell something straight away that could prove a disappointment tomorrow. Others confine themselves, however, to the sale of their paintings. I know that instead of ten, there will be fifty of us living a decent life. They will speak of the next twenty years as an excellent period for Italian art and say that the example set by a few will be taken up and remain a legend, like a flower growing in the shit. – Renato Birolli, 30 December 1938

I met Giuseppe Iannaccone, a lawyer by profession and collector by passion, during the Christmas holidays in 2001. Our first meeting in his old offices at number 8 Via Cesare Battisti in Milan arose out of an ad in the Corriere della Sera for a secretary, a job I was quick to accept. I was twenty-five. I had got married and moved to Milan just a few months earlier. I knew nobody and — to tell the truth — had no idea of what I really wanted to do when I grew up. Little did I know that my life had changed radically as from that precise moment due to a professional but also and above all personal relationship that, fortunately for me, still continues today now that I am forty. I remember as though it were yesterday his small, modest office, which also served for meetings, and a blaze of colour that was almost painful to look at hanging behind him in the midst of slightly outdated furniture in the eighties style. I did not dare to ask any questions but there was in fact no need. Immediately overcoming any reservations about me, with the simple grace of a gentleman of a bygone era, he understood my insatiable curiosity about this beautiful world like a visionary, with the readiness to talk about himself that distinguishes the great collectors. I would rush to see whenever a new painting arrived and was always eager to hear anecdotes about events and experiences connected with the purchases, like the time when, in his haste to make off with that “blaze of colour” — Renato Birolli’s La nuova Ecumene [The New Ecumene] [W. NO. 13] — before the previous owner changed his mind, he loaded it onto the roof of his car, a grey BMW series 5. He was not from a family of collectors but art became a passion for him very quickly and his adventures began as soon as he could afford it. It was 1989. He was thirty-four years

39 RISCHA PATERLINI TIRELESS PASSION OR SUBLIME MADNESS? old, involved in a very difficult professional assignment of great respon- the cultural impositions of Fascism, expressing the reality of their sibility and fraught with anxiety: everyday life unashamedly, depicting the real world with its needs but above all with the great tension determined by the wars break- I was so worried that I could not sleep at night and or ever enjoy ing out in Europe. While appreciating Futurism, Novecento and a moment of peace and quiet during the day. One day friend said, Valori Plastici, I really fell in love with the expressionist realism of “Come with me around the art galleries one morning every fort- the thirties and began to collect it. night. You need to take an interest in something completely different from your work.” 2. Cesare Maggi, Italica Gens, circa 1941. He is not interested in collecting big names but in collecting great works Livorno, Studio d’Arte dell’Ottocento with which he can identify. For him, the work or art is something sublime, And so he soon became a frequent visitor to exhibitions and museums. something that feeds the soul and takes you far away as you contemplate Thirsting for knowledge, he began by buying not paintings but books, it into a timeless emotion. The collection — which has obviously followed which became over the years a sort of aid to the images and stimulus for no precise historical-chronological order and in which an unconscious exciting new encounters. In the midst of catalogues, journals of the peri- desire may have predominated at first to surround himself at least with od and monographs on the artists who interested him most, he inevitably beauty without being able to imagine where this would then lead him — laid the foundations for his Wunderkammer: has undergone gradual transformation. Aided by a taste that has been honed over the years and ever-increasing knowledge, wholly detached I spent the evenings and weekends poring over books in an attempt from the fashions of the moment, free from the educational constraints to identify the masterpieces I would have liked to make mine. and responsibilities to which a public museum must respond if it wishes to represent the interwar period, with no concern about the market, often 1. Felice Casorati, Silvana Cenni, 1922. From that time on, he never knew a moment of discouragement by kept Private collection arriving at crucial works supposedly not for sale by relying on the “three 3 going straight towards his goal. Having begun to collect out of personal 3. Fausto Pirandello, Tavolato sul mare, 1941. Ds” of death, debt and divorce, Giuseppe Iannaccone has identified and need, not exhibitionism, he has no interest in recounting the history of Milan, private collection critically selected works that, by virtue of their pictorial quality and date, the renowned Novecento movement that Margherita Sarfatti created for paved the way for a new kind of painting and marked a significant turning “respect of the exact line […] the seriousness of a world that is solid- point. While this has obviously entailed the exclusion of Italian artists of ly constructed and examined in its architectonic values […] the painting great international renown, it has also made the collection unique and restored to its structural values of composition, decoration and perhaps wholly convincing in its outstanding personality and rigour. The meetings discourse too […] taut tonalities, closed and contained, even dark and at the outset with figures like Birolli’s widow, the artist Ernesto Treccani, earthen […] a return to the solemn values of the classical traditions.”1 the collector Enrico Brambilla Pisoni, the art historian Elena Pontiggia, What fascinates Iannaccone is precisely the opposite, to recount slices Professor Zeno Birolli and the gallery owners Claudia Gianferrari and of the life lived by the artists who were part of the “other” history from Giulio Tega, to name just a few, have led over the years to close relations 1920 to 1945, the tale of “vague chiaroscuro effects of phosphorescent of friendship enabling him to purchase various works and learn a lot about chromatic painting […] inebriated in its atmospheric rapture. The picture the art of collecting. […] a vibrant and shining work of painting. Carefree, idyllic tonalities When asked, Giuseppe Iannaccone is never loath to talk with cheerful en- […] sudden expressive freedoms”.2 It is not the works of Sironi, Funi or thusiasm about how he obtained the works of his collection. It all begins Casorati that fire his imagination. As he has always stressed, they arouse when a work he wants reappears on the market and rekindles his inter- his admiration when seen in museums but generate no more than a luke- est. We then talk about it face to face in an always constructive exchange warm personal interest. Thirsting for colour, he was instead fired by en- of views, something that has become a training ground for life over the thusiasm for the expressive freedom, pictorial poetry and the emotion of years. He then talks on the telephone with Professor Pontiggia and asks artists like Scipione, Renato Birolli, Mario Mafai, Fausto Pirandello and me to find out absolutely everything about the work. Once these prelim- Alberto Ziveri, to name just a few: inaries are over and he is certain that he wants to make the masterpiece his, the nerve-racking phase begins of finding out how much they want Alongside the images championed by Sarfatti and Mussolini, where with all the anxiety of sometimes prolonged negotiations — if it is true the people looked calm and confident, spending their summer that he is not interested in making money out of art, he is always hap- holidays in swimming costumes with the family at the Italian sea- py to get a bargain — before peace finally returns with the joy of adding side, there was a group of artists who painted with no regard for another piece to the collection even if everyone had advised against it at

1 R. Giolli, “Cronache milanesi. La seconda mostra del Novecento italiano”, in Emporium, LXIX, 1929, p. 174. 2 Idem, Ibidem. 3 In English in the original text.

40 41 RISCHA PATERLINI TIRELESS PASSION OR SUBLIME MADNESS? first. Because it does also happen that someone tries to dissuade him, All this for the precise purpose of offering the reader and the various stu- as in 2001 with Renato Birolli’s Il caos [Chaos] [W. NO. 15]. Both Professor dents who come to the office to discover the secrets of the collection and Pontiggia and Professor Birolli advised him to let it go — “What do you the collector not only “a well-documented slice of Italy’s artistic life as need it for? You’ve already got the Maschere [Masks] [W. NO. 17] of the same seen from the special angle of the generous passion for collecting but also period” — but he felt that it was his, he wanted it as a hunter wants his a great opportunity for reappraisal and reordering”.6 Before arriving in the prey, and so he bought it. He then wrote to apologise to both of them for collector’s safe hands, the new purchase is first handed over for framing ignoring their advice and explained why on unimpeachable grounds: to his friends Paolo and Massimo Romanò, who learned their trade in the

5. View of the collector’s library. Left: Studio shop from their father Antonio, to whom he entrusted his works person- per “La rissa” by Alberto Ziveri You and Zeno advised me against buying Il caos [W. NO. 15] for iden- ally in the early years. Made to measure entirely by hand, the frames are tical reason but, despite the great esteem I have for both of you, I unique items that distinguish and draw attention to each work, a hallmark simply couldn’t resist. Please don’t think I’m being presumptuous of the collection but never an obtrusive presence. The works of the thirties if I take the liberty of making some purely emotive comments on leave their workshop in Piazzale Susa to come home, to a place sought the work, which I have never been able to see as a painting in which after for a long time as capable of housing them and of becoming “an ex- the figure dissolves and therefore as an initial sign of abstraction 4. Cover of Il Tevere, y. XVII, no. 23, Rome, tension of the public exhibition channels, his private imaginary museum”,7 in Birolli. 24–25 November 1938 a place where the hanging of the works takes precedence over everything else. Placed alongside one another in an interplay of references that only a Zeno did not take long to reply: “How could I fail to be glad that you truly passionate and knowledgeable collector can discern and reconstruct, have rescued Il caos [W. NO. 15] from confusion? It is good — and right — that the canvases really seem to have found their home and create a unique you should ask for advice while convinced from the outset of your own atmosphere. To borrow a military metaphor from the Goncourts,8 a sol- choices, which are solidly motivated by the idea of a history that cannot dier can win a lot or lose a lot depending on who is at his side.9 During be erased, fashionable though this is. They are in any case less capricious these twenty-four years of collecting in his present residence, Giuseppe than one might think.” Iannaccone has found the right company for every work, thus creating, as The fact that I have been able to reconstruct this story is also due to the in a theatre of life, a precise mise-en-scène that existed in his mind as from fact that one of the first things Giuseppe Iannaccone realized was cer- his very first purchase, Aligi Sassu’s Nu au divan vert [Nude on a Green tainly the importance of research in order to do full justice to the works. Couch] [W. NO. 76], the work with which it all began: I therefore began to compile files on every painting work in accordance 6. View of the collector’s home with with scholarly parameters. Almost obsessively adhering to order, as in a Renato Birolli’s I poeti in the foreground I found it extraordinary to think that during Fascism, when official legal transaction, he insisted on a dossier for every work of art purchased art insisted on reassuring images like Achille Funi’s children in their containing a series of files making it possible to reconstruct its entire his- mothers’ arms and Mario Sironi’s united families, there were brave tory on paper: the correspondence between the collector and the various artists who told the truth about what men actually did. They went to figures involved; the authentication; the colour photographs that we still brothels to meet attractive young women like Aligi Sassu’s prostitute. preserve despite the advent of digital cameras (because a colour photo is a colour photo); the newspaper articles that we hunt down in a silent race Step by step, a collection consisting solely of cherished works took shape to come first solely for the pleasure of seeing the other’s face on behold- on the walls of Iannaccone’s home. While always respecting the aesthetic ing the new discovery; the exhibitions at which the work has been shown; canons of the homes of the art collectors of the early twentieth century, he the studies carried out with the restorers; and finally the entire critical has never hesitated over the years to revolutionize the furnishing, to move, fortune of the work, or misfortune in some cases. An example of the latter replace and eliminate, to construct in the drawing-room and in every cor- is provided by Birolli’s Il caos [W. NO. 15], which Il Tevere included in 1938 in ner of his home ad hoc spaces to accommodate and set off the warmth of a list of works condemned by the Fascist regime, a sort of Italian counter- 4 his beloved canvases. When he bought Renato Birolli’s La nuova Ecumene part of the Nazis’ Entartete Kunst or “degenerate art” [FIG. 4]: “Il Tevere of 6 G. Belli, “Una collezione per un museo”, in M. M. Lamberti (edited by), [W. NO. 13] and then his I poeti [The Poets] [W. NO. 14] shortly afterwards, for ex- 24–25 November included a full-page attack on Jewish, Bolshevik art. The La Collezione Giovanardi. Capolavori della pittura italiana del ’900, exhibition ample, he was determined that the two works should hang together: photographs show works by Carrà, De Chirico, Cagli (poor soul), Cingeri, catalogue (Trento, Palazzo delle Albere, 9 April – 15 November 1998), Milan: Terragni, a few abstract artists and yours truly (Il caos). You should get Electa, 1998, p. 12. 7 From an unpublished essay on art yourself a copy and read the filth spewed out by these pox-ridden spies collecting in the third millennium sent to Birolli regarded painting as something filtered through poetry me via email for an opinion by the author 5 and arse bandits.” 4 “Tutto nulla e qualche cosa – straniera Claudia Gianferrari. and believed that the new painters had to use the magic of colour bolscevizzante e giudaica”, in Il Tevere, 8 Edmond and Jules Huot de Goncourt, XVII, no. 23, Rome, 24–25 November French writers (Edmond: Nancy, 1938, p. 1. 1822 – Champrosay 1896; Jules: Paris, 5 Cfr. G. Marchiori, Z. Birolli, G. Bruno 1830–70). (edited by), Renato Birolli, exhibition 9 For the quotation on the Goncourts, catalogue (Verona, Palazzo della see M. M. Lamberti, “Un collezionista Gran Guardia, July–August 1963), Milan: e i suoi quadri”, in Eadem, La Collezione Edizioni di Comunità, 1963, p. 28. Giovanardi, cit., 1998.

42 43 RISCHA PATERLINI TIRELESS PASSION OR SUBLIME MADNESS?

in order to create form too in some way. I believe that La nuova so. While he dies in the world one day or another and his body disappears Ecumene [W. NO. 13] presents colour as the dominant element in the until the Day of Judgment, his image lasts in the space behind the mirror, new painting while I poeti [W. NO. 14] says that this must be combined I believe, eternally.”11 As when Professor Flavio Fergonzi visited the col- with poetry. I therefore see them as Birolli’s two manifestos on art. lection a few years ago and recognized in Mario Mafai’s Garofani bianchi con mammole [White Carnations and Sweet Violets] [W. NO. 50] a reference This is why the collector, in his joy at being able to reunite the two paint- to Giorgio Morandi’s Fiori [Flowers], 1922 [FIG. 7], which the young artist ings, decided to change everything round and devote the entire dining had certainly had in mind. Hard though it may be to imagine for those room to this artist. Professor Zeno Birolli was invited to dinner and wrote who do not know him well, Giuseppe Iannaccone, who is not an academic, as follows the next day: “First of all, thank you for the splendid evening. stands in awestruck contemplation before certain images. He is fully aware A visit full of memories to the home of painted emotions makes it possible of what he sees in an instant and capable of glimpsing the quality of a to see and understand how much care has been taken over everything. The painted canvas from a small photograph, tracing the course of its art-his- result is the whole, which would never have been gathered together so well 7. Giorgio Morandi, Fiori, 1922. Milan, torical path in less than a minute with all the exhibitions and biennials. In in other hands. And then the new painting with the still greater surprise private collection no time at all, he is also able to date a canvas from the colours used, as in of seeing it taken up and reflected in its brother by blood and conception. the case of a Mafai Self-Portrait with his companion of 1933 [W. NO. 49]. On As though Castor and Pollux had entered your life as guardian divinities. seeing it for a moment in an auction catalogue at the office between one The collection is soundly constructed because it reflects the sensitivity of telephone call and another, he was able — like a detective on the lookout for a man that loves it.”10 love affairs — to recognize the similarity with a Self-Portrait [FIG. 8] painted by Renato Guttuso four years later of himself with his sophisticated and Giuseppe Iannaccone would hang each painting on its own in order to en- beloved Mimise. “A young painter with black eyes and a tall blonde lady sure its just appreciation, a utopian ideal that obviously proves impossi- who never left his side (a countess […] perhaps the niece of a pope […]).”12 ble for a collector with his thirst for works. Thus it is that they have grad- This episode — which took place in 2013, after I had been working with ually invaded every corner of the home and hang in two rows, one above him for over ten years — left me amazed as though it was the first time. I the other, on the long walls of the bedroom and the hall. Despite this, the had no need to look in the general catalogue of Guttuso’s work to be sure arrangement never loses its quality and never becomes chaotic, always re- that the painting obviously existed and that the figures took up the lyrical flecting as a whole the two different sides of a single collection: the more quality of the work by Mario Mafai, now recognized as a master. It was, lyrical, poetic and contemplative art of the early thirties and the greater however, odd to find a note written by Guttuso in 1938 that appears to rawness, realism, energy and vitality of the second half of the decade. An refer to precisely this episode: “There is in the best a care and an effort overhead spotlight is focused on each work so that it can be fully appreci- 8. Renato Guttuso, Autoritratto con Mimise to eliminate all the dross of preconceived language and enter a realm of ated in every detail also in the evening, when the natural light that pours (Doppio ritratto), datable to 1937. Bari, freedom and power of the imagination that we regard as an exceptional R.V.G. collection in through the large windows gives way to darkness. prelude to what will remain in history of this period of great passion”.13 And in the dead of night, when Iannaccone cannot sleep, tormented by the Mafai’s work, auctioned in a secondary market, entered the Iannaccone idea that something in the meaning of his works escapes him, he gets up collection in 2013 and has been installed, in accordance with the col- to check on them as a father does with his children, observing them in rig- lector’s wishes, close to works that his friend Renato Guttuso produced orous silence. Thus it was with Scipione’s Profeta in vista di Gerusalemme during his years in Rome. “There is almost a relationship of necessity [Prophet in Sight of Jerusalem] [W. NO. 81] in the main hall, where he looked in between one painting and another, a sort of tense and vigilant kinship. anguish for some sign of the celestial presence that he was sure lay hidden This gives rise to a wholly necessary collection in which no painting is in the painting. I know him too well, he told me over and over, to believe fortuitous or superfluous.”14 Just as the backs of the works are never for- he did not create a more intense presence transcending the prophet on tuitous or superfluous. horseback. He found it of course: a face in the middle of the sky turned into blood representing the Lord that Scipione beseeched with his hands Faced with two paintings on the same support, I have never for a moment joined in prayer to save his life. considered separating them. Artists, and especially great artists, do not No choice is ever out of place and every image unleashes constant refer- paint on both sides of a panel by chance; there is always a connection 11 M. Bontempelli, La scacchiera ences, as in a mirror where “all the images of all the men, women and chil- davanti allo specchio, chapter 9; between what they paint on one and what they paint on the other. These now in L. Baldacci (edited by), Massimo dren who have looked into it are sheltered and preserved. When someone Bontempelli – Opere scelte, Milan: works should never be divided. If this is done some time over years, it is Mondadori, 1978, pp. 300−01. looks into a mirror and then goes away, he thinks that it all ends there. Not 12 M. Mafai, “In quel giardino con papà only for the financial reason of having two works to sell rather than one. Mafai”, in Panorama, 23 January 1984, p. 68. 13 Meridiano di Roma, a. III, no. 20, Rome, 15 May 1938. 14 For the quotation from Guido Piovene 10 Letter from the poet Zeno Birolli see La raccolta Feroldi, 2nd edition, to Giuseppe Iannaccone, 20 June 2001. Milan: Edizione del Milione, 1947, p. 8.

44 45 RISCHA PATERLINI TIRELESS PASSION OR SUBLIME MADNESS?

Used by painters because they lacked the freedom and the means to of the “little joys” of ordinary life, to describe the human condition be- buy canvases and paint, these supports conceal intimate secrets, as in tween private vices and public virtues or forebodings of hard times, ad- the case of Guttuso’s Natura morta con garofani e frutta [Still Life with dressing subjects that may appear always the same to a superficial eye, Carnations and Fruit] [W. NO. 36]. The barely sketched figure of a woman[W. NO. often obsessively recurrent, but reveal breaks with “tradition” from time 36V] revealed on turning the roughly cut, industrially produced pasteboard to time. through ninety degrees immediately reminded Iannaccone of the pose of In the case of landscape, for example, the collection reveals boundless Mimise in the portrait [W. NO. 37] in the collection of the artist’s heirs. Here love for the artists of the School of Via Cavour: their views of an increas- too, his tenacity as a collector enabled him to convince them that the ingly visionary Rome, the Tiber and the Colosseum as seen from the ter- work belonged in his collection: race of their apartment in colours that seem to catch fire. Iannaccone began with the purchase in 1993 of Mario Mafai’s Strada con casa rossa The fruit held by Mimise was terribly similar to the fruit in his still [Street with Red House], 1928 [W. NO. 46], which for him does not represent life. Only together could the works find peace and truly express the just a landscape, as the presence of man with all his warmth and human- great passion of a man for his beloved. ity is perceived immediately within it. Its pendant is the Arco di Settimio Severo all’alba [Arch of Septimius Severus at Dawn] [W. NO. 64] by his wife The artist’s family agreed in the end of course, albeit at a steep price, as Antonietta Raphaël. “A porter, a soldier and a policeman were looking at the painting is now part of the collection. “Whoever ‘possesses’ art — true the painting with close attention. She turned to speak to them a bit like a art, the result and long and tormented effort — possesses a piece of the school mistress. The porter praised the small landscape warmly, admiring soul and the intellect of its creator, of the artist who, embarked on the its beauty and the originality of the procedure and the style. He pointed arduous voyage of knowledge of the world, grasps the truth behind its out to the policeman and the soldier that all the other painters always did ever-changing appearance, the vital palpitation beneath the most fantas- the arch first in front and then the background, whereas she instead be- tic exterior. Believe it or not, there are many for whom art represents a gan with the trees behind and ended with the things in front.”17 strong and exclusive bond of involvement with the essence of the life, its For a long time the only woman artist in the collection, Raphaël fascinates understanding and its complexity.”15 Iannaccone for her ability to influence the artists close to her, like her In the case of Giuseppe Iannaccone, I can think of three exclusive bonds: husband Mafai and his eternal friend Scipione, through her curiosity and the first with Renato Birolli, the second with Scipione and the third with her absolutely unconventional nature. Her use of colour is unique. With Arnaldo Badodi. With taste, passion, sensitivity and intelligence, he has the red of passion cutting through the horizon and the round domes of the gathered together many works by each of these three artists and I am churches, she seems to offer us the image of a Rome free from any kind of ready to bet that he would strike again if only some heir, not too enam- superfluous reality and any anchorage, like a world back-to-front. oured of his or her legacy, would yield to his blandishments. Though very In addition to landscape, there is portraiture, a genre greatly cherished different from one another — Birolli a Veronese transplanted in Milan, in the collection and one capable with its many facets of opening up visionary and poetic; the Roman Scipione with his great insight into the interesting comparisons between the paintings of the intellectuals, least avowable passions and instincts; and Badodi of the Corrente move- friends, lovers and poets who posed for the artists. Perceptible in the ment, who endowed whores too with dignity − they encapsulate the spirit portraits is the serenity with which they lived their lives in Milan, Rome of the collection and the indissoluble relationship, “like two sides of the and Turin, interwoven in a mysterious atmosphere, and addressed the same coin”, between the personality of the collector and the sensibility of changes that were transforming Italy. “Implicit in these further refer- his artists and their works. ences to Europe was a new morality, a new principle of freedom and The collection and the collector address life, albeit with the difficulties rebellion that coincided perfectly with what was happening or about to that all of us encounter every day, with a positive spirit capable of help- happen in Turin and Milan.”18 Even though, as Guttuso observed, “the ing others to embrace their human condition with dignity. “Scipione, our painting in Rome was different from what they were doing in Milan”, contemporary, is already equal to our pride. He will provide posterity Giuseppe Iannaccone likes to shuffle the deck of cards and is therefore with the greatest good humour. And people that can raise a smile despite unhesitatingly ready to place Guttuso’s Ritratto di Antonino Santangelo everything are above all criticism. Just think, you scoundrels, that we 15 For the quotation from Gabriella Belli [Portrait of Antonino Santangelo] [W. NO. 41] alongside Birolli’s Signora col see “Anima e intelletto di un collezionista Italians could do great things because we have suffered more from the d’arte moderna”, in Maestri del ‘900: cappello [Lady in a Hat] [W. NO. 19], which is set off so well by Francesco da Boccioni a Fontana – La collezione 16 crises of Europe than anyone else.” All the artists collected by Giuseppe di un raffinato cultore dell’arte Menzio’s Ritratto di giovane [Portrait of a Young Man] [W. NO. 52], all to- moderna, Milan: Skira, 2007, p. 15. Iannaccone suffer the crises of existence but decide nevertheless to speak 16 G. Marchiori, Birolli, Edizioni gether with the splendid portrait by Ottone Rosai [W. NO. 69]: di Comunità, Quaderni d’arte e d’architettura moderna, edited by Z. Birolli, F. Bruno. Published on the 17 Diario: 1926-1965 Mario Mafai, occasion of the exhibition Renato Birolli introduction by G. Appella, Rome: 1931–1959, organized by the Verona Edizioni della Cometa, 1984, p. 45. Municipality at the Palazzo della Gran 18 C. Maltese, Storia dell’arte in Italia Guardia, July–August 1963, p. 27. 1785-1943, Turin: Einaudi, 1960, p. 387.

46 47 RISCHA PATERLINI TIRELESS PASSION OR SUBLIME MADNESS?

A work related to the loss of his father, sick with cancer and burdened social and — why not? — also in political terms, but first and fore- by debits, who drowned himself in the Arno and left a great void in most a life of freedom that did not exist. the artist’s life, depriving him of his truest friend and support. In building up the entire collection, which today comprises ninety-six In addition to portraits of individuals, there are also groups of figures, as works, he has focused not only on big names like Birolli, Scipione, Vedova, in Badodi’s café scenes [W. NO. 4] and Fausto Pirandello’s Spiaggia [Beach] [W. Mafai and Guttuso but also on lesser-known masters, reconstructing the NO. 60] as well as more recent acquisitions like Alberto Ziveri’s Il postribolo 9. Amerigo Bartoli, Gli amici al caffè, 1930. Italian expressionism of those years through canvases of the Six Painters Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte [The Bawdy House] [W. NO. 96] and Emilio Vedova’s Il caffeuccio veneziano Moderna e Contemporanea of Turin and the Chiarismo movement of Lombardy, and illustrating the From the left: Emilio Cecchi, Vincenzo 10. Mario Mafai, Demolizioni, 1936 [W. NO. 92] [Venetian Café] . The latter was purchased at 7.30 in the morning, Cardarelli, Carlo Socrate, Ardengo Soffici, Corrente movement with works by Migneco and Broggini. Nor has he over- Antonio Baldini, Pasqualina Spadini, Giuseppe as its owners were leaving Milan for six months and Giuseppe Iannaccone Ungaretti, Mario Broglio (seen from behind), looked artists belonging to no group but developing their own brand of could not wait. He needed that masterpiece to complete the set of group the waiter Malatesta, Armando Ferri, reflective realism, like Filippo De Pisis and Ottone Rosai. As Iannaccone Quirino Ruggeri, Roberto Longhi, Riccardo scenes he had built up over the years, works that really tell us what was Francalancia, Amerigo Bartoli, Aurelio Saffi insists, the collection is still in progress, even though he will never reveal happening then. The places of discussion and formation were no longer the and Bruno Barilli the works he still wants to buy: overly institutionalized academies and schools but the cafés [FIG. 9], which “took on a role of rational opposition to the official tradition, frequented because I would obviously lose them. And then there is the possibil- by the angry young men of Milan, eager to open the windows and let light ity of chance bringing me face to face with paintings or sculptures pierce the gloom of the Novecento movement”.19 Places of intellectual that I cannot even imagine right now. growth for artists like Guttuso, who recalled “long discussions of Sassu, 11. Scipione, Natura morta con beccaccini, Manzù and Birolli with Persico and our friends from the Milione gallery. 1930. Turin, private collection There are also masterpieces that he failed to obtain but are imprinted so We talked about Kandinsky and Vardemberger-Gildewart, Neoplasticism indelibly on his memory that we still find ourselves talking about them and Constructivism, theses that we already clearly rejected in favour of today, whereupon I see a haze of longing in his eyes. Examples include anti-formal and humanistic — if not indeed content-based — principles Mafai’s Piazza Mignanelli (1942 [FIG. 12]), sold on 3 June 1993 at a Finarte […] Birolli cooked his doves and green domes, his bishops and suburban auction that he was unable to attend due to an office dinner arranged taxis, his Van Gogh and Ensor, on the romantic fire of the post-expres- on the same day at the Ribot restaurant in Milan, and his Demolizioni sionist sunset. Sassu attacked the world of contemporary content with all [Demolitions], 1936 [FIG. 10]. Pinottini, the owner of the Galleria Narciso his vibrant, youthful impertinence, mixing myths and presences, ancient in Turin, came to the office with blurred photo of the latter but with- history and images of current urban events, in the same solitary ardour.”20 drew the offer on seeing Iannaccone’s hesitation and nothing came of These discussions led the artists to produce works developing a more it. Not to mention Scipione’s splendid Natura morta con beccaccini [Still symbolic and literary approach to still life, which Iannaccone collects be- 12. Mario Mafai, Piazza Mignanelli, 1942. Life with Snipes], 1930 [FIG. 11], which a “stray dealer” offered him in 1998. cause he sees in them an allegory of the life. Guttuso thus Private collection Unfortunately, having just bought the finest portrait of Santangelo[W. NO. 41] in circulation and a landscape by Scipione [W. NO. 78], he had no more money closes the window on the darkness and sadness of life to create a for another work. blaze inside that is nothing other than the yearning for a new Italy breaking away from the order and solitude of Morandi. I feel closer to reflections on everyday life than the prolonged solitude that With the benefit of hindsight I would certainly have gone into debt Morandi represents through the dust on his perfect bottles. The gladly, but I was inexperienced. I was already unable to sleep at bottles in Guttuso’s word are instead untidy because life “is not in- night and had a family to look after. tact, not perfect. Life is made up of broken necks and failures that must drive you to construct perfect bottles and therefore to begin The pain of these missed opportunities is, however, assuaged by the joy of anew all over again.” the coups pulled off, like the stroke of luck that arrived on 30 November 2016, when the catalogue was just going to press, and threw everything This is the reality of things that Giuseppe Iannaccone has decided to tell, into disarray. At 22.25, after a day of no little tension and anxiety at gathering together just some artists and excluding others: the thought of letting slip the, not a Tullio Garbari [W. NO. 35], Iannaccone informed Professor Pontiggia by e-mail that the masterpiece was his: 19 For the quotation about cafés see so as to have a clear idea of a throbbing humanity, a true humani- E. Pontiggia, N. Colombo (edited by), “Mission accomplished!” She replied at dawn the following day: “I knew Milano Anni Trenta. L’arte e la città, ty of citizens of this country awaiting better times; better times in exhibition catalogue (Milan, Spazio it. Della Ragione phoned me this morning green with envy.” These are Oberdan, 2 December 2004 − 27 February 2005), Milan: Mazzotta, 2004, p. 41. 20 R. Guttuso, Per l’amico Aligi Sassu, in ricordo degli “anni trenta”, in Sassu, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Galleria delle Ore, 1959), 1959.

48 49 RISCHA PATERLINI TIRELESS PASSION OR SUBLIME MADNESS? episodes that give Iannaccone hope of gems still to be had and encourage to the anxious and weary expressionism of Birolli, which he surpassed in him never to despair. As in the case of a drawing [FIG. 13] that Scipione gave his immediacy and spontaneity.”21 On observing the painting, I think that at the end of his short life to his friend Mafai is a treasure for Iannaccone this was madness and that the gesture cost him a great deal. He did indeed worth more than any slit canvas by Lucio Fontana or still life by George tell me in one of our conversations that he regretted having sold it, and I Morandi in circulation. Scipione wrote as follows to Enrico Falqui [FIG. 14] am sure that he only did so because he felt sorry that the artist’s family on 4 December 1932: “On completing this drawing, I realized that their should have none of his paintings. This is what I have learned by being at crossed arms form a W, the sign for Viva. How spontaneous and pho- his side over all these years. I have learned what “beauty” means in art tographic the expression of that sentiment is. I do not know whether a and, more importantly, I have learned the “art of living”. I have learned science of the birth and graphic meaning of signs exists. The M sign for that you must trust your instincts and always give priority to the quality Down with makes to visualize two figures wrestling.” He wrote to his of things. I have learned that every decision must be carefully considered 13. Scipione, Uomini che gridano, after Psalm friend Mario Mafai on the same day to tell him about the drawing and its 129 for Mario Mafai. Location unknown and then, once taken, defended with all your might, never surrendering. very personal meaning for him (“they are two men shouting”) and then It is thanks to Giuseppe Iannaccone that since the first day when I saw his again on 21 December to say that the drawing was to be his. Like Scipione, 15. Arnaldo Badodi, Bambino in rosso collection, I have never for a single moment stopped studying it, loving Giuseppe Iannaccone holds friendship sacred: (Cappuccetto rosso), 1939. Private collection it and appreciating every aspect of the history of art and contemporary culture. I have been able to grow and to see the collection growing from It is one of the beautiful things in life and Scipione glorifies it spon- a privileged vantage point, appreciating it in every detail and becoming taneously, in a very simple and absolutely non-rhetorical way. This what I am today thanks to his enormous patience, his always measured is why I feel so close to him. tones, never aggressive or offensive, and his generosity of thought. These are all characteristics I have experienced in his everyday actions I believe that this is why, even though there are no fewer than four historic and that manifest themselves also in his decisions regarding the collec- drawings by Scipione in the collection, Iannaccone would not hesitate for tion. A few years ago, on being asked for the loan of two of his best- a moment to buy the fifth, if we could only find out where it has ended loved works, free of charge, for the opening of the Museo del Novecento up. While it is true that he never has any qualms about adding a piece to in Milan, he did not hesitate to say yes despite the anguish he felt at being the collection, he certainly does about exchanging or selling works. The separated from them. When he is asked to lend works for major public anguish is so great that it keeps him awake at night and he always asks for exhibitions lasting no more than two or three months, I know that he is advice. I found a letter from Zeno Birolli in the archives of the collection, flattered but also that it is agony every time. It matters little that they written on the back of a postcard showing the marble quarries of Carrara, are insured. Money comes and goes but works never return and he would where he seems to be telling Iannaccone that cuts are sometimes indis- never forgive himself if anything should happen to them. For all his mis- pensable: “I have thought over your question about the Novecento paint- givings whenever faced with a form authorizing the transporters to take a ers and since a good collection of paintings, like everything that is truly work away, he always signs, knowing how fortunate he is to have been able loved, should not be hurried, I would leave room for direct experience. to collect these works, fully aware that they belong to everyone and that it What might happen if a Birolli, a Guttuso, a Morlotti, a De Pisis, a Badodi is not right for him to be the only one to enjoy them. Then of course, once were to arrive? Clarity is born out of your good root and the gardener will the works have set off on their journey, he never misses an opportunity to be happy about your necessary pruning.” In any case, such “pruning” has ask me when they will be coming back. been very rare over the years and often performed in silence out of generosity alone, as in the case of the painting by Arnaldo Badodi, who left to fight in the war at the age of thirty and never returned. In 1996, at the presentation in Rome of the book on the artist by Marco Falciano — with whom Iannaccone collaborated enthusiastically, having already many of the artist’s works in his collection even at the beginning — Badodi’s family asked him to sell them a painting because they did not have even one. He let them have, for the same price as he had paid, the splendid Cappuccetto rosso [Little Red Riding Hood], 1939 [FIG. 15], “an isolated subject in the work of Badodi, who looked in search of a vocabulary in line with his ex- 14. Letter from Scipione to Enrico Falqui, pressive needs to the example of more mature painters and in particular 4 December 1932

21 See the description of Arnaldo Badodi’s Cappuccetto Rosso in M. Falciano (edited by), Arnaldo Badodi e “Corrente”, Rome: El Ma, 1995.

50 51 ESSAYS Twelve Critical Themes for Italian Art between the Two World Wars flavio fergonzi

Historians have addressed the Italian art of the period from the end of World War I to the fall of Fascism in earnest at least since 1960, when Corrado Maltese’s Storia dell’arte in Italia 1875-1943 asserted the independence and value of some individuals and groups despite the pervasive cultural climate of Fascist Italy. The painting and sculpture of the interwar years came back into fashion above all in the late seventies in concomitance with renewed interest on the part of young artists in traditional techniques and genres. The new drive for figuration saw a convergence of themes like corporality (over a span stretching from gel- id neoclassicism to expressionist distortion) and autobiography, also in the most unseemly and instinctual terms. The result was an authentic revolution in taste. The art of the twenties and thirties was featured in retrospective, thematic and monographic exhibitions, strenuous efforts of scholarship led to the reappraisal of long-neglected artists and movements, and this new attention was reflected in the trends of the art market and collecting. Giuseppe Iannaccone’s collection is rooted in this episode of cultural revaluation: the art of the interwar years as seen from the post-1980 critical viewpoint. This period, spanning the late seventies, the eighties and part of the nineties, is still too close to us for analytical reconstruction of its dialogue between the work of young artists, revival of visual fashions and orientations in taste. What I shall instead try to offer here is a backdrop for those interested in reconstructing, even in summary terms, the context in which the works of the collection were executed in the twenties and thirties. This is based on a series of texts exemplifying critical positions that slightly precede and then run parallel to the paintings, first and foremost because the artists who produced them were certainly well aware of these views. There is, however, also a further historical consideration, namely the fact that the texts discussed were rediscovered, reprinted, critically addressed and fully understood only in the years in which the collection was formed.

1. The aura of the museum: Raphael The end of World War I was followed by the centenaries of great Italians like Leonardo da Vinci (1919), Raphael (1920) and Dante (1921). The celebration of these secular patron saints of the nation prompted consideration of the idea of the new Italy emerging from the victory of 1918,

55 FLAVIO FERGONZI TWELVE CRITICAL THEMES FOR ITALIAN ART BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS but in far cruder terms than had happened with the commemorations of is displayed. What Thucydides said of the Athenians can be said the period after unification. While Leonardo’s centenary had no impact of Raphael: “They produced the best works with a certain noncha- at all on the world of modern art (the divorce of art science having long lance.” Nonchalance, not negligence. been consummated and the pictorial expression of the motions of the mind being regarded as outmoded), Raphael’s marked a crucial turning Ojetti presented a group of artists of different ages and backgrounds, point. The vociferous generation that mocked him (with Ardengo Soffici ranging from Gola and Bistolfi to Casorati and Maraini, the following preferring the sign of a water melon seller to the Marriage of the Virgin) year in the Galleria Pesaro, Milan’s leading private gallery. In his intro- had given way to one ready to take him into account. duction to the catalogue, he speaks of respecting their jumbled need Ugo Ojetti, art critic of the newspaper Corriere della Sera and a power- for masters of tradition: “This sculptor bows down before Jacopo della ful, highly respected arbiter of bourgeois taste, which he steered in an Quercia, that one before the Romanesque masters. One looks to Bernini anti-Impressionist and anti-avant-garde direction, felt that his moment and another perhaps to Canova, without admitting it. This painter looks had arrived, that the new circumstances established his credit also with to Piero della Francesca, that one to Fra Angelico, if only for a land- the young, formerly firebrands and now firemen. To celebrate the fourth scape, and other fearlessly to Raphael.” The essential thing, he affirms, centenary of Raphael’s death he went so far as to draw the attention of is for modern art to rediscover the iron rules of the academy. Above all, modern artists to some precepts to be drawn “from the immense work painting must have the “weight” of sculpture (U. Ojetti, Arte Italiana and short life of Raffaello Sanzio”. What is so shocking is not only the Contemporanea, Galleria Pesaro, Milan, October–November 1921, p. 7): glorification of pre-Fascist values such as obedience, virility, the sense of hierarchy and the primacy of technical knowledge and architecture, Free young people are now aware of the extent to which freedom reversing the topoi of the anti-academic cult of youth of the newly end- is made up of discipline and indeed obedience; how much of ev- ed decade, but also and above all the tone. A critic laying down the law er-changing reality can enter into lasting truth; and what the style to painters, and in such peremptory, aphoristic terms, was something is whereby man imposes his will on the fleeting appearances and wholly unprecedented in Italy (U. Ojetti, “Raffaello”, in Corriere della hours. But this is how it is. They again feel that the life of a paint- Sera, 13 May 1920, p. 3): ing lies in its composition, in the balance and development of its lines and weights rather than the harmony and sweetness or boldness of its colours, tones and reflections; in its backbone as much The artist is a man of order. He will not countenance waste and as its skin; in short, that a painting must have weight, like a stat- revolt. In a painting, what is useless is harmful. With as little as ue, to the eye. possible, you obtain as much as possible. Greatness is simplicity. Even minute details can be precious, however. Consider the gleam of the fingernails in the Madonna del Granduca and the lights in 2. The drive for a definitive present the hair in the portrait of Bindo Altoviti. Margherita Grassini, the wife of Cesare Sarfatti and a champion of the best energies of modern Italian art for two decades, was able to fight On beholding the School of Athens, Expulsion of Heliodorus or St her battle from a privileged position in the twenties. Since 1916 she had Paul Preaching, you will realize that you have three things in a been the mistress and most influential adviser of Benito Mussolini, who painting to place in proportion to one another and to the whole: had in turn been the prime minister and Fascist Duce since 1922. While the volumes of the bodies and objects you represent; the spaces her goal was to regain the national primacy lost after the sixteenth they occupy and therefore the spaces left vacant; the chiaroscuro century, she did not, unlike Ojetti, regard the rift with the avant-garde and the colours serving to fill both spaces. movements as useless but rather as a wound to be healed. For her, the painting and sculpture that had jettisoned nineteenth-century realism Only through architectural drawing will you realize that perspec- were waging a war in which Futurism constituted a crucial episode. If tive is the mother of colour: a mother that first contains and al- there was a common denominator of the seven painters she gathered to- most conceals it in herself; then creates and frees it, giving it voice and breath; and finally teaches it to be well-behaved and gether under the ambitious banner of Novecento Italiano (Mario Sironi respect its neighbours. and Achille Funi being the most important), it was the effort made by the generation that had fought in the war to keep alive the values assert- The work of art must not reveal the artist’s efforts. With it, the art- ed by the courageous Futurists of 1910. This is how Margherita Sarfatti ist must show that his skill and ability are still greater than what (Segni, colori e luci, Bologna, 1925, p. 126) explained her idea in 1925,

56 57 FLAVIO FERGONZI TWELVE CRITICAL THEMES FOR ITALIAN ART BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS the year after the XIV Venice Biennial based on a now mature line of machinery of the sixteenth century — could serve in painting to deter- Italian classicism: mine a fracture of sense conjuring up an elsewhere with metaphysical overtones (M. Bontempelli, “Analogie”, in 900, summer 1927): This painting of today has many great merits. Scrupulously con- scientious, honest (or at least making an effort to hide any charla- The sixteenth-century painter was fully and exclusively interested tanism), carefully considered (or making an effort to appear so), in the real world painted by him, whereas the fifteenth-century decorative (or making an effort to become so). Effort is its law and painter presented this as a disturbing mask for his more secret effort its pathos. It has not arrived at the point where effort disap- interest. The greater the weight and solidity he gave to matter, pears, where skill is so assured as to seem non-existent. For these the more importance he attached to suggesting that his deepest avant-garde painters of ours, painting is not yet a means but still love was for something else around or above it. The greater the dil- a terribly present end. igence and perfection with which his hand served the three dimensions, the more his mind vibrated elsewhere. The more faithful The key word is effort, the very opposite of Ojetti’s beloved noncha- and protective he felt towards nature, the better he succeeded in lance. In 1926, on organizing the first Novecento Italiano exhibition, isolating it by enveloping it in ideas set on the supernatural. with the initial seven as the core of a group that was stylistically inco- Hence the amazement, the expression of magic, the true protago- herent but significant in terms of age, Sarfatti addressed the question nist of that fifteenth-century painting. Hence those atmospheres of a style, something not overly characterized but marking an era in a under tension, still more precise and vibrant than the forms of the matter represented. certain sense: “an art that seems to be for everyone and is essentially for the best, because everyone can understand its simple, descriptive, non-hermetic aspects”). Her attempt on the same occasion to list some Pre-classical rigidity and hyper-realistic concentration can therefore of its characteristics resulted in a generic formula where she struggled coexist and strengthen one another. The example initially used as a to pin down the “family resemblance” of those who appeared to identify pictorial and critical yardstick was a recently reappraised artist of the with the collective ideal Fascist Italy (M. Sarfatti, “Alcune considerazio- Quattrocento called Piero della Francesca, whose impassive monumen- ni intorno alla I Mostra del Novecento Italiano”, in Il Novecento Italiano, tality and visual objectivity offered a sure guide for modern painters. 1, Milan, spring 1926, n.p.): Roberto Longhi, the most intelligent art critic of the time, established Piero as a paradigm of quality and a test of the formalist principles in Precise in sign, decided in colour, resolute in form; deep and which he firmly believed. He was well aware, however, that the painter’s sober feeling pared down through meditation, elimination and greatness lay in his ability to produce a pictorial plane capable of sug- study, a striving for the concrete, simple and definitive: these are gesting space solely through colour and not in the slightly uncanny aura the common features, the family resemblance, of this generation that a modern eye may discern in his subjects and style (R. Longhi, Piero of artists, who seek to give a physiognomy and an imprint — i.e. della Francesca, Rome, 1927, p. 23): a collective ideal on which to converge, a line and a style — to the art, the life and the moral, aesthetic and emotional needs of our time. There is thus no contrast between man and his circumstances, and this sovereign pacification appears to stem precisely from the pro- 3. Objectivity and amazement portional perfection of the spaces that seamlessly meld figure and The second half of the twenties saw a revival of figure painting. As many landscape, near and far, in the liquid solemnity of noonday light. The contour of the people and things is reduced to a simple outline understood, the reality represented was not the painter’s ultimate goal that disappears as such when, through a mysterious process of but a tool capable of expressing a wholly modern anxiety metaphori- “metromancy”, the volumes join with one another and each of the cally. A former Futurist and then a theorist of “magical realism” as the nearby shapes is assigned its vast colour, then harmonized by the only art in keeping with the cultural condition of the post-war period, unit of natural light. the writer Massimo Bontempelli offered an effective account of this ep- A vision of such limpidity, a chromatic spectacle of such breadth, isode and identified the stylistically precise model of fifteenth-century where nature is allied with man on an equal footing, where every painting as the only one capable of combining objectivity and defamil- earthly event takes place not in hierarchical and ultimately theo- iarization. He sensed that archaism — and hence a style at variance both cratic subordination but in a supremely spectacular state of calm, with nineteenth-century optical realism and with the great academic had never been seen before amongst us.

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With its insistence on the role of noonday light and impassioned ob- attempt to define a series of possible identities for Fascist art in 1928, servations on the relationship between space and figure, Longhi’s text Ardengo Soffici addressed the slippery question of national character, was become prompt some painters, especially Romans like Capogrossi, narrowing the field from “religious” to “Catholic”. According to Soffici, Cagli, Cavalli and Ziveri, to develop a suspended, timeless form of art, “Catholic art” meant moral rigour as opposed to imagination, balance a flight from the here and now that masked their evident unhappiness as opposed to imbalance, and therefore the very opposite of the lyri- with the present. cism cherished by Venturi (A. Soffici, “Arte fascista”, in Periplo dell’Arte, Florence, 1928, p. 139): 4. Universal religiosity, Fascist Catholicism A return to figure painting aimed at the museum appeared anti-histor- Fascist art must be animated by religious feeling, spiritual auster- ical to those in the Italy of the twenties who possessed a sliver of criti- ity. And since religion in Italy means Catholicism, Fascist art must cal awareness or simply taste, not least because the results were often reflect what is the essence of Catholicism, i.e. greatness, moral embarrassing. The works shown in the major exhibitions display great nobility, beauty of form, balance and measure in artistic expres- clumsiness as well as evident insincerity. sion and construction. Art that is based instead on materialism, chromatic sensuality and rationalism, and reflects poverty of vi- Lionello Venturi, who taught art history in Turin and believed in the sion and invention, baseness of concepts and senses, immorality continuity of the Impressionist revolution, stated clearly that it was the of form or essence, ugliness of shape, imbalance and expressive or very genre of figure painting that created too many problems for the tectonic exaggeration of a bestial nature is therefore to be defined modern painter: “We have lost the requisite naiveté with respect to our as non-Fascist. fellow man. Our attitude takes on the character of a struggle.” For him, salvation lay in landscape, a genre still widely practiced by painters in According to Soffici, there is an Italian classicality of an intimately the twenties but much maligned in the critical debate of the time as religious nature that has no need of reference to the museum in order belonging to the northern tradition, overly retinal and overly subjec- to manifest itself because it is intrinsic to the rigour and severity of the tive; in short, not Italian enough. Venturi instead saw landscape as the heritage of painting. An example can be provided by an isolated artist only subject in which the painter could manifest religious feeling in the like Giorgio Morandi, who paints only landscapes and still lifes, the modern sense (L. Venturi, “Il paesaggio. Un problema alla mostra del genres on the lowest rungs of the ladder. In his paintings, Soffici writes Novecento”, in Il Secolo, 2 March 1926, p. 3): (A. Soffici, “Giorgio Morandi”, in L’Italiano, VII, 10, March 1932):

The origin of the art of landscape is to be sought simply in Christian substantial truth, absolute sincerity and a normal and therefore feeling, in the Christian need to understand the boundlessness of human vision of poetic reality burst forth to animate the frame- God. And precisely because its origin lies in Christian feeling, works prepared by will and science. The result is a perfect artistic landscape painting is necessary to us. It enables us to capture in organism, full and vital, and therefore of exemplary and classical the roof of a dilapidated house, a withered tree trunk, a mass of nature. And by this I mean classical in the Italian sense: real and foliage, an expanse of water, a clear sky, our desire for abandon- ideal, objective and subjective and traditional all at once. ment, love, disinterestedness and striving towards everything that is outside us but includes us too because it is the cosmos, the universe, which we refer to in a low voice out of courtesy but which 5. A question of youth rules over us. The generation of artists born just before or around 1910, including Renato Birolli, Aligi Sassu and Giacomo Manzù, was the first to op- Venturi had argued that lyrical authenticity can coincide with a sort of pose the distasteful academicism that dominated all through the twen- religious inspiration in his most successful and widely discussed book ties. It took a different view of the nineteenth century, looked to the of the decade, Il gusto dei primitivi. It was against this authenticity, he École de Paris and had some Italian models of reference (the delicate claimed, that the values of modern art were to be measured. The land- disorientation of Modigliani above all but also the brutal and archaic scape he had in mind was that of Cézanne and post-Cézanne art, and the naiveté of Ottone Rosai and the ironic narratives of Arturo Martini). recent models he put forward were all from Paris. It displayed a discontent that manifested itself in almost melancholy A different and far more specific sense of religious feeling was, howev- irreverence: light colours and simple, slightly childish draughtsman- er, called into question for modern Italian art in the same period. In an ship instead of the constructed machinery of Novecento. The first to

60 61 FLAVIO FERGONZI TWELVE CRITICAL THEMES FOR ITALIAN ART BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS speak of this was Edoardo Persico, a Neapolitan who arrived in Milan the twenties, was hailed as the driving force of pictorial invention in a via Turin in 1929 as director of a gallery outside the mainstream. He private piece of writing by Scipione (Gino Bonichi), a Roman painter drew attention in his journalistic writings to the bohemian pride of who drew both on the most visionary of seventeenth-century art and those young people: “There is always conscious austerity in the nooks the most caustic contemporary works. El Greco, on whom Scipione’s and crannies of their poverty. Far away from everyone, they live in attention focused, had been discovered at the beginning of the centu- these garrets with a stubbornness that presupposes a neither common ry, when his daring volumetric syntheses and unconventional handling nor mediocre ideal. They owe nothing to anybody. The instinct of pov- of colour found admirers. Now he was instead seen as the champion erty has saved them from compromise and corruption.” (E. Persico, of a unveiled spirituality, an artist who listened to the motions of his “Via Solferino”, in L’Ambrosiano, 9 September 1931, p. 3). Above all, mind, driven by irresistible emotional pressure to break the classical he identified a new authenticity of vision that is primarily existential rules (Scipione, “Sulla pittura del Greco” [1930], in E. Falqui (edited rather than stylistic. by), Carte segrete, Florence, 1943, p. 25): As in the Milan of the Scapigliatura movement and the Florence of La Voce and Lacerba, there was a place where these artists gathered, not El Greco is a visionary. He disturbs the mind with his painting, the studio, mythicized in the twenties as the magical fountainhead of fills churches with religious nightmares, conjures up images and visions, but the café. There, listening to their conversation, you real- transfigures them through transposition to an unreal plane, paint- ize that a “question of youth” is taking shape in Italy (E. Persico, “Il ing everything present in the work with the same intensity. His fig- mokador”, [1931], in Scritti critici e polemici, Milan, 1947, p. 151): ures are spectres that materialize with terrible tactile reality. The intangible beauty of divine figures is transformed and corrupted For the first time we have picked up the elements of a new and still as a warning to people, to tell them that they are killing divine uncertain aesthetic in the words of young painters, all flames and beauty with their vices and that the pain suffered for humanity fury but expressed by this Italian determination never to say die, disfigures their faces. this presentiment of sunset and frenzy to assert the birth of a new Having started from the Italian and Venetian school, following in mankind. These painters respond to the defence of the religion of the footsteps of the great, he slowly brought about the greatest art with the apology of religion itself, to the search for poetry with revolution that has ever happened in the artistic sense, turning striving for the epic, to the joy of the inspiration with the rules of the classical canons of composition upside-down in the paint- the craft. A terrible crusade of innocents. What remains of these ing. In this sense, he can truly be regarded as the first modern flames and fury? A new painting, a new content of Italian art, a artist. He eliminates the balance of mass and the rhythm of com- new stance with respect to the problems of the time. It can be be- position, thus destroying the sense of harmony. Everything is lieved that the improvisation of many painters is about to be con- unbalanced and disrupted because what matters is content. The demned forever in the work of the young, that the off-handedness figures are seen and revealed in human actuality and not for pur- and ability of too many gifted people will soon be seen for what poses of giving pleasure but only to reveal. And the intensity of it really is: an aspect of the lack of faith, a side of the irreparable vision is so strong that in order to drive out and destroy those decay of a civilization of indifference forced into expedients of established compositional practices, he repeats things over and action. What then does the indifference of people matter? The over again until the graceful, the cerebral and the aesthetic sense hostility of ringleaders? The opposition of critics? Today, in Italy, all disappear. young people finally exist. When the young artists reflected not on content but on vocabulary, the 6. Different models question of alternative models became still more pressing. Gigi Chessa, Giotto and Masaccio, Paolo Uccello and Piero della Francesca, a painter from Turin and pupil of Felice Casorati, was struck by the Egyptian sculpture and Etruscan ceramics, Romanesque and pre-Phid- paintings of Modigliani recently bought by the Turinese industrialist ian reliefs were the primary points of literal or ideal reference during Riccardo Gualino. What he liked in Modigliani were the formal contra- the third decade, all asserting the primacy of impersonality and pure dictions and discontinuities (G. Chessa, “Per Amedeo Modigliani”, in form. Things changed, however, around and after 1930, when a grow- L’A r t e , XXXIII [n.s. I], 1, 1930, p. 39). He saw that the painter was in- ing number of artists came to see these values as a prison curbing the terested in “not losing the single plane of the surface of the canvas” in imagination, stifling confession, limiting freedom and inhibiting sen- search of “an impersonal and abstract” form. As he observed, howev- suality. Content, a word barely tolerated in the artistic discussion of er, “the very stroke that outlines and delineates everything is the very

62 63 FLAVIO FERGONZI TWELVE CRITICAL THEMES FOR ITALIAN ART BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS opposite of these tendencies because, ever present and alert, it is always Architecture has the floor today. For all artists, this mother of the alive and, when the form is about to become too abstract, he is capa- arts has the task of bringing a new passion for constructed space, or- ble of softening it and making it human with emotional hesitation. His der, measure and proportion back into the arena of the plastic arts. delicate use of a continuous, winding arabesque does not weaken the Our mechanical civilization has taught us the value of geometric painting as a whole but tempers any harshness and causes every mass splendour, aerial life and new vertical perspectives. The right an- to vibrate”. gle is the symbol of equilibrium between horizontal matter and Filippo de Pisis, a writer and painter of no academic training whatso- vertical spirit. Surfaces are thus animated with contours independent of the chromatic and tonal planes, and the formal element ever and a nomadic lifesyle, rediscovered in Paris no less a figure than intervenes with the evocative power of chiaroscuro that is auton- Édouard Manet, regarded by everyone in Italy as the true source of the omous, i.e. understood not in its deceptive perspective of volume caustic poison that definitively violated the sacredness of painting. On but as constructive plastic volume, to oppose and break down reviewing the major Parisian retrospective of 1932 for an Italian period- anything overly geometric that might remain and humanize the ical he discovered in the master’s works something that he had always abstract language of architectonic surfaces. The plastic eloquence sensed simply through painting, i.e. that colour has its own subversive of this process intensifies the expressive meaning of the subject. power and is capable of asserting itself as an autonomous and absolute tool of expression: in Manet, he writes, “matter in itself becomes colour The most important document written on the relationship between paint- and thus rises to a lyrical plane. The flashy black silk, the tulle, certain ing and architecture is the manifesto of wall painting signed at the end of sea-blue fabrics covering sofas and armchairs, the wood of boats and 1933 by Sironi, Funi, Campigli and Carrà. In order to make “social paint- chairs, the green of certain broad leaves, the Japanese paper of a fan ing” and “Fascist art” wholly equivalent, inspiration for an art that is col- and the grey fur of a rabbit take on a sort of lyrical value sub specie lective and virile was to be sought in the rigour of the laws of architecture aeternitatis in the very material in which they are painted. (F. de Pisis, (“Manifesto della pittura murale”, in Colonna, December 1933, p. 11): “Centenario di Manet”, in L’Italia Letteraria, 2 October 1932). De Pisis even reversed the way in which the great paintings of tradition were Wall painting is the epitome of social painting. It works on the seen by painters, as places to find compositional solutions and metric public imagination more directly than any other form of painting harmonies, and was instead bewitched by the “empty spaces in a canvas and inspires the minor arts more directly. The present-day rebirth of Manet, painted in a sort of fever”, which he regarded as “worth the of wall painting and above all fresco makes it easier to address the patina that time has laid on certain revered masterpieces in dusty mu- question of Fascist Art. The artist is in fact forbidden to lapse into seums”. improvisation and facile bravura not only by the practical location of the mural (public buildings and places that perform in any case 7. Geometry, monumentality, socialization: the role of architecture a civic function) but also by the laws that govern it, the predom- The major theme running through the artistic debate of the twenties is inance in it of the stylistic element over the emotional, and its the relationship between architecture and the other visual arts. This is intimate association with architecture. These instead force him not only because many new public buildings were constructed in Fascist to prove his mettle in the resolute, virile execution that the very Italy and the questions arose of how they were to be decorated in paint- technique of wall painting demands, to ripen his invention and or- ing and sculpture, and how public art could perform the new function ganize it to the full. No form of painting in which the order and rigour of composition do not predominate and no form of “genre” of contributing to the growth of a collective epic. Above all, it was be- painting can stand up to the test of the mural technique and scale. cause architecture appeared to indicate a new direction for painting and Wall painting will give birth to the Fascist Style with which the sculpture that was simultaneously ethical and stylistic. new civilization can identify. [...] The debate on the relations between the architecture and the other The spirituality of the early Renaissance is closer to us than the arts was transversal, involving both the Futurists of the second gener- pomp of the great Venetians, the art of pagan and Christian Rome ation most hostile to tradition and the philo-museum Novecento move- than that of Greece. We have arrived once again at wall painting in ment. These are the views of Enrico Prampolini, an avant-garde artist virtue of the aesthetic principles that have matured in the Italian convinced that the very language of pictorial representation is deter- spirit since the war. mined by the geometric laws established by the new architecture (E. Prampolini, “Al di là della pittura verso i polimaterici”, in Stile Futurista, The core of the manifesto had, however, already been laid out by Sironi I, 2, 1934): the previous year: the truth of wall painting was superior to optical truth

64 65 FLAVIO FERGONZI TWELVE CRITICAL THEMES FOR ITALIAN ART BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS precisely because it was architectural. If a line of modern art existed Belli put it in his preface to a show of Anton Atanasio Soldati in 1933 in Italy, it was to be identified — he claimed — in the thrusts that had to one exhibition: “The printing press, Kodak and television has robbed made the “plastic question”, i.e. the question of spatial and therefore painting of the human task it once had to serve as a book for reading, architectonic synthesis, the focal point of interest for the artists of the documentation, reportage. Freed from these chains, art can now launch twentieth century (M. Sironi, “Pittura murale”, in Il Popolo d’Italia, 1 itself into the loftiest abstraction”). At the same time, there was also January 1932): a drive to redefine the very fundamentals of the arts philosophically. Belli, the leading theorist of Italian abstract art, wrote as follows in KN Wall painting is therefore not to be understood merely as the en- in 1935: “Art is not the expression of a state of mind, not the interpre- largement of paintings such as we are already accustomed to see tation of a visual reality, not translation, not illustration, not reportage. over large surfaces with the same effects, the same technical pro- Still less can it be the expression of impressions.” He thus called upon cedures and the same pictorial objectives. New problems of spa- artists to: “Free forms from the object. Free colours from the object. tiality, form, expression and content — lyrical, epic or dramatic Create painting.” — instead present themselves. The aim is a renewal of rhythm, bal- Above all, however, there was a sense among painters and sculptors ance and constructive spirit whereby art will regain the meaning that pictorial or sculptural poetry was born out of geometry. Ancient destroyed by the triumph of nineteenth-century northern realism. Greece and the fifteenth century thus became the models of reference From Futurism and Cubism to the present, the path of painting departs from the sphere of nineteenth-century naturalistic rep- (O. Bogliardi, V. Ghiringhelli, M. Reggiani, Dichiarazione degli esposi- resentation and creates the architectonic norms of the picture. It tori della prima collettiva di pittori astratti, Milan, 1934): creates and rediscovers the plastic and pictorial balances that exist independently of the “truth” of the scene observed and defined What we need is metre. The metre that varies only with the great because there is a superior “truth”, similar in all respects to the cycles; that gave us the pyramid and then the Parthenon, the ovolo other and made up of a harmony of mass, surface, line and colour, moulding and then all of classical sculpture; that has never exist- which weave a new reality in their invisible but immensely strong ed in representation because we can admire the greatness of Pier web. della Francesca and Paolo Uccello in Arezzo and Urbino without knowing the legend of the Cross or the miracle of the host. Art serves itself. According to Sironi, the propaganda of ideas is therefore to be developed through the eloquence not of subject matter but of space. Thus The finest contribution to the Italian debate on abstraction was writ- it was in Imperial Rome and the Byzantine East, where the moral im- ten by the sculptor Fausto Melotti, a pupil of Adolfo Wildt with a de- perative of civilization manifested itself and was propagated through gree in engineering and a diploma in pianoforte, in his self-presentation large-scale architectural decoration, preferably with symbolic or even to the Galleria del Milione, a private gallery in Milan. The Greece that abstract forms (M. Sironi, “Racemi d’oro”, in La Rivista Illustrata del Sironi regarded as less close to the ideals of the wall painting than “the Popolo d’Italia, XIII, 3, March 1935, p. 15): art of pagan and Christian Rome” was now regarded as the indispensable and also natural yardstick of a higher sense of order (F. Melotti, Art thus gives body and human reality to universal supernatural “Autopresentazione”, in Bollettino della Galleria del Milione, no. 40, visions and expresses the symbols of the religious will of the state, just as always happened in antiquity. And it is therefore not a mat- 10–25 May 1935): ter of decorative caprice but of an authentic moral imperative that emanates from architecture. Art has had an angelic, geometric spirit. It addresses the intellect, not the senses. This is why the brushstroke has no importance in painting or modelling in sculpture. It is not modelling that matters 8. Beautiful unreality but modulation. This is not a play on words: modelling comes from It is interesting that the assertion of the primacy of architecture in wall model = nature = disorder; modulation from module = canon = or- painting should have coincided chronologically in Italy precisely with der. The crystal enchants nature. the first work by abstract painters and sculptors, i.e. artists who took The foundations of harmony and counterpoint are to be found in ge- forms in space as a visual theme in its own right. ometry. The architecture of the Greeks, the painting of Piero della Underlying the Italian debate on abstract art is an evident question Francesca, the music of Bach and rational architecture are “exact” about the very function of art after the rift of the avant-garde (As Carlo arts. The forma mentis of their creators is a mathematical forma

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mentis. For them, 1 + 1 is not approximately 2 but 2, neither more You work with your colour as a musician works on sound, until nor less. It is not possible to think of an art without an understand- its evidence is recognized. Thus it is that unusual vibrations are ing of the basics required to master the counterpoint of that art. triggered and we participate directly in the duration of our paint- We believe in the order of Greece. When the sound of the last Greek ing. Light, having become a plastic fact, will give more in terms chisel stopped reverberating, night fell on the Mediterranean, a of geology than meteorology. Our moral landscape will be in this long night illuminated solely by the quarter moon (reflected light) architecture of colours and we will therefore continue our poetic of the Renaissance. Now we feel a breeze starting to blow over the promenade, stopping to note, examine, remember and rediscov- Mediterranean and dare to believe that dawn is approaching. er our very presences. In the new analysis, we will allow for the prejudices and established rights of representation. And though 9. Romanticism feeling ourselves present in the history of other walks, we will not In the by no means painless confrontation with the nineteenth cen- immediately realize that we are in the ideal landscape, but this too tury, which underlay all the Italian art of the interwar period with we will allow for in the analysis to the point of denying it if it is important consequences, the question of “romanticism”, understood better than memory. With the art of colouring, we will regain the as the involvement in art of the most instinctive, irrational parts of instinct of not fearing the consonance of colour. its creator, was felt in particular way some groups of artists in the second half of the thirties. The painter Renato Birolli asserted its im- 10. Painting-painting, Carlo Carrà portance in peremptory terms in his response to an artistic referen- It is precisely in the mid-thirties, while producing and exhibiting fig- dum organized by an architecture magazine in 1936–37 (R. Birolli, ure paintings of a slightly repetitive, archaic and neo-Giottesque nature “Risposta al Referendum ‘Dove va l’arte italiana?’”, in Domus, IX, no. as well as landscapes along lines laid down clearly from Fontanesi to 108, December 1936, p. 54): “I believe in Romanticism with no pre- the early Seurat, Carrà became a point of reference for the most se- fix, using colour to give my vision the power of cantus firmus.” It was rious Italian critics, those rigorously grounded on the aesthetics of obviously easier for him to define its opposite and distance himself pure visibility honed on ancient art. In a long review of the second from what is not romantic creation (“I regard as non-romantic works Rome Quadrennial, Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti used the juxtaposition those that are born out of initial conceptual clarity and then peter out of “non-pittura” (De Chirico) and “pittura-pittura” (Carrà) to establish in an egoistic and abstract hoarding of the aesthetic canon”) and indi- the values of modern Italian painting, regarding a painting like Carrà’s cate the models he saw as negative (“the Odalisque of Ingres and the landscape of the mouth of the river Cinquale (La foce del Cinquale) as Coronation of David are failed masterpieces because they do not con- endowed with “astonishing monumental simplicity”, the work of a soul tain the pure pictorial fact”). that has distilled “the contemplation of its anguish in dense, deep and Birolli painted chaotic, dramatic works in the same years that look to substantial words”. It is interesting that the most essential component a wholly French line of painting (Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh) alter- for him is colour, the one least regarded by formalist critics due to its in- native to the Quattrocento/Novecento axis then in vogue. At the same determinacy. He devoted long passages to this (C. L. Ragghianti, “Studi time, he reflected intensely in his notebooks on what he was doing. He sull’arte italiana contemporanea. Carrà”, in La Critica d’Arte, I, 4, 1935): was unafraid to state (in the first notebook of March–April 1936) that “a painting at its birth is an accumulation of dense, uncorrupted forces of A rare, unprecedented colour of torn and strangely pure tones great specific weight. It is hard to extend them in a spatiality that does that recall barbaric and medieval preferences: the wholly sponta- not cripple their initial power.” The organization of forms in space was neous colour of personal choice, of tonal and qualitative accents therefore seen as a difficulty to be overcome rather than a resource to as though discovered for the first time in a dazzling revelation. Colour so intrinsic and individual, devoid of osmosis with any kind be harnessed. of tradition, still wet from its birth. Nor could it be otherwise, as The primary subject of these pages is colour. The point, he claims, is not reflection will show, given the characteristics of his jealous and se- to intercept the visual impression and reorganize it in the painting but to cluded inspiration outlined above and the acute need by which he do something different: to rediscover a colour that exists in the depths has been spurred since the very first works in pursuit of perfect, of his condition as a man living in an often contradictory way through exhaustive and classical conclusions. This element could not be the intellectual and moral conditions of his time. The lofty precedent of conceived as mediated, received, reflected. All this represents his Van Gogh’s letters is always borne in mind, above all for their dogged in- individuality better than anything else and the nature of the artis- trospection (R. Birolli, “Ottavo taccuino” [1936], in Taccuini 1936–1959, tic path travelled in enlightened solitude, in constant, accentuated edited by E. Emanuelli, Turin, 1960, p. 60): striving for the classical.

68 69 FLAVIO FERGONZI TWELVE CRITICAL THEMES FOR ITALIAN ART BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS

The editorial board of Critica d’Arte also included Roberto Longhi, who of “realism”. And this was a problem that concerned us above all addressed modern art seriously once again in 1937, over twenty years af- as young people because the precondition of our spiritual certain- ter his support for Futurism. For the second edition of the slender volume ties was free examination of the “reality” being created around us, on Carrà published by Hoepli, he wrote an introductory text asserting that a reality that we had to conquer with our own strength in order to the Piedmontese painter had learned from Cézanne and Seurat through feel that it was truly ours with no uncertainty. “internalization” (i.e. absorption almost in terms of feeling) of their technique. The magic of his paintings thus derives from that constant dia- The existentialist philosopher Antonio Banfi was the group’s cultural logue, which repudiated the precepts of Berenson, between sumptuous point of reference. In a crucial work he addressed the concept of “hu- colour and the suggestion of depth. And it is colour that constitutes the manity”, cherished by all the artists who undertake to represent the driving force of invention (R. Longhi, Carlo Carrà, Milan, 1937, p. 15): world they live in and refuse to hide behind reassuring imitation of the museum. According to Banfi, “our humanity” must confront “concrete Carrà rediscovered them [Cézanne and Seurat ] poetically as pas- reality”. Though more moral than visual, this realism undermines one sages, links and accents to be composed in a song whose tone is of the assumptions that had ensured artists a margin of freedom during to be found in an inclination of the mind. In this way, technique the years of Fascism, allowing them to suspend judgment on the present ceases to be a fixed noun and again becomes the motion of ex- and look back to the forms of the past (A. Banfi, “Per la vita dell’arte”, pressive language, to be reinvented every time. Hence the initial in Corrente, II, 4, 28 February 1939): astonishment − followed by an entirely new and unprecedented satisfaction − of finding once again in a painting by Carrà a Art is in crisis. This does not mean that it is in a state of decay but backdrop of atavistic cubic space stained with floating touches, a rather that by necessarily addressing traditional forms and struc- pure, emerald green zone, recalling the two dimensions, suddenly tures whose value cannot make up for the fact of having absolutely plunged into the boldest chiaroscuro or clotted in the no longer no present-day relevance, it is forced to address the problem of its decipherable mixture of a wild and compressed range of colours. concrete reality and thus renew itself in contact with a world un- dergoing renewal. Those who offer models to art today, who harp 11. What kind of realism? on about the works of the past and who seek to draw a traditional Realism is something that enjoyed very little popularity in Italy after line for it show that they have understood neither the radical seri- 1920, being always associated with the art that had dominated the ousness of the problem our art addresses nor the living inner need “stupid nineteenth century”. It was therefore demonized by those who of artistic reality for development. It is not that we do not love the championed the primacy of form and construction, and then sacrificed art of the past, which is also and always the art of the humanity to the requirements of “art for art’s sake”, which inevitably subordinat- that lives forever in us, but that we want our art to be the art of ed the reality of the subject to the paramount importance of style. our humanity that grows and torments itself within us and can be expressed only through the problems that plague contemporary The young Milanese group gathered around the journal Corrente di Vita artistic creation. Giovanile were avowedly tired of the separation of art from life. The battle of modern painting and sculpture was to be fought by facing up 12. The question of the subject to the dramatic existential condition of the artist, not by harbouring the Long ignored, the question of the centrality of the subject depicted in illusion that “lyrical weariness and naturalistic repose” in themselves painting or sculpture began to make itself felt in unprecedentedly dra- were capable of alluding to this condition or — worse still — of providing matic terms during the war. The contrast between the Cremona Prize, consolation. The unsigned manifesto published in the now established with its cogent demand for images of episodes of Fascist Italy, and the journal stated this position with polemical clarity (N.d.R., “Manifesto di Bergamo Prize supported by the minister Giuseppe Bottai (accord- Corrente”, in Corrente di Vita Giovanile, 20, 15 December 1938): ing to whom, the true content of the work of Fascist art was “clarity The perfection and purity of the means of expression cannot dwell of style, straightforwardness of language and interiority of feeling”) so much on echoing its own metaphysical sense. It is a prelude to inevitably heightened awareness of the urgency of the issue, also and the concert of elements greeted by us as a demonstration of the above all among those who no longer regarded themselves as Fascists. rediscovered drama of life above and beyond lyrical weariness and Having rediscovered some years earlier the values, above all moral, naturalistic repose. of the French painting of the nineteenth century, from Delacroix to With this confidence, confirmed by so many experiences, we spoke Courbet and Manet, Renato Guttuso summed up the situation with his

70 71 FLAVIO FERGONZI TWELVE CRITICAL THEMES FOR ITALIAN ART BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS customary intelligence as a writer, taking the formal absolute of Piero An apple, a bottle, a face, men in war or peace, angels in the sky, della Francesca as his point of reference: “Is the Dream of Constantine saints in ecstasy, massacres, the damned in hell, crucifixions or only a machinery of forms or is the Dream of Constantine above all ex- concerts, newspapers, cinemas, museums, streets, countryside, pressed by a machinery of forms?” buildings and closed rooms, unmade beds, discarded objects cov- In 1942 the Roman painter Mario Mafai attacked still life, which he ered in dust. Painting is the form of our coexistence in each of regarded as the most consolatory genre and which the previous gener- these elements or in all of them together. ation, i.e. the avant-garde, had defined as the grammatical cornerstone of the language of modernity. Painting objects lined up on the table, as The crux of his argument is an attack on the theory of pure visibility and Morandi did, struck him as culpable refusal to face the moral challenges its mythologies, the attempt to confine painting to an “abstract” plane of painting, finding consolation in “a static world that he can, howev- (“lyrical” being the adjective used in Italy). Hence Guttuso’s insistence er, move and agitate at will”, that “does not force him into perilous on the value of “being arbitrary” in the choice of subjects to paint and adventures and indulges his precious laziness”. He instead regarded above all on terms “concreteness” and “concrete” with their evident po- figure painting as the best way to address his time face to face. Far litical overtones (Idem, Ibidem, p. 6): from being deterred by the risk of academicism inherent in the nude, he saw the naked body as revealing otherwise inexpressible truths that For fear of being accused of counterfeiting, the painter uses the bind the human figure to the realities of the world as a whole and drive money in circulation. Hence the myth of painting as an abstract the painter to probe the “moral being” of man (M. Mafai, “Il pittore, realm detached from mankind and its thoughts and its actions. l’uomo, le pere”, in Prospettive, VI, 25−26, January−March 1942, pp. There is fear of being arbitrary and it is not realized that this is 19–20): necessitated by the idolatry of painting, which forces the painter, consciously or unconsciously, to reduce every form to its preor- dained spectre of form; that there is no arbitrariness if not in de- The body is more harmonious and fantastic than the face. It opens spising the object in favour of an abstract spectre of it. Because out with elegance between the two branches of the collar bones on everything is always arbitrary in painting, in deciding and choos- the thorax, which breathing causes to expand, thus making visible ing and selecting forms and colours. Deciding how much is needed cords that rise and sink rhythmically, suggesting a harp with two to express what you want to express, not academic approximation. arms. Behind, the vertebral column. This long necklace is a snake (Painting can mean precisely giving concrete shape and real for- with its head flattened against the kidneys, lost in the enchant- mal identification to your free will.) Not therefore idolatry but the ment of the space of the two majestic buttocks. In front, the belly, concrete expression of a world of objects and people within reach like a soft mound with its small crater, the navel, always unstable. of our hands, our discussions and our thoughts; not idolatry in an Beneath, a triangle with no apex. And then the most beautiful col- anti-humanistic modern world but culture taken for granted hour by umns, the legs, the unforeseen ornaments, the bowl of the solemn hour in our most heroic and most habitual actions. pelvis, the perfect shells of the twin kneecaps like a religious emblem. Every time we see a nude it looks as though it has just been cre- This was the essential and crucial starting point for those practicing ated and arouses a feeling of wonder. A strange animality does in the profession of the modern artist during the dramatic succession of fact connect it as part of a mysterious vitality to the other things events from July 1943 to April 1945. In the Primo manifesto di pittori e of nature. scrittori [First manifesto of painters and writers] written in 1943 but not It is difficult today to construct a man as he is. His moral being published until 1947, the three authors Morlotti, Treccani and Vedova escapes us and attempting to define it is like leaping into the void. state that “the painting must be for us one way like another of compro- mising ourselves. With painting we want to raise banners.” And Guttuso At the start of his most dramatic and disjointed text of those years, pub- observed in a letter to Ennio Morlotti in October the same year that lished in the same issue of the magazine as Mafai’s, Guttuso compiled “every specific question regards only one thing: the amount of living a challenging (in its vastness and hence incoherence) catalogue of the flesh there will be in a painting”. subjects of its most recent painting and claimed that the “co-existence” of the man as painter with the reality in which he lives is to sought in 13. The works of a collection the subject (R. Guttuso, “Paura della pittura”, in Prospettive, VI, 25–26, Let us now pick up the thread of the discourse from the beginning. January–March 1942, p. 5): How do the paintings and sculptures of the twenties and thirties in the

72 73 FLAVIO FERGONZI TWELVE CRITICAL THEMES FOR ITALIAN ART BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS

Iannaccone collection stand with respect (or in opposition) to the frame- representational − of the pictorial means had been the great achieve- work of ideas I have endeavoured to outline? ment of the pure visibility school of criticism inspired by Croce and one The first and immediately obvious fact is that classicism, in all the var- that freed artists from obligation of representation governed by the laws ious forms it took during the two decades, has been kept at suitable of the academy. It could, however, also lock them up in the new prison of distance in the collector’s choices. There is nothing by Casorati or De the self-sufficiency of the means themselves in a sort of revived “art for Chirico, nothing by Funi or Campigli, and nothing so far by Carrà or art’s sake”. For some artists, escaping from this prison entailed address- Sironi or Martini with their desperate pursuit of a synthesis of the mod- ing a key phase in European art that had barely touched Italy, namely ern and the classical. The range stretching from Ottone Rosai (L’attesa post-Impressionism and expressionism: from Gauguin and Van Gogh to [Waiting] and I giocatori di toppa [“Toppa” Players], 1920) to Emilio Matisse and the Germans of Die Brücke. Unloved and often despised by Vedova (Il caffeuccio veneziano [Venetian Café], 1942) demonstrates an Italy’s dominant artistic culture, those paintings offered an important allegiance to the opposite values. These two chronological extremes resource: an opportunity to learn how to look at reality from a different tell a tale of minority culture, of unappeased youthful fury and even angle, through eyes informed by a new sense of involvement. of outspoken opposition to the widespread pride in the reinstatement of the national tradition, to the neo-humanistic mythology of Fascism and to the various consolations offered by a higher kind of formalism (including abstract art). The harsh tang of Rosai’s paintings, halfway between a distraught Fra Angelico and a vernacular nineteenth century speaks of a humanity stubbornly irreducible to the new figurative myths of the return to order. The jarring execution and unbreathable atmosphere of Vedova’s Caffeuccio mark a point of no return. Presented in the last edition of the Bergamo Prize, the painting was seen as an authentic anti-classical bomb by the young people of the Corrente group, for whom it was impossible to construct a new, “modern” form of painting at the height of the war without first destroying the basic values of what had been fashionable for twenty years. Between these two dates, 1920 and 1942, there are works indicative of evident discord with respect the visual world cherished by the dominant culture: bodies exposed in their defenceless nakedness, mysterious allegories and ceremonies, prosaic but oddly enchanted visions, myths excised from history and represented with primitive candour, the influence of the most libertarian French art and walks through museums without being guided by the predilec- tions of mainstream art critics. An unquiet literary sensibility appears to underlie all these works and the elegiac register, to which the thirties were well disposed, was tinged with tragedy. Also evident in the choices of the Iannaccone collection is a focus on Italian works produced in relation to a precise line in the European figurative culture, one that identifies its modern identity in the subversive power of sign and colour. The concept of “expression” acts as a by no means trivial link between the works of the various artists. The person who has gathered these paintings together knows that the deep content to be read there, independently of what is represented, consists in an attitude of judgment on the artistic and human condition of the period, as manifested through the use of the freest pictorial means, sign and colour, those that express the artist’s inner life most directly. The emphasis on the lyrical value − purely expressive and not simply

74 75 Garbari: a Master

elena pontiggia

The last artist — for the time being — to enter the Collezione Giuseppe Iannaccone, Tullio Garbari is actually the first in what we might call a logical sense, as the group of young artists that gathered around Persico in the early thirties, starting with Birolli, saw him as a master and indeed the master par excellence. When a show of work by the Primitivist Di Terlizzi was inaugurated at the Galleria del Milione on 30 November 1930 with a presentation by Garbari entitled La dispettosa Musa, Persico sent the latter an eloquent telegram hailing him as a master of the new Italian art. The signatories included the equally significant names of Carlo Belli, Garrone, Sassu, Birolli, Manzù, Del Bon, Lilloni and Spilimbergo.1 This was no mere compliment. In addition to drawing on Garbari’s advice for the Milione’s programme, Persico planned to hold two shows of his work in the gallery in the space of a year. The first opened almost immediately on 17 January 1931. The second and much larger exhibition, including work by a group of young artists close to Garbari, was to have taken place in November: “A score of young people, encouraged on by me, have decided to form a group […] These young people see you as a great master and wish to create an authentic school of realism together with you. It would be therefore best for the show of all your work to be held next November and for these young people to accompany you, not with good intentions but with their own works.” The same letter, dated 27 December 1930, also announced Persico’s intention to bring out a tribute to Garbari through the Milione publishing house.2 Persico wrote again on 7 January 1931, not long before the opening of the first show (the second never took place), to clarify his intentions: “With regard to the group of new artists, it is best to refer to them, as I did in my letter, as a school. You are free to decide whether to take part […] All I need to know at present is whether you are willing to show work together with people like Bozzetti from Turin, Lilloni, Ghiringhelli and Del Bon from Trentino and a few others that you already know and that I will refrain from naming for brevity.”3 First and foremost among the few others was Birolli, the member of 1 C. Garbari, “Tullio Garbari: una vita attraverso i documenti”, in D. Primerano, the “school” most responsive to Garbari’s painting. His San Zeno pe- R. Turrina (edited by), Tullio Garbari. Lo sguardo severo della bontà, scatore [St Zeno, the Fisherman], 1931, is influenced by Garbari’s San exhibition catalogue (Trento, 30 June − 4 November 2007), Trento, 2007, Cristoforo [St Christopher] and his Ritratto di Tomea [Portrait of Tomea], p. 204. 2 Persico to Garbari, 27 December 1930, 1931, Sposa [Bride], 1932, and Ritratto del padre [Portrait of the Artist’s in F. Lanza Pietromarchi, “Carteggio inedito Garbari Persico”, in E. Pontiggia Father], 1933, recall Garbari’s vaguely Douanier-like faces. (edited by), Edoardo Persico e gli artisti, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, 11 June − 13 September 1998), Milan, 1998, pp. 160−61. 3 Persico to Garbari, 7 January 1931, Ibidem, p. 163.

77 ELENA PONTIGGIA GARBARI: A MASTER

Garbari’s influence was not, however, confined solely to style. Drawn mental rather than realistic dimension of his painting, which was even primarily from the Gospels, the Bible and lives of saints, his subjects described as surrealistic at the time. It is precisely this anti-classical were marked by deep religious feeling despite departing from the of- classicality that most intensely informs the art of a master whose ten overly sweetened traditional approach. His painting thus offered premature death at the age of just 39 in October 1931 removed him the highest and most fully aware example of the “modern art reconciled from the art scene of his time all too soon. with God” that Persico advocated. Before moving to Paris in 1931, Garbari had lived in Milan, albeit with interruptions, since 1927 and therefore left an imprint on the younger Milanese artists with his physical presence as well as his works (shown at the Scopinich gallery in 1927, the Bardi in 1930 and the Milione in 1931). Moreover, like Arturo Martini, he was one of the few artists that interested both Margherita Sarfatti and Persico, both the classically inspired Novecento movement and its neo-romantic adversaries, as shown, for example, by Sironi’s convinced praise of the show of 1931 at the Milione. This review is never quoted but well worth remembering. The painter of the Outskirts writes: “Garbari has not been twiddling his thumbs. His fertile and fully developing activity happily dispels the clouds of mystery and aloofness in which he loved to hide. The manifestations of this contemplative and poetic soul are always a matter of interest and discussion. Garbari is not a sensual or simply instinctive painter. He loves symbols, poetic and indeed philosophical concepts, painting that always contains an idea, a spiritual motion [...] he expresses the limpid, innocent sense that comes from the sky, the earth, the solemn peaks contemplated with purity and lightness of spirit. And this pure serenity, this pellucid song […] is in turn a symbol of the sensitive, spiritual atmosphere in which all the dreams and visions of this impassioned and noble artist take place.”4 Why is it that observers with so very different views express in the same praise? Because Garbari’s painting combines the classical ideal with the influence of the Douanier Rousseau and the sermo humilis of rustic art to arrive at a sort of folk-art classicism capable of pleasing both Novecento and the Primitivists. Being well aware of the singularity of his art, Garbari in any case refused to be identified with either group. On the one hand, he drew inspiration from Maritain, whose Art and Scholasticism (1920) sang the praises of maladresse or clumsiness as against expertise. It is this conception that gives rise to the intentional errors in perspective and anatomy of his works, the soft, rubbery shapes of so many of his figures and the lack of proportion between his compositional elements. On the other, however, Garbari drew on a lofty tradition stretch- 4 M [M. Sironi], “Mostre di pittura”, ing from the Etruscans to the thirteenth century, above all in his in Il Popolo d’Italia, 22 January 1931. This piece is mentioned in the literature late works. Severini recalls that they spoke in their last meeting in on Garbari but has never been examined in any of the studies and does not appear 1931 about the need to return to Margaritone d’Arezzo, Coppo di in the anthology of Sironi’s writings edited by E. Camesasca (Mario Sironi. Marcovaldo and Giunta Pisano in order to rediscover a metaphysical Scritti editi e inediti, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1980). Due to a printing error, which 5 conception of art. Hence the solemnity, the hieratic quality and the I take this opportunity to point out, nor does it appear in my own list of Sironi’s articles for Il Popolo d’Italia published in Mario Sironi. Scritti inediti (1927-1931), Milan: Abscondita, 2013, pp. 91−92. 5 G. Severini, “Garbari nel ricordo di Severini”, in Il Milione, no. 44, 25 January 1936, n.p.n..

78 79 Lilloni, De Rocchi and Del Bon: the Chiaristi in the Collezione Giuseppe Iannaccone

lorella giudici

I can only say that it was a form of painting that united us, a form deriving from something that was in the air and inside us too: an inner lightness that was our guide. We all obviously continued, however, to be the painters we were. – Francesco De Rocchi1

Umberto Lilloni painted Uliveto ad Arenzano [Olive Grove at Arenzano] [W. NO. 45] in 1931. Although the title stresses the characteristic trees of the Liguria region’s landscape, they only serve, with their feathery canopies and black silhouetted trunks, as a frame for a town as small as a crib scene, a small cluster of houses in pastel shades as fragile as blown glass. Standing amongst them, the grey church of Santi Nazario e Celso nestles in the curve of an olive tree that seems to bend precisely in order to make room for it. With their simplified façades and little windows aligned like squared paper, the buildings have the solidity of a mirage. Between the impalpable blue of the sky and the quiet green of the meadow, they conjure up the enchanted, idyllic atmosphere of a fairytale. It was painted a few months before the solo show Lilloni held in February at the Galleria del Milione, confined exclusively to landscapes stylistically very similar to this, which prompted Sironi to express flattering judge- ments but also some important observations: “his eminently colouristic gifts manifest themselves with dreamy delicacy […] sophisticated nuanc- es […] dense with colouristic meaning, embedded in an instinctive play of tonalities that is characteristic of the new Lombard school and indeed almost its secret. […] Primitive painting in its light hues, its naive and imaginative visuality, the absence of shadow, chiaroscuro contrast and mechanical ostentation, the subtle expressive power of the colour, which seems to generate itself and sometimes to halt at an unsophisticated stage of folk art.”2 The predominance of colour over draughtsmanship, absence of chiaroscuro, sweetly expressive hues and primitivism of the Garbari variety, a mixture of culture, sincerity and folk art, prompted Sironi to speak of a “new Lombard school”, thus alluding to the great nineteenth-century tradition of Gola and Piccio all the way up to the Scapigliatura movement of Ranzoni and Cremona but also the “naivety” of Masolino and Luini as well as the simple folk art of wayside chapels. Carrà too had seen “the links […] with Gola” two years earlier on the occasion of a show held by the painter at the Galleria Bardi, even though “Lilloni […] does not close his eyes to

1 F. De Rocchi, in R. Margonari, R. Modesti, Il chiarismo lombardo, Milan: Vangelista, 1986, p. 28. 2 M. Sironi, in Il Popolo d’Italia, Milan, 11 March 1931.

81 LORELLA GIUDICI LILLONI, DE ROCCHI AND DEL BON: THE CHIARISTI IN THE COLLEZIONE GIUSEPPE IANNACCONE other values that exist outside the regional orbit.”3 This strong link with is insufficient to take up the numerous questions and illustrate the many “the Lombard stock”4 was indeed to be a fixed point of reference for the facets, readers are referred to her works for the more analytical consider- painting all the Chiaristi and especially the five from Milan: De Rocchi, ations. The basic aspects will instead be outlined here and related to the De Amicis, Del Bon, Spilimbergo and of course Lilloni himself. A look at works in the Iannaccone collection. the literature on Chiarismo and its individual practitioners reveals in fact “There is no Chiarismo without the last Brera Biennial of 1927.” De that the interweaving of recognition and misunderstanding revolves pre- Amicis thus established not only a date of birth but also an artistic and cisely around this origin. cultural context of anything but secondary importance. The exhibition What was Chiarismo? It was certainly not a movement. It never had the saw the participation of many future Chiaristi, including De Rocchi, Del physiognomy of an organized, compact, homogeneous group, nor did the Bon, De Amicis, Lilloni and Ghiringhelli. The last three also carried off artists involved ever consider themselves such. As De Rocchi put it, they the top honours, De Amicis being awarded the gold medal while Lilloni all continued to be the painters they were, admitting a nebulous varie- and Ghiringhelli were joint winners of the coveted Principe Umberto ty of heterogeneous colleagues to their ranks — such as Vernizzi, Birolli, Prize. Nearly all of them were born in 1898 apart from De Rocchi and Broggini, Semeghini, Ghiringhelli and Sassu, to name just a few — some De Amicis (both 1902). All of them were recent graduates of the Brera only for a fleeting period. Moreover, contrary to what has often been writ- Academy, where Ambrogio Alciati’s course on painting had imbued them ten, Chiarismo never saw itself as a reaction to the neoclassicism of the with a love of free, vibrant brushwork, soft, glowing colour and hues shot Novecento Italiano group, to the dark colours of Sironi, the solid volumes through with emotion and lyricism; in short, for the art of Gola and nine- of Funi or the limpid, closed perimeters of Dudreville. If anything, what teenth-century Lombard painting. On their highly successful debut, these the five Milanese painters developed was gradual detachment with no young talents were given a place of honour in Margherita Sarfatti’s review 12 rifts and polemics, progressive abandonment of the forms, colours and 3 C. Carrà, L’Ambrosiano, Milan, in Il Popolo d’Italia. Above all, they aroused the interest of Pietro Maria 6 December 1929. subjects of the artists with whom they had indeed entered into dialogue 4 Ibidem. Bardi, director of the Galleria Micheli and soon to be the owner of the 5 De Rocchi, Del Bon, De Amicis and 5 and exhibited work in the twenties and on up to 1931. Nor can Chiarismo Lilloni, for example, took part in the first Galleria Bardi and of what Persico and Ghiringhelli were to develop after Novecento Italiano exhibition in 1929 be seen as a forerunner or a weaker version of the Corrente group, as has and some of them also in the his departure for Rome as the Galleria del Milione. These galleries were international events subsequently sometimes been claimed, taking the lyricism and delicacy of that muted organized by Margherita Sarfatti in to hold solo and group shows of work by all the young Chiaristi. Bardi was Buenos Aires, Munich and Stockholm. light as a sign of hesitancy instead of an initial symptom of the change now 6 Out of so many, suffice it to quote also closely related to the critics Giolli and Persico, who played a key part Torriano, who was prompted on two 6 under way and indeed promptly noted by the critics of time. Moreover, occasions by the works on show at the in the birth and development of Chiarismo and its major practitioners. Fascist Union of Fine Arts exhibitions the idea is not even justifiable solely on the basis of a luminous painting of 1932 and 1934, to ask: “Is Lombard art In addition to being one of the militant critics most attuned to the voices perhaps at a turning point?” and “Is this in auroral hues, obtained in certain cases by means of a wet, white ground the rebirth of a painting of sensitivity?” of his time, Raffaello Giolli (Alessandria, 1889 – Mauthausen, 1945) was Both quotations, originally published in like that of a fresco, a technique developed by Birolli around 1929−30 and La Casa Bella, are now in E. Pontiggia, also among the most fervent admirers of nineteenth-century Italian and Il Chiarismo, Milan: Abscondita, 2006, 7 later adopted also by Del Bon. As Cristoforo De Amicis stated, refuting pp. 20, 25. especially Lombard painting, which he considered equal if not indeed su- 7 Renato Birolli recalls this in his one of the many clichés that have only caused confusion over the years, notebooks: “Around 1929−31 I started perior to French Impressionism, above all because it came first and then covering what was called medieval “Chiarismo does not mean just painting with white but the fusion of light canvas (pure hemp) with a thin layer because the Italians preferred the throbbing pulse of life to a science of of zinc white, leaving the marks in 8 13 and colour in form.” charcoal exposed. While the white was vision. He wrote a monograph on Gola in 1929 as well as numerous arti- still moist, I painted on this layer, thus Well then, what was Chiarismo? It was a climate of expression or, as De obtaining light, vibrant hues almost like cles on Spadini, Ranzoni, Cremona, Piccio, Mancini, Zandomeneghi and fresco. […] Instead of clotting, the paint 9 14 15 Rocchi says, “something in the air”, hard to pin down in a formula but flowed fluidly over the white and mixed others in newspapers and in art magazines that he founded or to which with it slightly.” Renato Birolli, Taccuini 16 certainly a marked presence in the Milanese cultural debate of the thir- 1936–1959, edited by E Emanuelli, Turin: he contributed. He championed Italy’s nineteenth-centry art when it Einaudi, 1960, p. 157. ties, of which it was a by no means marginal but rather central manifes- 8 P. R. De Rocchi, Conversazione con was forgotten and insulted precisely by its own xenophile critics: “After Cristoforo De Amicis, now in E. Pontiggia tation. (edited by), Il Chiarismo, cit., 2006, p. 42. the anxieties and dreams of Faruffini and Piccio, after Scrosati, after, in 9 F. De Rocchi, in R. Margonari, R. 10 After the initial, indispensable work of Margonari and Modesti, the Modesti, Il chiarismo..., cit., 1986, p. 28. short, the so-called ‘prophetic’ period, the awareness of a new kind of 10 Ibidem. person who has reconstructed all the history of Milanese Chiarismo and 11 See E. Pontiggia, I chiaristi. Milano painting, naked and vibrant, resolute and convincing, took shape pre- e l’Alto Mantovano negli anni Trenta, explained its various aspects, origins and implications in the context of Milan: Mazzotta, 1996; E. Pontiggia, cisely in Ranzoni, after which it succeeded in convincing and changing “Una stagione neo-romantica. Pittura the Italian scene of the thirties is Elena Pontiggia. She has definitively e scultura a Milano negli anni trenta”, Cremona, and in forming this important modern movement that was to in E. Pontiggia, N. Colombo and irrefutably taken stock of the situation in a number of publications (edited by), Milano Anni Trenta, 12 M. Sarfatti, “La ‘seconda ondata’ alla sweep Carcano and Mosè Bianchi along with it, and to instruct Segantini, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Spazio Mostra di Brera”, in Il Popolo d’Italia, 11 17 and exhibitions, providing a scholarly, chronological reconstruction of Oberdan, 2 December 2004 – 27 Milan, 21 October 1927. Conconi, Gola and Previati freely.” February 2005), Milan: Mazzotta, 2004; 13 R. Giolli, Emilio Gola, Milan: Anonima an often misunderstood history so as to give Chiarismo and its practi- E. Pontiggia (edited by), Il Chiarismo, Editrice Arte, 1929. Edoardo Persico (Naples, 1900 – Milan, 1936) arrived in Milan at the cit., 2006; E. Pontiggia, Il Chiarismo. 14 Mainly La Sera and L’Ambrosiano. tioners their due place and importance. As the space at our disposal here Omaggio a De Rocchi. Luce e colore 15 Problemi d’Arte Attuale, Colosseo end of 1929 by way of Turin to direct Bardi’s gallery and write for the nella Milano degli anni trenta, exhibition – Colonna, Poligono and Vetrina. catalogue (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 16 Pagine d’Arte, Emporium, La Casa Bella, 16 June – 5 September 2010), Milan: Rassegna d’Arte Antica e Moderna, Skira, 2010. See also R. Bossaglia, I Cronache Latine and Domus. chiaristi, Milan, 1999, and F. Rovesti 17 R. Giolli, “Il rinnovatore della pittura (edited by), Il chiarismo milanese lombarda: Daniele Ranzoni”, in La Sera, (exhibition catalogue), Legnano, 2004. Milan, 13 February 1923, p. 3.

82 83 LORELLA GIUDICI LILLONI, DE ROCCHI AND DEL BON: THE CHIARISTI IN THE COLLEZIONE GIUSEPPE IANNACCONE magazine Casabella. A friend of Gobetti and Lionello Venturi with a keen the Novecento group with fragile, minimal figures, forms full of air and interest in philosophy and French painting, Persico talked to artists about vapour. A sense of the fleetingness of time and an ideal romantic rela- Maritain and Permeke, about Impressionism (which he interpreted as the tionship between art and life replaced myth and history. These changes throbbing of existence) and primitivism (filtered through the theories of were all perceived by Torriano in his review of the 1932 exhibition of the Venturi, who published Il gusto dei primitivi in 1926), about St Thomas and III Sindacale Lombarda [Lombardy Fascist Union of Fine Arts], in which the Laethem School, converting them to a kind of “modern art reconciled all the Chiaristi took part, where he spoke of “impressionistic romanti- with God”,18 to painting in which “form is born out of colour and never cism understood as art seeking the liberation of instinct”. He pinpointed outline”,19 and gathering around himself first the Six Painters of Turin its characteristics as: “primitive representation […] predominantly light (a group he introduced in an exhibition in 1929) and then the Chiaristi, colours, lively and most often flat, which do not aim at volume […], the albeit without ever describing the latter as such. transfiguration of reality, fantasies […], poetic freedom”.28 In his review As Elena Pontiggia points out in her writings, the first to speak of paint- of the same event, Giolli spoke long before many others of the “chiarità” ing characterized by lightness and light (“pittura chiara e leggera”) and or lightness of the paintings of Lilloni and Del Bon: “a substantial, satu- a “tendency towards the lightest hues” was rather the critic and writer rated lightness that loves the white flame of lime more than the transpar- Leonardo Borgese, a painter in his own right. It was in a review published ency of air; or lightness that is instead slightly languid and gentle but also 1. Angelo Del Bon, La zingara, 1934. in L’Italia Letteraria20 in 1935 on the 6th exhibition of the Milan Fascist Maria Grazia Boldrocchi collection so firm and good, so taut and living; or a rosy, bodiless lightness explor- Union of Fine Arts21 that he spoke of the “extreme consequences of this ing beyond the body”.29 chiarismo” being manifest in the paintings of Del Bon and De Rocchi.22 All this is perhaps most evident, however, in the portraits.30 Instead of the It is, however, Guido Piovene that went down in history four years later, brawny, vigorous limbs of Novecento art, the Chiaristi presented slight, perhaps recalling Borgese’s article, by describing Lilloni as “one of the flimsy bodies with perimeters devoid of thickness, beings with deliberate- most important chiaristi” in a review, published in the Corriere della Sera ly ungainly anatomical proportions, clumsy poses and dazed expressions. 18 E. Persico, in E. Pontiggia (edited newspaper, of a solo show of the painter’s work at the Galleria Grande in by), Persico e gli artisti. Il percorso The people appearing in the midst of those elusive, undisciplined brush- di un critico dall’impressionismo al 23 Milan. primitivismo, Milan: Electa, 1998, p. 28. strokes, which vaporize the background but also the figures, are more Readers are referred to this work for Let us go back for a moment to the events of the early years. The cru- further information on Persico and his suited to dreaming than action, to listening than self-exhibition, more role in Italian art in the twenties and cial moment came in November 1930 with a group show of work by some thirties. apparitions of colour and light than human beings of flesh and blood. As 19 E. Persico, “I sei pittori di Torino”, known and very young Lombard artists at the newborn and ultra-modern in Le Arti Plastiche, Milan, 10 July 1929, Bonardi wrote, “De Rocchi is still painting for ghosts. In other words, he now in G. Veronesi, Edoardo Persico. 24 Galleria del Milione in the heart of Milan at number 21 Via Brera, right Tutte le opere (1932–1935), vol. 1, Milan: captures transcendental apparitions in which, however, human warmth is Edizioni di Comunità, 1964, p. 81. in front of the Brera Academy. Those taking part included De Rocchi, 20 L. Borgese, “La IV [sic] Sindacale deviated into investigations whose cerebral, intellectualistic character is di Milano”, in L’Italia Letteraria, Rome, 31 Del Bon, Lilloni, Spilimbergo, Sassu, Bogliardi and Ghiringhelli but also 11 May 1935, now in E. Pontiggia not hard to detect.” (edited by), Il Chiarismo, cit., 2006, p. 27. Fontana, Soldati and Melotti as well as the architects Figini and Pollini. 21 Borgese himself showed two paintings Let us therefore pause to examine one of the many figures that De Rocchi in this exhibition: Rose di campagna Bonardi drew attention to “a very personal still life by Angelo Del Bon in [Wild Roses] (no. 110) and Maddalena painted in this period and that now belongs to the Iannaccone collection, penitente [Penitent Magdalene] which the freshness of pictorial expression wholly peculiar to Lombardy (no. 111, reprod. in cat.). 2. Angelo Del Bon, Lo schermidore, 1934. namely his Popolana [Young Peasant Woman] [W. NO. 32] (1933), also known 22 In the VI Sindacale (6th exhibition Milan, private collection 32 lives again” and to a landscape by Adriano Spilimbergo, “interesting for of the Fascist Union of Fine Arts) (Milan, as Giovane contadina [Young Farmer Woman]. Palazzo della Permanente, 1−31 May 25 its unadorned concision but somewhat dry”. An unsigned review in the 1935), Del Bon and De Rocchi each The woman’s full, rounded body occupies the centre of the painting and showed two works in room IX, the former Corriere della Sera instead noted the “quiet harmony of soft blues and pale two landscapes (nos. 227 and 228), one nearly all the surface but is astonishingly weightless, as though made of of which with a cyclist in the depths of greens with an intimate sense of rustic peace and rest” in a landscape by a wood (reprod. in cat.), and the latter air. Barely enough space is left to sketch a few uprights of the railing be- Neve [Snow] (no. 229) and Inverno Lilloni and the “shades of grey combined with fine and sober taste” in a [Winter] (n. 230). low and two glimpses of landscape between the shoulders and the thin 23 G. Piovene, “Artisti che espongono. 28 P. Torriano, “I giovani alla III Sindacale 26 figure by Virginio Ghiringhelli. Umberto Lilloni”, in Corriere della Sera, lombarda”, in La Casa Bella, no. 51, strip of the sky. The trees, farmhouses, trellises and objects of the coun- Milan, 29 December 1939. Milan, March 1932; now in E. Pontiggia The change was now under way and the rift with Novecento Italiano grad- 24 Designed and furnished by Pietro Lingeri (edited by), Il Chiarismo, cit., 2006, p. 20. tryside look like toys of the flimsiest possible kind by comparison. More with large display cases and a modern 29 R. Giolli, “Alla Sindacale Lombarda. ually became irreparable. Painting “pervaded by almost seraphic love, and, for the period, unusual glass door. L’ultima sala”, in Cronache Latine, II, than a world of things, it is like a collection of memories, distant evoca- Offering not only exhibition spaces but no. 8−9, Milan, 20−27 February 1932. 27 suffused with mysticism and not so much painted as dreamt” was their also a library of European and Italian 30 For a broader discussion of the tions of childhood, something carried inside us because it has belonged art books and journals for consultation, relationship between Chiarismo and response to a Platonic, neo-Renaissance conception of the world and hu- the gallery became the driving force figure, see the present author’s study, to entire generations. The woman, remembered by the painter’s daughter of Italian abstraction after Persico’s “Il chiarismo e la figura”, in E. Pontiggia manity. The latter was replaced in Chiarismo to a dimension of doubt, resignation in 1931 and organized shows (edited by), Il Chiarismo. Omaggio as Cesarina, the family’s willing servant, wears a work apron and a very not only of Melotti, Fontana and Licini a De Rocchi. Luce e colore nella Milano fully aware of all the uncertainty of life and what Pascal described as its but also Léger, Kandinsky and Mondrian. degli anni trenta, exhibition catalogue simple dress. The serene face, framed by small, brown curls and illumi- For the history of the gallery and abstract (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 16 June wretchedness but also emotionally responsive to its beauty. They respond- art in Italy, see E. Pontiggia, Il Milione – 5 September 2010), Milan: Skira, 2010, nated by almost transparent eyes, recalls the kindness and good nature of e l’astrattismo 1932 - 1938, Milan: pp. 95–98. ed to the solid, powerful volumes and brawny, robust draughtsmanship of Electa, 1988. 31 D. Bonardi, in La Sera, Milan, 28 the saints frescoed by Gaudenzio and Luini in the Sanctuary of Saronno. 25 D. Bonardi, in La Sera, Milan, December 1932. 27 November 1930. 32 For De Rocchi, see E. Pontiggia, 26 Anonymous, in Corriere della Sera, Francesco De Rocchi (1902–1978). Milan, 28 November 1930. L’aspirazione alla luce, Milan: 27 P. Torriano, “Cronache d’arte. Fondazione Stelline, 1998, and Eadem Due giovani”, in La Casa Bella, no. 49, (edited by), Il Chiarismo. Omaggio Milan, January 1932, p. 54. a De Rocchi, cit., 2010.

84 85 LORELLA GIUDICI LILLONI, DE ROCCHI AND DEL BON: THE CHIARISTI IN THE COLLEZIONE GIUSEPPE IANNACCONE

The figure as a whole encapsulates the simplicity of the humble (inspired fortress, however, it seems to float like a little boat on an ethereal lake of by an enthusiastic reading of Manzoni), who know that life is toil but also elusive colour. This impression is made still stronger by the minute farm- wonder, moral commitment and calm acceptance. The clear, misty light in houses and the sheaves of hay surfacing here and there in a sea of small shades of liquid pink is handed down by tradition but almost monochrome flecks. A scene of ploughing initially completed the view of an industrious in colour — in a suffused gradation of hazel and pale powdery hues, au- rural area accustomed to the slow passage of time and the seasons, to tumnal ivories and browns — and characterized in form by thin, simplified the caress of light and air. This was how Del Bon had presented it for the outlines in which echoes of Modigliani ring out loud and clear. Like every- 4. Umberto Lilloni, Study for “Risveglio”, 1931. Bergamo Prize in 1939, devoted that year to the subject of landscape.39 On Milan, Renata Lilloni collection one else, De Rocchi had seen the show held at the 1930 Venice Biennial its return to the studio, however, the artist pared the composition down to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the master’s death with thir- still further, removing every reference to labour and replacing the plough ty-eight oil paintings, some sculptures and about ten drawings selected with strokes of light, glowing colour. The painting then entered the col- by Lionello Venturi.33 lection of Bruno Grossetti, owner of the Galleria Annunciata, where the Verging on eternity in the portraits of Sironi, Bucci, Oppi and Funi, the Chiaristi showed their work at the end of the decade. temporal dimension of De Rocchi’s Popolana [W. NO. 32] is instead the se- The end of an era was marked by Giolli, first with an article in Domus raphic time of patient waiting, of a life that knows no dramatic turns of (February 1942) and then with a monograph on Spilimbergo in 1943. It events or tragedies and has its sure, rewarding and deeply Franciscan ref- is, however, what he wrote in the former that strikes us as interesting uge in the soul. The figures painted by the Chiaristi are in any case a here. The end of the decade was already enough for a change in views family of clumsy actors, too awkward for any performance but perfect for 3. Adriano Spilimbergo, Lania, 1936. and for critics to look back with the slight suspicion or fear that what had Milan, Spilimbergo collection a life more imagined than actually lived, evoked rather than consumed. been taken as the child of tradition was instead a sign of weakness: “Who Del Bon’s Lo schermidore [The Fencer] [FIG. 2] and La zingara [Female Gipsy] can say that Lo schermidore [The Fencer] [FIG. 2], Del Bon’s painting for the [FIG. 1] (both 1934), Spilimbergo’s Lania [FIG. 3] (1936), Lilloni’s Studio per Principe Umberto Prize, is a work of Chiarismo? Light it certainly is, but “Risveglio” [Study for “Awakening”] [FIG. 4] (1931) and the Ritratto del figlio all of Del Bon − the Del Bon that is indelibly imprinted on our eyes, that [Portrait of the Artist’s Son] [FIG. 5] by De Amicis (1936) are a series of pure, has accompanied us with violence − rejects, refuses and clashes with that unblemished souls, anti-heroic by vocation, a procession of romantic soft definition of art. No flames other than bitter flames, no transparen- dreamers. cies other than icy transparencies, shakes and shudders in his painting,

De Rocchi presented a Popolana lombarda [Peasant Woman from 5. Cristoforo De Amicis, Ritratto del figlio, in the painting that matters, which may be light, flooded with light, but Lombardy] in 1935 at the second Rome Quadrennial and was to win the 1936. Milan, private collection is also harrowing.”40 Principe Umberto Prize the following year with another work on the same subject. Carrà described these paintings, which place sentiment rather than the person in the centre of the painting, as conveying a sense of 34 “mute despair, the inward-looking melancholy of a crepuscular poet”. 33 Modigliani had also been featured in a number of publications. Scheiwiller Carrà drew attention to the “vast artistic movement now taking shape” published a monograph In 1927 and drawings by the artist appeared in 35 in his review of a group show that opened at the Galleria del Milione in Belvedere (Bardi’s journal). Problemi d’Arte Attuale, a journal founded 36 January 1936 at the very time of Persico’s death at his home in Milan. by Giolli, featured him on the cover and nearly all the pages inside in 1929. The participants included Sassu, Birolli, Broggini, Tomea, De Amicis, Giolli brought out a monographic issue of Poligono in February 1930 De Rocchi, Ghiringhelli, Lilloni and Del Bon but also Marini, Fontana, and Scheiwiller published Omaggio a Modigliani in the same period. Melotti, Messina, Reggiani and Borra. Del Bon, who showed a Venetian 34 C. Carrà, “La pittura alla Quadriennale romana”, in L’Ambrosiano, Milan, landscape and a still life, was likened to a “painter of magnesium flashes, 25 March 1935. 35 C. Carrà, “Mostre d’Arte”, in interested not so much in volume as in the resonant softness of pink and L’Ambrosiano, no. 15, Milan, 17 January 1936, p. 3. 37 silvery greys”. This would hold also for the expanse of hills sprinkled 36 For a biography of Edoardo Persico by the present author, see E. Pontiggia with sulphurous yellows, verdigris, pale violet-pinks and magnesium greys (edited by), Persico e gli artisti, cit., 1998, pp. 164–73. in his Rocca delle Caminate n. 2 [W. NO. 33] (1935). The castle, geographical- 37 “Mostre d’Arte”, in L’Ambrosiano, cit., 17 January 1936, p. 3. For Del Bon and ly located in the municipal territory of Meldola not far from Predappio, his work, see G. Marchiori, M. Carrà, B. Grossetti, Angelo del Bon. Tutte 38 Mussolini’s birthplace, had been restored a decade earlier and was paint- le opere, Turin: Bolaffi, 1977. 38 The restoration, which took place 39 See O. Sellani, Premio Bergamo. Mostra ed by Del Bon on the crest of the undulating hills of the Emilia region be- between 1924 and 1927, was funded Nazionale del Paesaggio, exhibition by citizens of the Romagna region by catalogue (Bergamo, Palazzo della neath an impalpable sky. Rather than appearing as a powerful, turreted popular subscription and the castle was Ragione, September–October 1939), then donated to Mussolini, who used Istituto Italiano d’Arti Grafiche, Bergamo, it as his summer residence. A beacon 1939, n.p.n. installed on the entirely rebuilt tower 40 R. Giolli, “Posizione di Del Bon”, emitted a beam of light in the three in Domus, Milan, February 1942, colours of the Italian flag visible at pp. 92–93; an extract is now in a distance of over 60 kilometres E. Pontiggia (edited by), Il Chiarismo, whenever the Duce was in residence. cit., 2006, p. 122.

86 87 Reality and Utopia. The Birolli Paintings in the Collezione Giuseppe Iannaccone elena pontiggia

Prologue “You must know Giuseppe Iannaccone,” said Ro’ when I called on her at Via Plinio 70 one day back in 1985 or ’86, thirty years ago. Ro’ was Birolli’s wife, “the good and wonderful Rosa” as he called her in his notebooks, and her home on Via Plinio was where they had gone to live just after their wedding in 1938. The artist’s studio was still there with a large unfinished painting on the easel by the kitchen with its small balcony full of plants and flowers. For me, Ro’ was always Professoressa Rossi, my art teacher at middle school on Via Colletta. I had been one of her least bright and gifted pupils there years before, saved only by the miracle of her exceptional talent for teaching. She could have taught a fish or an umbrella to draw and succeeded to some extent even with me, who handled a pencil about as well as someone whose hands had been crippled in the Great War. “You must know lo Iannaccone,” she insisted, with the Lombard mania for inflicting a definite article on every name or surname. “He’s not like certain collectors [reeling off a list that I cannot repeat here]. He’s really in love with art, in love with Birolli.” This is how I came to meet Iannaccone in his law firm office on the corner of Via Cesare Battisti near the justice building. I have seen many masterpieces by Birolli and others enter his collection since then, even though Birolli’s work has always been its emblem, so to speak. L’Arlecchino [Harlequin] [W. NO. 9]), Tassì rosso [Red Taxi] [W. NO. 11], Periferia [Outskirts] [W. NO. 10], I poeti [The Poets] [W. NO. 14], La nuova Ecumene [The New Ecumene] [W. NO. 13], Caos I [Chaos I] [W. NO. 15], Maschere [Masks] [W. NO. 17] and Signora col cappello [Lady in a Hat] [W. NO. 19] are not only peaks of his art but also paradigms of a conception of painting as colour, pathos and existential exploration in accordance with the neo-romanticism that pervaded so much Italian art of the thirties and had one of its strong- holds in Milan, the city of Persico’s circle, Chiarismo, lyrical expressionism and the Corrente group. Some art historians labour under the deplorable delusion that praising one movement necessarily entails denigrating those prior, subsequent or juxtaposed to it, as though loving the Riviera entailed loathing the Alps. Obviously enough, it is perfectly legitimate to prefer one movement to another according to your temperament, taste and ideas, just as the seaside can be preferred to the mountains (but some lucky people love both). It is not so legitimate to see the history of the art in

89 ELENA PONTIGGIA REALITY AND UTOPIA. THE BIROLLI PAINTINGS IN THE COLLEZIONE GIUSEPPE IANNACCONE

Manichaean terms, divided into heroes and villains as in the simplistic Alongside these figures of a childlike, evangelical quality, however, westerns of yesteryear, where the goodies always win and the goodies Birolli began his own City of the Sun, giving birth to the series of red are always right. taxis (Tassì rosso, 1932 [W. NO. 11]) and suburban views (Periferie, 1932, in Collectors, or at least some of them, have an advantage over critics in actual fact a Landscape of the Marche region). The work of the latter se- this sense. As passionately attached to their artists as children are to ries in the Iannaccone collection, namely La città degli studi [Città degli their toys, they have neither time nor motive to denigrate what lies out- Studi, the Milan Universiy District] [W. NO. 12], is regarded by the artist side their sphere of interest and action. Iannaccone has thus spent years himself as the finest. As he wrote to Tomea in May 1933: “I have finished tracking down a work and making it his own. He has focused on only 1. Milan, Piazzetta Occhialini a view of the Città degli Studi that is, I think, the best so far.”3 one movement because he was not looking for a painting but for that The artist left the area of Piazzale Susa, where he had a modest flat with painting, not an artist but that artist. This is why his collection is one of no heating, and moved a short distance, a kilometre at most, towards the most faithful portraits we have today in Italy of the neo-romantic art the Città degli Studi, Milan’s university district. Crowned with domes of the thirties, which took over from the neo-classicism of the previous and pinnacles reminiscent of Soviet architecture, and hence nicknamed decade.1 I have, however, never heard him express disdain for the latter the Kremlin, his new building at Via Columbus 81 now houses a scien- in order the glorify the former in all the thirty years we have known one tific research centre. It was designed by Molinari, an estimable eclectic another. There are absolute masters whose works will never enter his architect, and completed a few years earlier in 1927. collection because they do not correspond to his idea of art and his vi- The Kremlin is hard to make out today from Via Colombo because the sion of life. This does not prevent him from appreciating them, however, street is shaded and indeed practically hidden by a long line of trees. even though his heart belongs to another. Then instead it soared in isolation with its slightly dreamlike decora- In short, what Giuseppe Iannaccone has is an art collection, not an ide- tion, presenting Milan with some fragments of Mother Russia (or rather ology. And this strikes me as the finest compliment we can pay him. Stalinist, Soviet Russia, of which little was known in Italy). Birolli painted it from Piazzetta Occhialini [FIG. 1], which still has a round- Birolli: a visionary realist about in the middle with a few trees, as in the painting. He did not de- Renato Birolli (Verona, 1905 – Milan, 1959) can be described also on the pict the Kremlin as it is, of course, but accentuated the dome, elongated basis of the masterpieces in the Iannaccone collection as a painter of uto- the spires and narrowed the central section to endow it with a fairytale pia and reality at the same time. These two things may appear to conflict character. The surroundings were altered in the same way, eliminating but do not in his paintings. Something the artist wrote to his close friend the rails on which trams rattled down the street. The lampposts became Sandro Bini can perhaps shed light on his way of seeing the world and a Gauguin-like rusty orange, the pavement yellow and pink, and the therefore of painting: “All of Giotto’s mountains are a stone picked up in roadway a glossy cobalt blue, all colours obviously nonexistent in the the street and multiplied by his imagination, multiplied by God.”2 drab urban panorama. The finishing touch was a Van Gogh moon in the In other words, art starts from simple and even lowly everyday life sky. La città degli studi [W. NO. 12] is in fact one of the first paintings in Italy (a stone on the ground) but illuminates it with a fantastic dimension to show the influence of the great Flemish artist. Birolli already had a steeped in a sense of mystery and the divine, the latter being also sus- clear idea of Van Gogh — or Van Gog, as wrote in one of his first articles ceptible of secular interpretation as a vision in love with reality, a sort in 19304 — at the beginning of the decade. of secret, vital enthusiasm. It is no coincidence that enthusiasm derives 1 For an analysis of the concepts A new city, a City of the Sun, is thus created in this work too out of of Novecento neo-classicism and etymologically from en-theos, having god inside you. neo-romanticism, which cannot be “stone” (in this case the buildings and urban surroundings of Via addressed at length here, readers are This is how Birolli proceeded in his paintings of the thirties. After mov- referred to two studies by the present Colombo) and the imagination (we hardly dare to involve God in this but author: “Una stagione neo-romantica. ing to Milan at the end of 1928 and spending a couple of years on land- Pittura e scultura a Milano negli anni Birolli was in fact deeply religious in the early thirties, like Sassu, and Trenta” (in E. Pontiggia, N. Colombo scapes that were still immature or influenced by the Novecento move- [edited by], Milano Anni Trenta. L’arte shared the deep, awestruck faith that characterized Persico’s circle). e la città, exhibition catalogue (Milan, ment, he began to express his utopian vision in 1931 and turned the Spazio Oberdan, 2 December 2004 – The birth of the Tassì rosso [W. NO. 11] was also inspired by Via Colombo. 27 February 2005), Milan: Mazzotta, drab, wan Lombard city into a capital of colour. 2004); Modernità e classicità. Il Ritorno Birolli loved the walls with square panel separating the small houses all’ordine in Europa dal dopoguerra agli Birolli also painted an inadequate, awestruck humankind in the early anni Trenta, Milan: Bruno Mondadori, from the street — again hidden by the trees today and scarcely visi- 2008. thirties, as exemplified in the Iannaccone collection by the Matisse-like 2 Birolli to Bini, 18 July 1937, in Carteggio ble — because they reminded him of certain details of the mosaics in Bini Birolli, edited by G. Erbesato, L’Arlecchino [W. NO. 9] (1931). Anything but triumphant, this Harlequin is Mantua, 1987, p. 21. The entire Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, which he had seen as a child and early period of the artist’s career, intimidated and incapable of taking advantage of the success the public which cannot be examined here, is describes in his notebooks. The taxi is instead a Fiat T 1[FIG. 2], produced reconstructed by the present author in appear to have bestowed on him. He is a loser, an anti-hero. “Una realtà visionaria. La pittura di Birolli in 1921 on the basis of a model originally designed in 1910, a taxi still dagli esordi all’amorfismo (1924-1937)” 3 Birolli to Tomea, 20 May 1933, Florence, and “Birolli. L’avventura di ‘Corrente’”, Gabinetto Scientifico Letterario G.P. both in E. Pontiggia, V. Birolli, Renato Vieusseux, Archivio Contemporaneo Birolli. Figure e luoghi 1930-1939, Alessandro Bonsanti, Fondo Rosa exhibition catalogue (Turin, Museo e Renato Birolli (hereafter ACGV/FB). Ettore Fico, 10 March − 26 June 2016), 4 R. Birolli, “Sei artisti che espongono”, Turin, 2016. in Libro e moschetto, 11 April 1930.

90 91 ELENA PONTIGGIA REALITY AND UTOPIA. THE BIROLLI PAINTINGS IN THE COLLEZIONE GIUSEPPE IANNACCONE similar to a carriage where the driver sat in the open, framed only by occurs about a dozen times in the Bible, appears in particular in the slender uprights, while the passenger sat inside the cab behind him. Gospels during the Transfiguration: Birolli depicts it faithfully but in an atmosphere of enchantment enhanced by the absence of the waiting driver, who has left the door open, And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered, and and the passengers, who are all of us in this colourful, Baudelairean his clothing became dazzling white. And behold, two men were talk- “invitation au voyage”. ing with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory […] And a 2. A Fiat T1 taxi in a photograph voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is my Son, my Chosen One, The colours are altered in this work too, however, as the Fiat was actual- of the twenties ly green and black. The artist drew from his imagination a precious red listen to him.7 3. Renato Birolli, Eldorado, 1935. deftly harmonized with the pink of the pavement and the lemon yellow Milan, Civiche Raccolte d’Arte of the road. Nothing is more realistic and more visionary than his Tassì, collezione Boschi-Di Stefano It can therefore be assumed that the mysterious Convegno dei Religiosi accurately reproduced in the smallest detail and completely reinvented. also depicted a transfiguration and L’Eletto a glowing metamorphosis, Birolli’s simultaneously utopian and highly concrete trajectory was in- “dazzling white”. tensified in the mid-thirties, when the feverish months of 1935 saw the During 1935 Birolli also read the anthology Le più belle pagine di creation of I poeti [W. NO. 14], La nuova Ecumene [W. NO. 13] (also known as Tommaso Campanella, edited by Corrado Alvaro and published by La visione d’Ezechiele or Ezekiel’s Vision) and Eldorado [FIG. 3]. All three Treves that year.8 In his City of the Sun (1602) the Renaissance philos- paintings were born out of a vision of the Milanese suburb of Monluè opher Campanella takes up the model of Plato’s Republic to describe a [W. NO. 18] ablaze with light. Demolished in the seventies to build the east- perfect city on the island of Taprobana with an orderly circular layout ern bypass, the ancient Mons Luparium (“hill of wolves”) was still a bus- dominated by a round temple of the Sun, the symbol of God radiating tling village in the thirties with lines of poplars along the Lambro river light and life. Campanella thus revives the ancient myth of Atlantis, the and a farmhouse bearing traces of the monastery founded in the thir- dream of a society with no imbalance or injustice, a place of happiness teenth century by monks of the Humiliati order. It was the closest area and harmony. of countryside for people coming from Piazzale Susa like Birolli, who For a painter, however, this City of the Sun represents not so much a po- distorted the reality here too in a glowing metamorphosis. litical utopia as an epiphany of light with its white columned buildings, In I poeti [W. NO. 14] and La nuova Ecumene [W. NO. 13] in particular, Birolli the temple studded with precious stones, the seven lamps of gold and draws on the Book of Ezekiel: the stars glistening over the altar: all images translated into incandescent colours in Birolli’s mind. Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth In addition to these religious and philosophical sources of inspiration, day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, that there are others, earlier or later, of a more properly pictorial nature. the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God. […] And I looked, Van Gogh painted the dazzling light of Provence and the Mediterranean and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire sun. Cézanne, Matisse and the Fauves painted bathers living in a glowing infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof golden age in complete symbiosis with the energies of nature. Drawing in- as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire. […] spiration from those bathers but also from the modest amusements of sub- As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burn- urban life, Birolli also depicted a golden age, a timeless earthly paradise, in ing coals of fire, and like the appearance of lamps: it went up and down Eldorado [FIG. 3], L’Età felice [The Happy Age] (1936) and Eden (1937). Reality among the living creatures; and the fire was bright, and out of the fire and utopia, Monluè [W. NO. 18] and Taprobana, Milanese suburbia and gardens went forth lightning. […] And above the firmament that was over their of Eden thus melded in a seamless whole. Awareness of his “amphibious” heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone: condition, midway between the visionary dimension and realism, also and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of emerges in the lyrical words he wrote to his friend Puglielli in 1936: a man above upon it. […] And I saw as the colour of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it […] and it had brightness round about.5 I came down from the heavens this evening and feel myself streaked by the wind like clouds. Cleansed of all prejudice, I have rediscov- The lost Convegno dei Religiosi [Conference of the Religious], subse- ered so many on the earth; burnt and as though medieval am I now 6 “I am entirely repainting the canvas quently entitled L’Eletto [The Chosen One], of which Birolli spoke to his Convegno dei Religiosi, which has this evening. Early to dream, my entire life lies in the perennial al- become L’Elet to.” Birolli to Puglielli, 6 friend Vincenzo Puglielli in November 1935, must have been born out 4 November 1935, ACGV/FB. ternation of the two poles, terrestrial and celestial, in the constant 7 Luke 9: 28-35. The expression is also 9 of a similar inspiration. Who is the Chosen One? The expression, which used about Christ on the cross: “Let him transfer of reciprocal values. save himself if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One” (Luke 23, 35). 8 A. Della Latta (edited by), Renato Birolli. Biblioteca, Milan: Scalpendi, 2014, p. 118. 9 Birolli to Vincenzo Puglielli, 3 October 5 Ezekiel, I, 1-26. 1936, ACGV/FB.

92 93 ELENA PONTIGGIA REALITY AND UTOPIA. THE BIROLLI PAINTINGS IN THE COLLEZIONE GIUSEPPE IANNACCONE

What became of Birolli’s “terrestrial and celestial” vision? How did the had I stayed. […] No one has anything because you can no longer have visionary striving so firmly rooted in reality end? In the most dramat- anything when mankind reaches the peak of corruption […] I have no ic way. The City of the Sun painted in the thirties, from the Periferia more hope […] I cannot get over the ruins by interpreting them. I suffer [W. NO. 10] to the Tassì rosso [W. NO. 11] and I poeti [W. NO. 14], began to crumble them […] Perhaps later, when no longer in pain, memory will be able to as early as 1936. The first indication is to be found precisely in the see images again. Art needs this.”13 Iannaccone collection with Caos I, the revelation of the anti-cosmos, In the end, the real City of the Sun is art. the shattering and shattered forces that gave birth to the universe. Rather than a peaceful earthly paradise, Eden (1937) itself is swept by a 4. Renato Birolli, Elegia per un paese felice, sort of hurricane that recalls Paul Valéry’s verse: “The wind is rising [...] 1942. Private collection We must try to live.” The shift in perspective is confirmed by another masterpiece in the Iannaccone collection, namely the Maschere [W. NO. 17] (1938–39). The painting is a metaphor of history: history as it is, not as it should be. It represents the falsehood of the eternal human comedy, a theme stylistically related to Ensor but rooted in Pascal: “Most people hide behind a mask and are not as they seem” (Pensées, III, 398). The wandering masks are the opposite of utopia: cognizance of the lies and hypocrisy that surround us. Birolli could say with Pasternak: “I am alone. Everything around me drowns in falsehood.” From then on, the theme of the City of the Sun enclosed a sort of awareness of its own unreality. Birolli painted another Eldorado in 1942 but no longer with the joy conveyed by the plebeian bathing establishment of 1935. As its title suggests, the Elegia per un paese felice [Elegy for a Happy Town] [FIG. 4] has elegiac overtones in its depiction of women deep in thought among roosters as big as turkeys invading the sky and the earth. The Birolli paintings of the Iannaccone collection end ideally for now (we evidently have no wish to impose limits on providence) with the Signora col cappello [W. NO. 19] (1941), a pensive muse painted against a gold background of a more silent than oneiric nature.10 Birolli was evacuated to Cologno di Melegnano in the Veneto region during the war. On returning momentarily to Milan, he gave a terrifying image of the city, now a far cry from any utopia. As he wrote to the critic Umbro Apollonio late in 1942, “I have realized that I am tired of living […] Milan is a ghost town […] I have suspended all exhibitions by refusing the paintings.”11 He also wrote to the poet Barolini in August 1943: “Saying that I know nothing about our destiny is the only perception of the moment, like Socrates knowing that he knew nothing […] The fate of all Europe is already sealed and we think it is dramatic because we are alive, while for me it is instead because we are in our death throes. We 10 Birolli wrote as follows about his yellows a year earlier: “I think that beneath the 12 will speak a dead language.” last skin of a painting there are ten cracked and dry. […] When I apply the The City of the Sun will therefore not only never exist but can no longer first yellow it is never beautiful in the sense of being a full, ripe yellow. Hard even be dreamed of. A few days later, however, in flight from the bomb- and perhaps shapeless. It is not always the finest yellow of my mind, the most ing of Milan, his despair and desperation for the present state of things adventurous yellow of my eyes, but the necessary premise of all the yellows did not perhaps rule out the possibility of a rebirth of art in the future: to come. […] Because it has not yet entered into the relations that will be “I have left the city in darkness and ruins […] I would have gone mad born close to it, which it will have to seek out in order to have a philosophical life.” Birolli to Nino Bertocchi, 7 February 1941, ACGV/FB. 11 Birolli to U. Apollonio, 17 December 1942 (ACGV/FB). 12 Birolli to Barolini, August 1943, ACGV/ 13 Birolli to Barolini, 17 August 1943, ACGV/ FB/RB.I.37.38. FB/RB.I.37.39.

94 95 The Painting of the Corrente Group: between Colour and Reality

mattia patti

While it is true that the Corrente movement has been repeatedly addressed in studies, exhibitions and lively discussions over the decades, the need still remains for a broad and truly exhaustive reconstruction of what happened in Milan between 1938 and 1943.1 It was in this period, coinciding with the terminal phase of the Fascist regime, that the experience ran its course. First, there were the great pages of the journal, which established itself immediately as one of the strongest and 1 Precise assessment of the critical fortunes of Corrente would require most independent voices on the Italian cultural scene, and two group an analytical summary of the existing 2 literature divided into sections exhibitions held in Milan in March and December 1939. Then, after (critical studies, exhibition catalogues, first-hand testimony and so on), which Italy entered the war and the periodical was closed down on political is impossible here. In any case, the most significant publications include grounds by Mussolini himself, there was a whole series of publica- the following: R. De Grada, Il movimento 3 di Corrente, Milan: Edizioni del Milione, tions and solo shows, the latter held in Via della Spiga at the Bottega 1952; E. Crispolti, F. Irace (edited by), 4 Corrente, cultura e società 1938-1942: di Corrente, later renamed Galleria di Corrente e della Spiga. The end omaggio a Edoardo Persico, 1900-1936, exhibition catalogue (Naples, Palazzo of the activities nominally related to the movement coincided more or Reale, 20 July – 10 September 1978), Naples, 1978; M. De Micheli (edited by), less with the fall of Mussolini. A raid carried out by the OVRA, the Corrente: il movimento di arte e cultura di opposizione 1930–1945, Fascist political police force, on Via della Spiga in the spring of 1943 exhibition catalogue (Milan, Palazzo 5 Reale, 25 January – 28 April 1985), Milan: discovered evidence of dissent now turning into revolt. The ensuing ar- Vangelista, 1985; M. Pizziolo (edited by), Corrente: le parole della vita, exhibition rests, imprisonments and escapes did not, however, prevent the group catalogue (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 17 June – 7 September 2008), Milan: Skira, 2008; from staying alive in the very heart of the Resistance. In actual fact, the E. Pontiggia (edited by), Il movimento di Corrente, Milan: Abscondita, 2012. movement even continued to operate after the war until the autumn of I wish to thank the personnel of the Fondazione Corrente for all their 1948, when the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti — which had taken up its mantle helpfulness during my bibliographical and archival research. — plunged into an irreversible crisis, torn apart by the deep rifts of the 2 As is known, the journal founded and 6 edited by Ernesto Treccani, which new political scene. appeared from 1 January 1938 to 15 May 1940, was initially called The need to reconstruct the countless episodes constituting the history Vita Giovanile before changing its name to Corrente di Vita Giovanile and finally of Corrente one by one, an operation to be carried out elsewhere, is con- Corrente. It is most readily accessible in the anastatic copy by Vittorio Fagone firmed if nothing else by the invaluable chronology recently published published by La nuova Foglio, Pollenza, in 1978. by Elena Pontiggia, in which the facts are set out in detail for the first 3 For a chronological list of works published by Edizioni di Corrente, time, encompassing the entire galaxy of magazines, people and plac- see G. Sebastiani, I libri di Corrente. 7 Milano 1940-1943: una vicenda es that began to revolve around the Milanese movement all over Italy. editoriale, Bologna: Pendragon, 1998. 4 The history of the Corrente gallery Corrente was first and foremost a beacon for all, a point of reference can be reconstructed through the catalogues printed, an index of which for people all around. As Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti observed in a lucid appears in I libri di Corrente..., cit., 1998. 5 For an account of what took place, and penetrating study published in 1985, unlike many other groups born see E. Vedova, Pagine di diario, Milan: Galleria Blu, 1960; now also in G. Celant in the twentieth century, Corrente “was not a closed, esoteric sect but (edited by), Vedova 1935-1984, exhibition catalogue (Venice, Ala Napoleonica, instead marked by a deep and constant commitment to uniting people Museo Correr and Magazzino del Sale 266 alle Zattere, 12 May – 30 September — or rather artists, endowed as such with strong and often intransigent 1984), Milan: Electa, 1984. 6 See L. Caramel, “La premessa e l’eredità individual character — in the common exercise of freedom of thought di Corrente, i ‘realismi’ a Milano e a Roma, il Fronte Nuovo delle Arti”, and expression, even when the political and social divisions would have in L. Caramel (edited by), Arte in Italia 8 1945-1960, Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1994, required obedience to the heteronomy of art.” Corrente was, in short, pp. 9−42. 7 See E. Pontiggia, “Cronologia”, in Il movimento di Corrente..., cit., 2012, pp. 41–84. 8 C. L. Ragghianti, “Il movimento di Corrente”, in Corrente: il movimento..., cit., 1985, p. 20.

97 MATTIA PATTI THE PAINTING OF THE CORRENTE GROUP: BETWEEN COLOUR AND REALITY a forum of free and courageous discussion than endeavoured from the influence of Matisse is in fact already clearly recognizable, especially very first page of the journal to involve the new generations that had the paintings of the early years in Nice, where the expansive light of grown up under the Fascist regime.9 Many have rightly drawn attention the south dilutes and softens the colours to make them less glaring to the unorthodox — if not indeed subversive — character of this deci- than before. The same cultural sphere is also reflected in the slightly sion to address young people outside the framework of the GUF (Gruppi later urban scenes, Periferia (Grottammare) [Outskirts (Grottammare)] Universitari Fascisti), institutions created by the regime long before to [W. NO. 10], Tassì rosso [Red Taxi] [W. NO. 11] and La città degli studi [Città mould the new Italian youth, channel its activities and blunt its stimuli degli Studi, the Milan University District] [W. NO. 12], which combine the for independent thought. “soft whiteness” of the ancient mosaics in Ravenna10 with a primi- In the field of the visual arts, addressing the young meant two things tive draughtsmanship and handling of space recalling the landscapes above all in 1938: on the one hand, providing information about what was painted by Raoul Dufy and André Derain around 1906, chromatical- happening on the national artistic scene, indicating names, works and ex- ly lighter than the peak of Fauvism the previous year. The brightest hibitions so as to orient taste and establish values; on the other, drawing hues instead inflame the large scenes of figures that Birolli produced the outlines of a modern tradition of art and discussing the recent origins in the mid-thirties, La nuova Ecumene [The New Ecumene] [W. NO. 13] and of artistic developments openly in a European and certainly not autar- I poeti [The Poets] [W. NO. 14], both painted almost entirely with an an- kic perspective. The latter was made all the more difficult in that period ti-naturalistic palette. In La nuova Ecumene, the whirling combination because the debate had been irreparably poisoned for some time. The of warm colours, especially the yellow, orange and red that set the exhibition of Entartete Kunst or “degenerate art” staged by Nazi Germany sky and the garments of some figures ablaze; the sudden collision of in 1937 had given rise to heated arguments on the relationship between complementaries, blue and orange in particular; the diagonals cutting art and politics, causing many to take a dim view of the experimental art boldly through the space on the right, with the orange crosier and produced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, especially the white staff that almost meet at the top at a point on an axis with in the French and northern sphere. The crazed Nazi views had unfortu- the seated figure turning round and indicated by the bishop, whose nately been taken up by some Italian critics and many — unquestionably brightly coloured mitre is resting on the ground: all these elements are including the Corrente group — therefore considered it necessary to put drawn by Birolli quite directly from Derain and in particular from the up some resistance, give different indications and lay the foundations of a views of boats at Collioure painted in 1905. Another possible source modern road to art that it proved hard to distinguish clearly in Italy due to in another respect is the masterpiece The Turning Road, L’Estaque (a backwardness, revivals of classicism and exhibitions of the Fascist union large work painted by Derain in 1906 and now in the Houston Museum of fine arts. of Fine Arts), where we also find the strong idea of a concave space While significant echoes of these discussions can be found in the pages sinking internally through the alternation of two-dimensional scen- of the journal, it is above all the works of the Corrente group — the draw- ery and curved planes. This spatial syntax, which rejects all rigorous ings, sculptures and paintings — that speak out unmistakably and show perspective to dissolve into molten colour that almost ends up swal- the signs of a precise cultural orientation. In the light of these consid- lowing the figures, reappears in I poeti, another work clearly influ- erations, a walk through the works of the Iannaccone collection, which enced by Fauvism. In any case, Birolli was developing new interests includes some of the group’s greatest masterpieces, makes it possible to and different passions shortly before the birth of Corrente, especially understand the sense of this episode fully as well as the broad cultural the painting of Cézanne, to which the artist began to look insistently horizons of the Italian artists who joined together to fight for art in one of after a stay in Paris in 1936 and above all after his crucial meeting with the most difficult moments of the country’s history. Lionello Venturi. Venturi had taken refuge in the French capital after No matter how we choose to address the subject, the first step to be refusing to swear the oath of loyalty to Fascist regime and was engaged taken necessarily regards Renato Birolli, unquestionably the leading there on important studies on the artists of the Impressionist gener- figure of the Corrente group at the time of its birth. While readers ation, which included publishing the catalogue raisonné of Cézanne’s are referred for a more thorough examination of the individual works works.11 The influence of Cézanne — and in particular some paintings to the study by Elena Pontiggia published in this volume, it is neces- of bathers, characterized by the close interweaving of figural elements sary here at least to recall the essential coordinates of Birolli’s visual and architectural elements of the landscape — can unquestionably be 10 Elena Pontiggia rightly concentrates culture, which attests to a deep love of French painting, above all the on this source in “Il taxi rosso”, 36 seen in many works produced by Birolli between 1936 and 1938, in- in E. Pontiggia, N. Colombo (edited Fauves, as from his L’Arlecchino [Harlequin] [W. NO. 9] of 1931, the earliest by), Milano anni Trenta. L’arte e la città, cluding Il caos [Chaos] [W. NO. 15], once owned by Sandro Bini. It can even exhibition catalogue (Milan, Spazio work in the Iannaccone collection. Here, as in other later works, the Oberdan, 2 December 2004 – 27 be detected in works with markedly different points of iconographic February 2005), Milan: Mazzotta, 2004, p. 122. 11 L. Venturi, Cézanne. Son art, son œuvre, Paris: Rosenberg, 1936. Another important result of these studies was 9 See “Presentazione”, in Vita Giovanile, to be Les Archives de l’Impressionnisme, y. I, no. 1, Milan, 1 January 1938, p. 1. Paris: Durand Ruel, 1939.

98 99 MATTIA PATTI THE PAINTING OF THE CORRENTE GROUP: BETWEEN COLOUR AND REALITY

reference. In Maschere [Masks] [W. NO. 17], a work that displays a pre- in the Iannaccone collection, looks forward to Migneco’s works in the cise interest — as always emphasized by critics — in the angst-ridden turbulence of its handling of paint (scored in places with the brush painting of James Ensor, the “roaming masks” soar in agitated flight handle) and visionary quality (the black finger-stall of L’uomo dal dito over a bare mountain reminiscent of Mt Sainte-Victoire. The sky too, fasciato [W. NO. 55] is almost like a citation of the eye patch and the gloves while returning here to the colours of nature, refuses to stretch out in of Il principe cattolico [The Catholic Prince] [FIG. 2, P. 302], one of Scipione’s a thin, taut plane but wrinkles under the weight of Cézanne-like brush- masterpieces). strokes. (Something similar, poinsed between fantastic dream and the A further link with the modern French tradition regards Aligi Sassu, who concrete physicality of matter, can also be found in Italo Valenti’s took expressionistic colour as the basis of his painting back in the early Gabbiani [Seagulls] [W. NO. 89].) thirties, as did Birolli. It is no coincidence that in writing about Sassu in As Birolli gradually entered into the full swing of Corrente, the accen- 1. Édouard Vuillard, Le Grand Teddy, 1941, Luciano Anceschi indicated “the most felicitous and uninhibited 1917–19, detail. Geneva, Petit Palais, tuation of colour gave way to a new sensitivity to paint, which thickens Musée d’Art Moderne chromatic liberty in a free and fanciful realm of the imagination”15 as in works like the Signora col cappello [Lady in a Hat] [W. NO. 19] of 1941, for- one of the hallmarks of Corrente as a whole. The Concerto, 1930 [W. NO. 74], mally reminiscent of Gauguin’s portraiture. The same density also char- the Dioscuri [Castor and Pollux], 1931 [W. NO. 75] and the Nu au divan vert acterized other members of the group, including Arnaldo Badodi, who [Nude on a Green Couch], 1941 [W. NO. 76] are not characterized by the wild again displays numerous signs of deep love for the French modern tradi- colour of Fauve painters like Kees van Dongen alone. Accentuated to tion and sometimes in particular for Cézanne’s handling of paint, as in the point of violence, the colour goes beyond powerful but simple visual the Soprabito su divano [Overcoat on a Sofa] [W. NO. 8]. In any case, Badodi excitation and ends up saturating the air, impregnating every particle usually concentrated on interiors in which the colour and light remain of the atmosphere. Colour is transformed in Sassu’s work from a physi- distant both from Cézanne’s fullness of form and from the chromatic in- cal to a mental element that makes it possible to interpret reality from tensity of the Fauves. In the catalogue of Badodi’s show at the Bottega di a stronger and more straightforward viewpoint. The screen that Sassu Corrente in 1941, Raffaele De Grada rightly refers to Toulouse-Lautrec places between us and the image thus takes on a symbolic character in connection with the “melancholy setting” of the works exhibited: in much the same way as what happened with some members of the “[...] On looking at these paintings you feel the dissatisfied air of an post-Impressionist generation. While thorough examination is impos- ‘artificial’ world that constitutes an albeit fragile shelter against a ‘nat- sible here, attention should be drawn in this connection to the close ural’ world that is frightening for the resolutions it can bear in a period relationship between much of Sassu’s painting and some late works of of crisis of values, when the sense of mediocrity remains the most fear- 15 L. Anceschi, in Opere del periodo Édouard Vuillard, especially the large canvases painted in 1918 for the 1928-1934 di Aligi Sassu, exhibition 12 some enemy.” In works like Caffè [Café] [W. NO. 4], Il biliardo [Billiards] catalogue (Milan, Corrente. Bottega Grand Teddy café in Paris [FIG. 1]. degli artisti di Ernesto Treccani, [W. NO. 3] and Soprabito su divano [W. NO. 8], the streaky brushstrokes and the 19–31 March 1941). The final stage of this survey regards Renato Guttuso, Ennio Morlotti, 16 M. De Micheli, in Corrente. Cultura coagulation of paint around the figures and objects recall most direct- e società, cit., 1978. Bruno Cassinari and Ernesto Treccani, a group that in some way diverged 17 Emilio Vedova, then practically making ly the example of Van Gogh if not indeed Chaïm Soutine (who inherit- his debut, wrote as follows in his Pagine from the painting of colour discussed above during the movement’s clos- di diario: “All the most progressive ed to some extent Van Gogh’s role as a tragic, anguished figure on the forces in Italy had made an unspoken ing phase. If it is true that the antifascism of Corrente was not openly agreement to meet at the Bergamo Prize. Parisian art scene). I recall the truly alarming atmosphere avowed until the summer of 1943, it must be pointed out at the same time of that day, the authentic anarchy with As recognized by critics from the outset, Van Gogh is also a clear point plates flying into the air in the upper town that a group of more radical young people with ideas wholeheartedly op- of Bergamo, glasses smashing against of reference for the work of Giuseppe Migneco, some of whose great- glasses, a Fascist in a black shirt who posed to the policies of the Fascist regime had already been taking shape was so furious that he pulled out est paintings are now in the Iannaccone collection. The swirling flux a dagger to stab me in the back, the air inside the Milan movement for some time, including above all the second of conspiracy circulating amongst us at of long brushstrokes that structures the Amanti al parco [Lovers in the the table, the works of Migneco, Guttuso, generation of Corrente. As noted by Mario De Micheli, who began to take Birolli, Treccani and Apollonio as well Park] [W. NO. 54] and L’uomo dal dito fasciato [Man with a Bandaged Finger] as Elio Vittorini. A strange gathering of part in the movement’s discussions in precisely that period, “The group of anti-fascist intellectual forces at a prize [W. NO. 55], both 1940, is unquestionably drawn from the master. In addi- created by certain Fascists but almost Morlotti, Cassinari, Treccani, Morosini, Guttuso and myself was obvious- 12 R. De Grada, “Badodi”, in Le ultime turned into an official anti-fascist point 16 tion to this source — and others promptly identified by the critics, like opere di Arnaldo Badodi, exhibition of departure. I remember the afternoon ly one more inclined towards the politicization of artistic creation.” The catalogue (Milan, Corrente. Bottega of that day, at least twenty of us in that the references to Rouault and Soutine rightly made by Umberto Silva degli artisti di Ernesto Treccani, bedroom, halfway between slaughter formation of this group can be traced back at least to September 1942, 22 February – 5 March 1941). and chaos: certainly not an edifying 13 in 1941 — attention should be drawn to another and this time Italian The catalogue includes a reproduction symbol of the structure, organization, when the fourth (and last) edition of the Bergamo Prize brought some of of the painting Caffè, now in the will power and order that was or was influence, namely Scipione. As has still to be adequately recognized, Iannaccone collection. supposed to be second nature to people the most battle-hardened artists and critics of the time together in the 13 U. Silva, “Migneco”, in Le ultime opere running an empire. Every time I recall 17 Scipione was taken by the Corrente artists as a sort of tutelary divin- di Giuseppe Migneco, exhibition those hours, I am almost forced to see city. The second prize that year was awarded to Guttuso’s Crocifissione catalogue (Milan, Corrente. Bottega an entire symbolism in the actions and ity, epitomizing an anxiety and a painful tension to which they ac- degli artisti di Ernesto Treccani, events of the day. For example, Vittorini’s [Crucifixion][FIG. 1, P. 125], a painting that caused great outcry by its unortho- 6–18 January 1941). dismantling of the bed — and the room 14 corded priority. Scipione’s painting, which is also well represented 14 This love for Scipione was confirmed and more besides if it had been possible dox interpretation of the religious episode depicted. in the late thirties and early forties — like an automatic detector of an by a series of exhibitions, editions apparatus to be destroyed, etc., etc. and critical studies largely prompted That little piazza in the upper part and undertaken by artists and critics of Bergamo certainly saw some alarming associated with the Corrente movement. episodes that day: precise symptoms A specific study on this subject by the of a more or less conscious upheaval.” present author is to be published shortly. (E. Vedova, Pagine di diario, cit., 1960).

100 101 MATTIA PATTI THE PAINTING OF THE CORRENTE GROUP: BETWEEN COLOUR AND REALITY

The group’s real emergence came, however, with the show held by shortly afterwards to direct participation in the Resistance, he appears Morlotti, Cassinari and Treccani at the Galleria di Corrente e della Spiga to have already attainted the liberation of gesture and sign that were to in February 1943. It was on that occasion that the new generation seemed characterize his painting and that of many of his companions after the to break free once and for all from the work of the older masters. Raffaele end of the war, when the Corrente movement resurfaced in a different De Grada, who presented the three young artists in the catalogue, wrote form and continued to exist as a vibrant, living entity through groups, later of “a great leap beyond the dignity of the hermeticism that had de- programmatic manifestos, exhibitions and periodicals, making its own fended the values of the first phase of Corrente”.18 This radical change crucial contribution to the revitalization of Italian art and culture. was primarily strategic in nature. Following the advice of Guttuso and in particular his “Paura della pittura”, published in Prospettive at the beginning of 1942, Morlotti, Cassinari and Treccani began to “shout” in order to express themselves. No longer hiding their roots and intentions, they finally came out into the open and freed themselves from the “fear of painting” identified by Guttuso as the greatest burden for young artists.19 In terms of pictorial language, Guttuso was still the primary ex- 18 R. De Grada, “Morlotti, il paesaggio ample for the three artists. The Sicilian painter had always differed from dell’anima”, in Corriere della Sera, Milan, 16 December 1992. the other members of Corrente in his love for Picasso and always kept 19 “Expressing ourselves ultimately means letting ourselves shout if we want to. his distance from the expressionistic painting with romantic overtones It is true that shouting does not necessarily mean being right, but nor and devoid of drama that was instead loved and practiced by artists like does speaking in a low voice. Accused of anarchy and aberration twenty-five 20 Birolli, Migneco and Valenti. years ago, Cubism is now accused of intellectual rigour. What value did that As observation of the works in the Iannaccone collection reveals, the act of freedom have then? But being free means doing what you can, knowing pictorial works of Guttuso and those closest to him in the early for- what your imagination commands and bravely obeying it, trying and testing ties are not yet characterized by direct reference to Picasso or indeed the means given to us, which belong to everyone, with our own blood, the to Guernica [FIG. 8, P. 133]. What emerges most strongly from paintings concrete flow of our being, to which everything about us refers. In this like Guttuso’s Ritratto di Antonino Santangelo [Portrait of Antonino constant presence of the whole of the self, painters will live their true life and Santangelo] [W. NO. 41] and his still lifes of 1940–41 is close and some- put their freedom into effect, open to the world, in relations of solidarity and times blunt reference to reality as an absolute necessity of art. The dialogue with the other human beings.” R. Guttuso, “Paura della pittura”, draughtsmanship, form and hence colour too surround the objects, the in Prospettive, y. VI, no. 25–27, Rome, 15 January – 15 March 1942, pp. 5–6; spaces and the faces of subjects tightly in an approach that can al- also in R. Guttuso, Mestiere di pittore, Bari: De Donato, 1972, p. 16. ready be described as new realism. In short, not only and indeed not 20 As Guttuso explained in 1962, “Although my presence in Corrente from 1940 on so much Picasso as Van Gogh once again (even though the master’s in- was active, I believe that, without wishing to, I played the part of a contrarian. fluence in Guttuso’s Gabbia bianca e foglie [White Cage and Leaves] I refused any connection with ‘pictorial expressionism of Impressionist [W. NO. 40] or Treccani’s self-portrait [W. NO. 86] manifests itself in very dif- derivation’. I liked the Mannerists, I liked Grünewald, Van Gogh and ferent terms, less delicate and romantic, with respect to Migneco’s Picasso. Birolli loved Van Gogh too, but for reasons very different from work). Not only and not so much Picasso as Cézanne once again and mine. I liked the organic brushstroke of Van Gogh, the pantheistic definition indeed even Courbet in the case of certain works of dense physicali- of things, faces, leaves, stars, chairs, flowers, shoes, rain, reflections in the ty like Morlotti’s Natura morta con bucranio [Still Life with Bull Skull] water. I liked the painfully earthy sense of Van Gogh and therefore likened him [W. NO. 57]. The desire to come out into the open as soon as possible, to to Picasso in my love. Birolli instead interpreted Van Gogh through Ensor move definitively beyond a long and terrible period, manifested itself and placed him at the service of a symbolism that I found suspect at the among the younger artists, in short, as a new and strong passion for the time.” R. Guttuso, “Dialogo sulla pittura”, in Mestiere di pittore, cit., 1972, 21 concreteness of reality. This agitation of matter can also be seen in pp. 57–58. “Dialogo sulla pittura” was originally published in Quaderni the Venetian Emilio Vedova, whose friendship with the Corrente group milanesi, no. 4-5, Milan, summer-autumn 1962. dates from the fourth edition of the Bergamo Prize in 1942, where the 21 The emergence around these dates of a new relationship with reality, which works he presented include Il caffeuccio veneziano [Venetian Café] [W. involved the young artists of Corrente as well as other leading figures in the NO. 92] that graces the Iannaccone collection today. Vedova even went new Italian painting, was examined in depth with great clarity on the occasion beyond a new idea of reality in this case. In the grip of an anger that led of the exemplary exhibition organized by Andrea Buzzoni, Fabrizio D’ Amico and Flaminio Gualdoni in 1993 at the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara. See Pittura e realtà, exhibition catalogue (Ferrara, Palazzo dei Diamanti, 28 February – 30 May 1993). Ferrara: Ferrara Arte, 1993.

102 103 The Six Painters of Turin: European and Modern. Themes, Exhibitions and Paintings through a Collection

giorgina bertolino

These painters, who belong in the field of the figurative arts to the school of thought developed by Lionello Venturi for the modern taste, can therefore be described as European. – Edoardo Persico, 19291

The exhibition is the form that the Six Painters of Turin chose for the birth of their group, a social form making it possible to develop shared pictorial aims and adopt a stance in the public discourse on the art. Programmes gave way to the collective practice of exhibiting and the writing of manifestos to two singular images d’après Manet and Cézanne. Placed at the entrance to the shows of 1929 and 1930 in Turin, they made the sources explicit and spoke of a history of art forged by artists. Writing was to come later. The group’s first internal text, produced by Francesco Menzio in 1930, summarized the progress of a year and expressed the common aim of entering “the climate of European artists”.2 The Europe of the Six was precisely that, a climate, the breath that 1 [E. Persico], “I Sei pittori”, in Le Arti Carlo Levi appears to evoke with the title of his large painting Aria Plastiche, y. VI, no. 13, July 1929; now in A. Bovero (edited by), Archivi [Air], almost an invocation in “the empty room that Italy was becom- dei Sei Pittori di Torino, Rome: 3 De Luca Editore, 1965, p. 121. ing”, as he wrote in 1965. It was a place of travel, of artists, images and 2 F. Menzio, introduction to Sei Pittori, exhibition catalogue (Turin, Sala d’arte thoughts on the move whose paths crossed; a cultural scene governed Guglielmi, 4–12 January 1930), Turin, 1930; now in A. Bovero, Archivi, by the concept of “interdependence” placed by Luigi Einaudi as the cit., 1965, p. 162. 3 In an untitled text dated “Rome, July cornerstone of the creation of a European federation in opposition to 1965”, written on the occasion of the 4 exhibition of work by the Six at the the principle of the “isolated sovereign state”. History was moving in Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Turin, and published in V. Viale (edited by), another direction but the group’s date of birth coincided significantly I Sei di Torino 1929-1932, exhibition catalogue (Turin, Galleria Civica d’Arte with the speech on the United States of Europe delivered by Aristide Moderna, September–October 1965), 5 Turin, 1965, p. 13. Briand at the League of Nations in 1929. The overcoming and indeed 4 Junius [L. Einaudi], “Il dogma della sovranità e l’idea della Società delle the destruction of “national prejudice” in their art is what made them Nazioni”, in Corriere della Sera, 6 28 December 1918. For these subjects “cosmopolitan painters” for Lionello Venturi, breaking away from “the and their connection with Turin, see D. Marucco, C. Accornero, Torino overly narrow confines of Italian taste in the hope of rediscovering the città internazionale. Storia di una 7 vocazione europea, Rome: Donzelli, great European tradition”. 2012. 5 See L. Passerini, Memoria e utopia. For the Six, European meant modern, the antithesis of Neoclassicism Il primato dell’intersoggettività, Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2003, esp. the and the national artistic discipline. Being European and modern repre- section entitled Idea d’Europa e identità europea, pp. 97–107. sented the antidote to “twentieth-century myth, archaism, totalitarian 6 L. Venturi, introduction to Exhibition 8 of New Italian Painting by Carlo Levi, populism” according to the retrospective narrative imbued with polit- Francesco Menzio, Enrico Paulucci, exhibition catalogue (London, ical passion of Levi, ripened in Turin in the circle of Piero Gobetti and Bloomsbury Gallery, 25 November – 5 December 1930), London 1930; then with allegiance to the Giustizia e Libertà movement led by Carlo now in A. Bovero, Archivi, cit.,1965, p. 186. Rosselli from Paris. 7 L. Venturi, introduction to Peintres Italiens Chessa, Menzio, Levi, Paulucci. The Europe of the Six was French and had its fully accomplished model Dessin et Sculptures de Spazzapan, Galvani, exhibition catalogue (Paris, Jeune Europe Galerie-Librairie, from 5 December 1931), Paris, 1931; now in A. Bovero, Archivi, cit.,1965, p. 210. 8 C. Levi, introduction, cit., 1965.

105 GIORGINA BERTOLINO THE SIX PAINTERS OF TURIN: EUROPEAN AND MODERN in the transnational community of the École de Paris. Some of them As he wrote, “We shall therefore call these painters Neo-romantics, but spent time studying in the French capital and thus acquired an eccen- Romantics with more seriousness than the Crepuscular school and with- tric, temporary status certified by inclusion in the room of the Italiens out the deep tragedy of the greatest nineteenth-century artists.”16 The de Paris at the 1931 Rome Quadrennial.9 For the Six, modernity coincid- introduction of the term into critical debate (by Soldati and others17) ed with Impressionism, an ideal stylistic and poetic point of reference opened up new horizons. that informed the colour, tone and surface of their canvases and served The Neo-romantics also included other “younger and less assured” art- as an example for a repertoire of everyday subjects belonging to the di- ists who had been just a few years earlier the “companions” of Felice mension of becoming as against the myth of eternity that characterized Casorati, “smiling” but now “alone in the squalid neoclassical studio”.18 Italian art all through the twenties. The presence of a number of works The Six were already all present at the Biennial the 1928, even though by the Six Painters of Turin in Giuseppe Iannaccone’s collection offers the group did not yet exist as such: Gigi Chessa and Francesco Menzio an opportunity to follow a path, to work back to the point at which that by invitation and with a substantial number of works; Jessie Boswell, vocabulary gave way under the pressure of new styles and iconographic Nicola Galante, Carlo Levi and Enrico Paulucci among those admitted 1. Francesco Menzio, Ritratto di poeta 2. Gigi Chessa, Natura morta or Tavolino, alternatives. This phenomenon can be observed, thanks to the complete- or Ritratto di Mario Soldati. 1928. Turin, Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna by the selection panel.19 That they, or at least two of them, were the Page from the catalogue of the Prima e Contemporanea, GAM. ness and precise focus of the collection, within the broader framework Esposizione sindacale fascista della Società Page from the catalogue of the Prima young Neo-romantics was revealed by Soldati shortly afterwards in an Promotrice delle Belle Arti, Turin, Palazzo Esposizione sindacale fascista della Società 20 of a certain line in Italian art, where the Six can be seen as occupying della Società Promotrice al Valentino, Promotrice delle Belle Arti, Turin, Palazzo article published in Mario Bonfantini’s magazine La Libra in the form an anything but isolated position. Precious testimony is provided in this June−July 1929 della Società Promotrice al Valentino, of a letter to “Dear Ettore” (Ettore Zanconi, a member of the edito- June−July 1929 sense by Enrico Paulucci’s memories of an exhibition in 1931: “Scipione rial staff). The choice of this formula and the informal tone adopted with its calm, rosy-cheecked face, who came to see us every evening are indicative of a desire to try out new approaches and find common with Mafai at the Galleria di Roma”.10 ground for critics, poets and painters of the same generation to meet as equals. The framework was that of taste in Venturi’s sense, “the taste,” The Neo-romantics as Soldati wrote, “that I now insist on calling Neo-romantic”.21 The ter- Summer 1928. After a visit to the XVI Venice Biennial, Mario Soldati rain of reflection had been an institutional context in Venice; now it was published his impressions in an article on “the new trends in Italian the working space of a studio: “But you cannot imagine how overjoyed painting”.11 He had gone through the rooms recording the new devel- I was on entering Menzio’s studio the other morning to discover that opments, tensions and harmonies picked up beneath the organized sur- he had, in the belief that he was initiating the French, found a new way face. There were no “revelations”, he explained. What he felt was rather to paint. Out with intelligent concepts, psychological limitations, con- a “general atmosphere”, an “annunciation”: The characteristics of this structed spaces and deft chiaroscuro! Out with expressionism and the new painting are easy to recognize: a sentimental aura free from any Novecento, Strapaese and Stracittà movements […] Life-sized, seated 16 Ibidem. form of ‘intelligentism’; an abdication of the faculties of abstraction in 17 For the circulation of the term frontally in a grey room, a young blonde dressed in yellow. […] The face romanticismo at the turn of the decade, favour of pure pictorial sensoriality; […] the choice of simple subjects, see “Una stagione neo-romantica. is painted in disjointed planes and uneven shadows. Thick brushstrokes Pittura e scultura a Milano negli anni of vague, open, non-literary themes like nudes, towns and horses; a safe trenta”, in E. Pontiggia, N. Colombo and exposed patches of canvas alternate freely, disdaining detail and (edited by), Milano anni Trenta. return, a precise attachment to our nineteenth century, i.e. to romanti- L’arte e la città, exhibition catalogue material, rising as pure chromatic power […] You do not remember that (Milan, Spazio Oberdan, 2 December 12 cism, Impressionism and colour. 2004 – 27 February 2005), Milan: dress, that hand or even the luminosity and spatial depth of Menzio’s Mazzotta, 2004, pp. 9–37. The young art historian brought into the front line of current develop- 18 M. Soldati, “L’Arte a Venezia...”, cit., painting; but you do remember Menzio’s painting as a whole, like a 9 At the Rome Quadrennial, inaugurated 1928. 13 22 ments the theories of Lionello Venturi, who had maintained the equiv- at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni 19 The giuria di accettazione was made real, living person you once met. on 5 January 1931, Menzio, Galante, up of Felice Casorati, Napoleone alence of romantic and classical art in terms of perfection in his work Levi and Paulucci were shown in room Martinuzzi, Mario Sironi and Ardengo Impressionism returned and so did the above-mentioned Biennial group XXIX together with the Italiens de Paris: Soffici, all appointed by the board of 14 Il gusto dei primitivi. This is one of the cornerstones on which he con- Massimo Campigli, Filippo de Pisis, directors, together with Antonio Maraini, with the addition of Chessa and his “spontaneous enthusiasm towards René Paresce, Gino Severini and general secretary of the event. 23 structed his proposal for an unprecedented genealogy stretching from Mario Tozzi. 20 The periodical, with Casorati as graphic the world, which opens up before him bathed in a greenish glow”. A 10 E. Paulucci, lecture delivered at the consultant, appeared in twelve issues Giotto to Manet, rejecting the primacy of the Renaissance and hence the University of Turin in 1956; now from November 1928 to June 1930. long passage was devoted to Emilio Sobrero and his “barely hazarded in V. Viale, I Sei di Torino..., cit., 1965, It had a large number of contributors 24 canons of the Neoclassicism then in force. p. 24. (including Giacomo Debenedetti, Dino composition […] something like Montale’s Ossi di seppia”. 11 M. Soldati, “L’Arte a Venezia. Garrone and Guido Piovene) described Soldati’s observations on the Biennial were exemplified in the exercise I neoromantici”, in La Stampa, as “all friends of long standing” by 4 September 1928. Bonfantini in the first issue. Its aim was of vision translated by writing sensitive to the quality of the “thick, vi- 12 M. Soldati, “L’Arte a Venezia...”, cit., to eliminate Italy’s cultural provincialism, At the sign of Manet 1928. taking up the legacy of Primo Tempo 15 brant” brushstrokes, as “dense and gleaming” as “fibrils”. That gener- 13 Soldati graduated in 1927 under and Baretti. See in particular R. Cicala, Winter 1929. The “young artists” got organized and counted their the supervision of Venturi, who then Inchiostri indelebili. Itinerari di carta tra al atmosphere circulated between the names of Tosi and Carrà, of Guidi, put his name forward for the compilation bibliografie, archivi ed editoria, Quaderni numbers, presenting themselves to the public as six painters in a show of the Catalogo della Galleria d’Arte del Laboratorio di Editoria dell’Università Sobrero, Funi and Salietti, of Carena in particular and even of Sironi. Moderna del Museo Civico di Torino, Cattolica di Milano, Milan: Educatt, (Mostra di sei pittori) held in January at the Sala d’arte Guglielmi in published by Avezzano in the same year. 2012, pp. 192–95. 14 “L’arte romantica è un’arte perfetta, 21 M. Soldati, “Pittura italiana d’oggi”, quanto la classica, almeno.” L. Venturi, in La Libra, y. I, no. 1, November 1928, Il gusto dei primitivi, (1926), Turin: p. 1. Einaudi, 1972, p. 172. 22 Ibidem. 15 M. Soldati, “L’Arte a Venezia...”, 23 Ibidem. cit., 1928. 24 Ibidem.

106 107 GIORGINA BERTOLINO THE SIX PAINTERS OF TURIN: EUROPEAN AND MODERN

Turin. They belonged to the same generation not so much in terms of Négresse39), the ideas shared with Soldati and Persico, and the trips to 33 Registering a marked delay with respect age as of artistic background, having developed under the wing of Felice 25 Within the area of Casorati’s influence, to Milan, art galleries did not become Paris. One year later, for their return to the Sala Guglielmi in January Chessa and Menzio took part in the a permanent feature of the Turin scene Casorati, who provided them with teaching, an ethics of painting and an Esposizione d’Arte. Mole Antonelliana, a until the early years after World War II, 1930, Luigi Spazzapan produced a second sign, based this time on Secessionist exhibition organized by the when La Bussola and Gissi opened. It is 25 40 operative model of cultural action. local Società Promotrice di Belle Arti in significant that in 1935 private initiative Cézanne [FIG. 5]. 1921, and the same artists together with was still represented by two artists with The exhibition was the format identified by the Six to give birth to an Galante and Levi in “La Quadriennale”. the opening of the Studio by Casorati The connection between the Six and Impressionism directly affected Esposizione Nazionale di Belle Arti at and Paulucci in Via Giulia di Barolo and aggregation, a space that contains and presents the work of the indi- the Promotrice in the room entrusted to the associated commencement of its the analysis of their painting and gave rise in the context of the critical Casorati, who also invited Carrà and De important programme of exhibitions. viduals but transcends it at the same time, becoming a field for the ex- Chirico among others. Outside Turin, all They then followed this up by opening debate of the late twenties to tension and confrontation, often related of the Six took part in numerous editions the Zecca in 1938. For the history of change and sharing of new approaches and attitudes. This was imme- of the Venice Biennial and Chessa, galleries and exhibitions in Turin, see in to the nationalistic spirit that emblematically saw the “pseudo Parisian” Galante and Menzio were three of the particular A. Dragone, “Le arti figurative”, diately perceived in the reviews, which focused on the sociology of the twenty Italian artists featured in Venti in Various Authors, Torino 1920-1936. as ideologically extraneous. Previously disparaged as a form of “disso- artisti italiani at the Galleria Pesaro, Milan, Società e cultura tra sviluppo industriale event and “changes in practice” as regards printing — the “programme in December 1924. Outside Italy, Chessa, e capitalismo, Turin: Ed. Progetto, 1976; lute painting”, Impressionism was acquiring new importance precisely Menzio and Galante were among those A. Dragone, “Le arti visive”, in Torino Città with no capital letters” — and the constant presence of the artists “in included in the Exposition d’Artistes viva da capitale a metropoli 1880-1980, in this period as an element of a “modernity to be understood as a not Italiens contemporains organized by Turin: Centro Studi Piemontesi, 1980. 41 their room, curious to hear, eager to mingle with the public, ready to Alberto Sartoris in Geneva at the Musée 34 E. Zanzi, “Gli insegnamenti di exclusively temporal category”, as Laura Iamurri noted. In December Rath in 1927. For the period before the un’esposizione”, in Gazzetta del Popolo, 26 provide explanations and offer interpretations of their works”. The birth of the Six, see in particular M. Rosci, 21 January 1929; now in A. Bovero, 1929, in the first and only text signed by all of them, the Six offered an “Appunti per una preistoria dei Sei”, in M. Archivi, cit., 1965, pp. 86–87. exhibition turned into a conversation, becoming a terrain of discourse Bandini (edited by), I Sei Pittori di Torino 35 For Persico and his relationship with original contribution on this theme in response to a “referendum” on 1929-1931, exhibition catalogue (Turin, the Six, see in particular E. Pontiggia for the pooling of knowledge acquired during training and through the Mole Antonelliana, 6 May – 4 July 1993), (edited by), Edoardo Persico e gli artisti “the nineteenth-century history painting” held in Le Arti Plastiche by Milan: Fabbri, 1993, pp. 55–67; and (1929-1936), exhibition catalogue members’ respective circles: Boswell’s background in England and the M.M. Lamberti, “I giovani pittori torinesi (Milan, PAC – Padiglione d’Arte Vincenzo Costantini in connection with the Biennial’s competition for a e la solitudine di Casorati”, in M. Fagiolo Contemporanea, 11 June – 13 September 27 cosmopolitan life of the Gualino household ; Chessa’s close relations dell’Arco (edited by), Realismo magico. 1998), Milan: Electa, 1998, pp. 17–22. work inspired by figures or events involved in the formation of the early Pittura e scultura in Italia 1919-1925, 36 E. Zanzi, “Gli insegnamenti...”, cit., 28 42 with Carena ; Galante’s friendship with Soffici and work for the pe- exhibition catalogue (Verona, Galleria 1929. The information about the sales is Fascist structures. They appear to indicate a change in the paradigm of dello Scudo, 27 November 1988 − 29 contained in the article. The subject was 29 riodicals La Voce and Lacerba ; Levi’s relations with Gobetti togeth- January 1989), Milan: Mazzotta, 1988, also mentioned by Menzio in a letter to history painting by putting forward Renoir’s Leaving the Conservatory as pp. 65–78. Emilio Sobrero after the show closed on er with contemporaries like Natalino Sapegno, Federico Chabod, Ada 26 U.L., “Una mostra di Sei pittori. 50 opere 28 January 1929: “[...] something never an example and therefore including more lowly depictions of society and d’avanguardia. Una ‘sveglia’ artistica”, before achieved, we sold nearly 75% of 30 43 Prospero, Nella Marchesini and her sisters Maria and Ada ; Menzio’s in L’Ambrosiano, 18 January 1929; the paintings”. See F. Poli (edited by), collective rituals in the genre. Their aim was not so much this, however, now in A. Bovero, Archivi, cit.,1965, p. 85. Emilio Sobrero, exhibition catalogue 31 background among the Italiens de Paris with a studio in Rue Falguière 27 For Boswell and her relations with (Turin, Circolo degli Artisti, 19 October – as to provoke a response entailing consideration of the inspiration and Riccardo Gualino and Cesarina Gurgo 8 December 1996), Turin: Lindau, 1996, 32 where Paulucci also stayed. Salice, her employers from 1914 to pp. 62–63. freedom of the artist: In short, in all the paintings in which a historical 1928, see I. Mulatero (edited by), Jessie 37 I. M. Angeloni, “Una mostra all’insegna The Six’s conversion of the Sala d’arte antique shop on Piazza Castello Boswell, exhibition catalogue (Turin, Sala di Manet. Sei pittori in Piazza Castello”, fact or event has been seen by a person who is a poet, we will find not Bolaffi, 18 March –10 May 2009), Turin: in Il Momento, 13 January 1929; now in 33 marked the first step towards the birth of art galleries in Turin, private Bolaffi, 2009; M. Fagiolo dell’Arco, B. A. Bovero, Archivi, cit.,1965, p. 80. The that fact but that poetry, not that event but that person; poetry and Marconi (edited by), Cesarina Gualino e presence of the sign was also mentioned spaces far removed from the formality of large-scale exhibitions, capa- i suoi amici, exhibition catalogue (Rome, by Persico in “Sei Pittori di Torino”, in person that we will then be able to consider also without reference to Accademia Nazionale di San Luca, 4 June L’Ambrosiano, 2nd semester, 1931; now in ble of fostering direct acquaintance and confidential rituals, renewing – 3 July 1997), Venice: Marsilio, 1997. A. Bovero, Archivi, cit.,1965, p. 217. These those facts or events in connection with certain problems of art of which 28 For the artist’s life and work as a whole, are the only sources for this lost element. 44 the relationship with the general public and stimulating the formation of see Gigi Chessa, 1989-1935, exhibition 38 L. Venturi, “Manet”, in L’A r te, y. XXXIII, history can be made up. catalogue (Turin, Mole Antonelliana, July–August 1929, pp. 145–64. collections: “Doctors and lawyers, industrialists and ladies of high so- 14 November 1987 – 14 February 1988), 39 The work was shown in 1928 in the As against the tradition and the “blood in the veins” that Costantini Milan: Fabbri, 1987. exhibition of the Gualino collection at the ciety, and — something new and significant — artists, writers and critics 29 For the artist’s life and work as a whole, Regia Pinacoteca Sabauda in Turin. It is traced back to the lineage of nineteenth-century Italian art, the Six see L. Guasco (edited by), Nicola published and examined by Maria Mimita 34 of art”. More than half of the works exhibited were sold and Edoardo Galante, 1883-1969, exhibition catalogue Lamberti in “La raccolta Gualino d’arte championed the “taste”, “civilization” and “spiritual unity of modern (Turin, Foyer del Piccolo Regio, 18 moderna e contemporanea”, in Dagli ori Persico — who played a key part in the birth of the group and in its ottobre – 20 novembre 1977), Turin: antichi agli anni Venti. Le collezioni di painting and above all French art, from early Impressionism to contem- Stamperia artistica nazionale, 1977. Riccardo Gualino, exhibition catalogue 35 45 collective reflections and strategies — “had no need to invite muse- 30 For Levi’s participation in Gobetti’s (Turin, Palazzo Madama, Galleria porary Post-Impressionism”. For them, the response to the glorifica- plans, see in particular “Gli anni di Sabauda, December 1982 – March 1983), um committees […] for what were known as official purchases”, Emilio ‘Energie Nove’. Intervista a Carlo Levi Milan: Electa, 1982, pp. 82–83. tion of “contemporaneity” by rhetoric and “propaganda” could only be e Natalino Sapegno”, in Mezzosecolo, 40 The collage by Spazzapan was used 36 46 Zanzi writes in the Gazzetta del Popolo. Materiali di ricerca storica. Annali del in 1965 for the cover of the catalogue the search for a “modern style”. centro Studi P. Gobetti dell’Istituto edited by V. Viale, I Sei di Torino 1929- The organization of the operation was completed by a reference to the storico della Resistenza in Piemonte, 1932..., cit., 1965. no. 1, 1975, pp. 465–79. The present 41 L. Iamurri, Lionello Venturi e la modernità history of art through an image chosen as an indication of sources and author examines the relations inside dell’impressionismo, Rome: Quodlibet Through the collection Piero Gobetti’s circle in “L’arte è la Studio, 2010, pp. 7–8. preferences in the immediate sphere of visuality. As we read in the ar- stella polare. Vita e pittura di Nella 42 The prize of 50,000 lire was funded by Out of the fifty-three works shown in the exhibition of January 1929, Marchesini”, in G. Bertolino (edited by), the Fascist party and figured among ticle “Una mostra all’insegna di Manet”, “Perhaps not wholly devoid of Nella Marchesini. Catalogo generale. I the competitions instituted by Antonio three were interiors, eight figure paintings, twelve still lifes and thirty dipinti (1920-1953), Cinisello Balsamo: Maraini for the XVII Venice Biennial in significance is the slightly isolated sign in the cold entrance to the ex- Silvana Editoriale, 2015, pp. 11–47. 1930. See M. De Sabbata, Tra diplomazia landscapes, a distribution that reflects a clear preference for the lat- 31 Menzio, who lived in Paris in 1927 and e arte: le Biennali di Antonio Maraini hibition, an amusing caricature by Menzio of the Olympia that reigns in 1928, was one of the Italian painters (1928-1942), Udine: Forum, 2006, pp. ter and thus assigns significant centrality to a genre then regarded as featured in Les artistes italiens de Paris 128–29. 37 the Louvre today.” This apparently offhand appropriation of an icon at the Salon de L’Escalier, February 43 I Sei Pittori di Torino (Levi, Menzio, minor. This is related to developments on the art scene in Turin and in 1928. For the artist’s life and work as a Chessa, Paulucci, Galante, Boswell), encapsulates the salient facts of the history of the Six: the teaching of whole, see P. Fossati, A. Gelli, M. Rosci “Il ‘Quadro storico’“, in Le Arti Plastiche, particular to the policy of the Società di Belle Arti Antonio Fontanesi, (edited by), Francesco Menzio, opere 15 December 1929; now in A. Bovero, 38 Venturi (who was to publish an article on Manet in July), the weight 1921-1977, exhibition catalogue (Turin, Archivi, cit.,1965, p. 157. The order of the which was then engaged in promoting a reappraisal of the nineteenth Circolo degli Artisti, 8 April – 10 May names probably reflects the extent to and the infuence of the Gualino collection (including Manet’s study La 1987), Milan: Fabbri, 1987. which the individual painters contributed century and identifying some elements of continuity with the present, 32 The information about the stay in Paris to writing the article. For their response is taken from E. Paulucci, “Frammento to the referendum, see also C. Levi, autobiografico”, [1960], in M. Bandini Lo specchio. Scritti di critica d’arte, (edited by), Omaggio a Paulucci, edited by P. Vivarelli, Rome: Donzelli, exhibition catalogue (Turin, Fondazione 2001, pp. XII–XIII and 3–5. Palazzo Bricherasio, 6–29 September 44 I Sei pittori di Torino, Il “Quadro 1996), Milan: Electa, 1996, p. 39. storico”…, cit., 1929.

108 109 GIORGINA BERTOLINO THE SIX PAINTERS OF TURIN: EUROPEAN AND MODERN also through the rehabilitation of supposedly lesser and unfashionable in the landscape inhabited by human beings. Landscapes were thus the genres.47 The Esposizione delle Vedute di Torino [Exhibition of views of way found by Galante, described by Zanzi as “uprooted in Turin”,58 to Turin] that opened in November 1926 (with all of the future Six taking give new meaning to places in painting, to revisit those of his origins (as part) mobilized the city’s artists, produced an iconography and served in this view of Vasto) and to explore the outskirts of the city where he at the same time as a response to the predominance of figure painting. now lived. The cliché of the sincere, self-taught artist (warned by Soffici 45 Ibidem. Venturi famously called for a reversal of the situation in an article on the 46 Ibidem. to “be careful not to lose the graceful innocence and naiveté that was his 47 The Fontanesi is an association 59 first exhibition of the Novecento Italiano in Milan, where he called for of “primarily professional and 3. Invitation to the show at the Galleria Bardi, natural gift” ) must be set in the context of the contacts that Galante de- corporative character” (art. 10 of its 48 Milan, November 1929 the human figure to be painted just as a landscape is. corporate charter, undated printed veloped during his apprenticeship and within the sphere of the interests sheet, Archivio Emilio Sobrero) with At the first exhibition of the Six, Levi displayed a preference for the two categories of members: “a) artists, shared among the Six. His notes on the trip to Paris in 1930 document b) art lovers”. In addition to Bistolfi, urban scene, the Paris of the 14 Juillet, Notre Dame and the Tuileries; Casorati, Grosso, Ferro and Rubino, the open-mindedness of a cultured and singular nature while constituting former included members of the younger Galante for the landscapes of Tuscany, Liguria and the hills around Turin; generation such as Sobrero, Chessa, an up-to-date map of the group’s points of reference: the phrases copied Levi, Menzio and Galante (the oldest Paulucci for scenes in the snow and Boswell for Cereseto Monferrato and of the future Six). For the exhibitions from Joachim Gasquet Bernheim-Jeune’s monograph on Cézanne (“na- organized by the Fontanesi, attention 49 Sestri Levante, the holiday resorts of Riccardo and Cesarina Gualino. should be drawn in particular to the ture is not surface but depth”); the “light greys” of Utrillo’s Notre Dame Esposizione di Bozzetti e Disegni, Her Marina [Seascape], 1929 [W. NO. 20], now in the Iannaccone collection, May–June 1925 (including Boswell, seen at the Galerie Percier; Marie Laurencin in the Rosenberg gallery Chessa, Galante and Menzio), the Mostra was probably painted at Sestri, where the painter — “lady-in-waiting” to di pittori macchiaioli toscani e di paesisti and the Musée du Luxembourg, where he was also struck by Derain’s piemontesi dell’800, January–February 50 60 the “little queen”, as she described herself — spent the summer in the 1926, and the Esposizione delle Vedute Forest at Martigues and The blonde as well as a still life by Matisse. di Torino, November–December 1926. Castello dei Lecci with its vast grounds and paths leading to the belve- 48 L. Venturi, “Il problema della mostra del The trips to Paris were among the things mentioned by Francesco Novecento”, in Il Secolo, 2 March 1926. 51 4. A room of the show at the Galleria Bardi, 49 The show of January 1929 included dere, the aviary and the Marconi tower overlooking the sea. So faithful Milan, November 1929 Menzio in his introductory note to the exhibition at the Sala Guglielmi eleven works by Levi, four of which on was she to the same places that Cesarina renamed one of nearby beach- Paris (nos. 32–35 in the catalogue); in January 1930. It was a year since their debut and the Six already had a six gouaches and twelve paintings 52 es “Jessie Bay”. Built up in a deft interplay of light and tonal relations, by Galante, including Paese toscano distinct collective physiognomy constructed through a strategy of alter- [Tuscan Landscape], Marina (Zoagli) 56 In addition to the above-mentioned the Marina [W. NO. 20] is one of the works described by Arrigo Angiolini [Seascape, Zoagli], Paese (Liguria) article by Carrà, C. E. Oppo, “I ‘6’ nating group shows and participation in institutional events, including [Landscape, Liguria] and Paese di Torino a Milano”, in La Tribuna, in his comments on the Six’s exhibition at the Genoa press club in the (Cavoretto) [Landscape, Cavoretto] 26 November 1929; A. Carpi, ‘Sei Pittori the second Novecento Italiano exhibition in Milan and the entire room (nos. 16, 22–24); one gouache and nine di Torino alla Galleria Bardi’, L’Italia, spring of 1929 as “delightful impressions in sumptuous shades”, “so paintings by Paulucci, including two 26 November 1929; M. Sironi, “La mostra at the Prima Sindacale fascista [First Exhibition of the Fascist Union of landscapes in the snow (Paese sotto dei ‘Sei’“, in Il Popolo d’Italia; g. dott. 61 Italian as to be almost Tuscan”, with a reference to the Macchiaioli, la neve, nos. 51 and 52); and ten works [G. Dottori], “Messe a punto”, in Fine Arts] at the Promotrice in Turin. It is thus necessary to insist once by Boswell including Cereseto and two L’Impero, 3 December 1929; now in whose paintings Boswell would have seen in the collection of Gualino, seascapes of Sestri Levante (Marina A. Bovero, Archivi, cit.,1965, pp. 146–48, again on the group’s European vocation as developed through travels di Sestri Levante, nos. 2, 7 and 8). 149, 152–53. 53 a financier and patron of the arts. Contrary to the interpretations of For the complete list of works shown, 57 The title appears as no. 16 in the list and returns between discovery, memory and progressively developed see A. Bovero, Archivi, cit.,1965, p. 77. of works published in the catalogue the period, marked by the clichés of the genre and characterized by an 50 B. Marconi, “Jessie Boswell e Cesarina 6 Pittori di Torino, with an introduction by autonomy: “The impressions obtained were distorted, entered the fan- Gualino. Affinità elettive”, in I. Mulatero, P. M. Bardi, Milan: Belvedere, 1929; now anecdotal approach, Carrà perceived her ability to work on the “har- Jessie Boswell..., cit., 2009, p. 67. in A. Bovero, Archivi, cit.,1965, p. 31. The tastic world and lost all connection with the things that had given rise to 51 The Gualino family residence at Sestri list shows that Galante presented twelve 62 mony of three or four tonalities that struck her” in accordance with “a Levante, built on two fortified ruins, was oil paintings, three sketches in oil, six them, at which point they became legitimate property.” the result of a project by the architects gouaches, two sanguines, two drawings 54 naturalistic principle outside the customary models”. Carlo, Clemente and Michele Busiri Vici in pencil, one “blue” and one “red”, for a Menzio showed “only six items” in Turin, including “La finestra [The including the Castello dei Lecci, Castello total of twenty-seven works, the largest 63 Carrà wrote shortly after the end of the group’s show at the Galleria dei Cipressi and Castello delle Agavi. in the exhibition together with that of Window], Fiasco [Flask] and La sciarpa verde [The Green Scarf]”, the See G. Castagnoli, A. Imponente, Paulucci, followed by Levi with twenty, Bardi in Milan [FIGS. 3, 4]. It is no coincidence that their debut in the most “La casa museo”, in Dagli ori antichi..., Menzio fourteen, Boswell eight and latter being identifiable as Lo scialle verde [The Green Shawl] [W. NO. 53], cit., 1982, p. 15. Chessa seven. dynamic hub of the Italian scene was marked by a controversy initiat- 52 The note, dated April 1924, is taken from 58 E. Zanzi, “Gli insegnamenti...”, cit., 1929; which represents the artist’s work together with the Ritratto di giovane the diary of Cesarina Gualino Gurgo now in A. Bovero, Archivi, cit.,1965, p. 89. ed by a reactionary protest on the part of a group of students of the Salice, in B. Marconi, Jessie Boswell 59 A. Soffici, letter to N. Galante, 31 October [Portrait of a Young Man] [W. NO. 52] in the Iannaccone collection. The title e Cesarina..., cit., 2009, p. 74. 1930; now in M. Bandini, I Sei Pittori di Brera Academy, as a result of which, the Six were associated with the 53 A. Angiolini, “I Sei pittori al Circolo della Torino..., cit., 1993, p. 218. orients the perceptual reading of the painting, guiding the eye to the Stampa”, in Il Lavoro, 3 May 1929; now 60 N. Galante, “Appunti – Parigi 1930”; now 55 Novecento group despite all their efforts. The press published articles in A. Bovero, Archivi, cit.,1965, p. 113. in M. Bandini, I Sei Pittori di Torino..., shawl in acid shades of seaweed green streaked with yellows and browns The second Mostra di Sei Pittori ran cit., 1993, pp. 211–12. These “notes” are 56 by Carrà, Carpi, Oppo, Sironi, Dottori and everyone else. from 20 April to 7 May and had a printed studied in particular by M. C. Maiocchi that contrast with the dark draperies and shadows. The face of the young brochure with a list of the works on in “‘Parigi amica’, 1930. Venturi, i Sei In the modern premises of Pietro Maria Bardi’s gallery, Nicola Galante show and short biographical sketches e Parigi: ipotesi e prospettive”, in M. woman with red lips, black eyes and a pensive expression grows out of of the artists; now in A. Bovero, Archivi, M.Lamberti (edited by), Lionello Venturi e presented twenty-seven works comprising oil paintings and sketches, cit.,1965, pp. 103–107. la pittura a Torino 1919-1930, Fondazione this chromatic corolla, a figure of colour steeped in melancholy. The 54 C. Carrà, “Sei Pittori di Torino”, CRT Cassa di Risparmio di Torino, Turin: gouaches and drawings in sanguine and pencil in his personal room, in L’Ambrosiano, 22 November 1929; Editris Duemila, 2000, pp. 191–213. fashionable cloche hat indicating her social status is a unifying element now in A. Bovero, Archivi, cit.,1965, 61 Novecento Italiano, Milan, Palazzo della as though to assert the close relationship between his painting and p. 143. Società per le Belle Arti ed Esposizione in the modern iconography of the Six from Chessa’s Ragazza in bianco 55 The episode was reported in the article Permanente, 14 February – 31 March his skill in graphic art. The list opens with his landscape Paese per la “Chiassate di studenti a Milano per 1926. Prima Esposizione sindacale [Young Woman in White] (Florence, Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Palazzo una mostra d’arte novecentista”, in Il fascista della Società Promotrice delle 57 Casetta (Vasto) [Little House in the Country (Vasto)] [W. NO. 34], now in Giornale d’Italia, 20 November 1929, Belle Arti, Turin, Palazzo della Società Pitti) to the women of Carlo Levi’s Aria (Turin, Galleria Civica d’Arte which subsequently appeared also in Promotrice al Valentino, June–July 1929. the Iannaccone collection, the very title of which seems to suggest the several national newspapers. See A. 62 F. Menzio, “Sei pittori...”, cit., in Moderna e Contemporanea), a Ligurian variation on the theme of the dé- Bovero, Archivi, cit.,1965, pp. 136–37. A. Bovero, Archivi, cit.,1965, p. 162. indicative function attributed to painting, its ability to orient the artist The event attracted so much attention 63 E.Z. [E. Zanzi], “La tristezza di cinque jeuner sur l’herbe [FIG. 1, P. 178]. From here on, the expressive quality sought that the gallery’s owner Pier Maria Bardi artisti e di una pittrice”, in Gazzetta del sent a letter to the editors (printed Popolo, 8 January 1930; now in in La Tribuna, L’Ambrosiano and A. Bovero, Archivi, cit.,1965, p. 169. Il Caffaro) to make it clear that “none As the list of works exhibited on this of the Six Painters of Turin was occasion has yet to be found, the titles responsible for this demonstration”. See are drawn from this review and others A. Bovero, Archivi, cit.,1965, pp. 138–39. that appeared at the time.

110 111 GIORGINA BERTOLINO THE SIX PAINTERS OF TURIN: EUROPEAN AND MODERN in fluid brushstrokes and bright colours became a dominant common As though in response to Venturi, the Nudo is a landscape, the metamor- feature in the work of Menzio, Levi, Chessa and — albeit with substan- phosis of body into place, the result of organic interpenetration between tial stylistic differences — Paulucci too. woman and nature. The back of the sleeping figure, wrapped and indeed Strict observance of the number indicated in the name gave way after almost absorbed in the volutes of the garments, presents the features of a the 1930 Venice Biennial64 to the affinities between the members, pres- map, the circular contours of hills, lakes and coves. The colours too — rosy ent in groups of four and then three both in major events, such as the yellow ochre, earthen hues, browns, blues and greys — seem to belong to Novecento exhibition in Buenos Aires,65 and in shows in private galler- the physical map of a terrain. A nude and a landscape, this is a radiant, ies: at the Bloomsbury in London, with a presentation by Venturi,66 part rocky, marine painting, possibly produced at Alassio in the year of Levi’s of which then moved to the Galleria di Roma in January 193167 to coincide first arrest. Within the boundaries of Giuseppe Iannaccone’s collection, with the Rome Quadrennial; and at the Galerie-Librairie Jeune Europe it is an open image that bears witness to the contacts and affinities circu- in Paris,68 with which the chronology of the Six came to a close at the lating in the Italian art of the thirties. end of 1931. The works of Gigi Chessa and Carlo Levi in the Iannaccone collection take the story beyond its canonical conclusion. Signed and dated 1934, Chessa’s painting belongs to the series of nudes, 5. Cover of the catalogue of the exhibition of 1965 at the Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna a central theme all through his career that took on new importance as in Turin with a reproduction of the poster produced by Luigi Spazzapan for the show from the solo show of December 1931 at the Sala d’arte Guglielmi. The of January 1930 at the Galleria Guglielmi, titles of the recent nudes gathered together on that occasion each in- Turin dicate a single colour — Nudo bianco [White Nude], Nudo grigio [Grey Nude], Nudo rosa [Pink Nude] — as though in a verification through the development of variants (I, II, III)69 of the power of monochrome in terms both of style and of sentimental intonation. Inspired by Modigliani, the subject of a long article in L’A r t e ,70 and influenced by the celebrated Nudo rosso [Red Nude] of the Gualino collection, Chessa found his own path, developing the bodies in soft, light colour with the forms barely outlined in quick, thin, glowing brushstrokes and hollow almonds for the eyes. In the nude of the Iannaccone collection [W. NO. 28], the seated woman presents a more defined appearance of belonging to a period of time and place, as suggested by the hairstyle, the armchair and the plant in a flowerpot, while the same atmosphere made up of colour alone, like 64 The Six all exhibited work at the XVII Venice Biennial but in different rooms. air moved by painting, remains around her. See A. Bovero, Archivi, cit.,1965, pp. 180–81. Separated by just a short interval, Levi’s two paintings of document the 65 Chessa, Levi, Menzio and Paulucci took part in the exhibition of September– course of a progression. The Ritratto di donna [Female Portrait] [W. NO. 43] October 1930 in the premises of the Amigos de l’Arte association in Buenos 6. Cover of the book Archivi dei Sei pittori of 1932−33 represents a point midway between the vitality of the nude Aires. See A. Bovero, Archivi, cit.,1965, di Torino, edited by Anna Bovero, Rome: pp. 194–95. De Luca Editore, 1965 of 1934 [W. NO. 44] (which already looks forward to southern period) and the 66 The above-mentioned Exhibition of New Italian Painting. turn towards expressivity initiated halfway through 1930. The figure is 67 The exhibition of January 1931 at the Galleria di Roma, opened by Pier Maria the skewed fulcrum of an oscillation or concentric motion developed by Bardi on Mussolini’s instructions, presented paintings by Levi, Menzio the direction of the brushstrokes, the winding, circular forms and the ca- and Paulucci. Participation in premises “under the auspices of the Sindacato denced rhythm of the chromatic succession: the blue of the background, Fascista Belle Arti” was a question discussed above all by Levi. See the the orange crown, the purple red of the dress. The painting presents letter of E. Paulucci to C. Levi, 25 September 1930, and the undated letter 71 M. M. Lamberti, “Il Dott. Carlo Levi itself as an event, a generative process that absorbs and records what of 1930 from C. Levi to E. Paulucci, now Pittore”, in E. Mongiano, I. Massabó Ricci in M. Bandini, I Sei Pittori di Torino..., cit., (a cura di), Carlo Levi. Un’esperienza happens and is transmitted between painter and model. Levi’s portraits 1993, pp. 213 and 216. For the list of the culturale e politica nella Torino works exhibited, see A. Bovero, Archivi, degli anni Trenta, exhibition catalogue 71 are not “only portraits” but “discourses”, to quote Aldo Garosci, the cit.,1965, pp. 200–02. (Turin, Archivio di Stato), Turin, 1985, 68 The Première Exposition. Peintres p. 30. friend variously represented as Figura in rosso [The Red Man], Figura in Italiens Chessa, Menzio, Levi, Paulucci. 72 The Red Man (Italian title Figura in Dessins de Spazzapan, Sculptures de rosso) was included in the show at the giallo. Ritratto di Aldo Garosci [Yellow Figure. Portrait of Aldo Garosci] Galvani, 5−23 December 1931, was Bloomsbury in London of December introduced by Lionello Venturi. See 1930 and is mentioned by Maria Mimita 72 and Eroe cinese [Chinese Hero] [FIG. 1, P. 252]. A. Bovero, Archivi, cit.,1965, pp. 210–11. Lamberti in the above-mentioned 69 For the list of works shown, from which catalogue of the Turin State Archives, the titles are taken, see M. Bandini, I Sei 1985, as now belonging to the Pushkin Pittori di Torino..., cit., 1993, p. 202. Museum in Moscow. Figura in giallo 70 G. Chessa, “Per Amedeo Modigliani”, (Ritratto di Aldo Garosci), private in L’A r te, vol. I, y. XXXIII, January 1930; collection, was painted in 1930 and Eroe now in Gigi Chessa 1989-1935..., cit., cinese, owned by the Fondazione Carlo 1987, pp. 75–76. Levi in Rome, is dated 1931.

112 113 The Universe in a Leaf. Rosai and De Pisis

carlo sisi

It is the idea of poetic solitude with its many corollaries that appears most germane to the sketch of parallel lives attempted here between Rosai and De Pisis, industrious members of Margherita Sarfatti’s militant Novecento movement and then, albeit for a short period, active in the impatient years of the post-war period but without ever sharing either the canons of the “return to order” or the formal precepts of realism. “For a painter, for example, achieving his dream will mean painting the universe in a leaf.” Rosai wrote these words in the modest pages of the magazine Frontespizio in 19371 as part of a statement intended to redeem his past reputation for “hooliganism” and replace it with the “private drama” of one who has chosen the contemplative torment of isolation: “His life will be one of constant, endless pain at being able to give neither himself nor others peace with his work.”2 From the “melodramatic chamber” of his aesthetic youth to the ultimate grey room in Villa Fiorita (“That grey, That grey […] is congenial to me in this moment. It is the very colour of my life”3), De Pisis’s biography, though coloured by international adventures and erotic abandonment, is equally marked by a destiny of intimate poetic seclusion that subjected the artist’s human experience to often unbearable intermittency, to the bitter contradictions that torment the “men — few, privileged and ill-fated — who feel the mystery of life to the point of agony and delirium” and therefore “cannot be with others”.4 These two protagonists of the short twentieth century were part of the sphere of “insularity” delimited by Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti at the time of the pioneering exhibition of modern art in Italy from 1915 to 1935 held in 1967, an unrepeatable opportunity to redraw the artistic map of that period in accordance with egalitarian rather than selective conceptions.5 On this methodological basis, with the disappearance of the various of “isms” and their directional inevitability generated by the succession of manifestos, programmes, movements and groups, the poetic trajectories came to light in previously unknown form of Morandi, De Pisis, Rosai and Montale, to mention some examples relevant to our present purposes. Figures who went through the revolutions and changes of that historical period “forming and developing the dictates of their inner life, embedding in history the addition of their revelation of life”,6 which is ultimately the multifaceted formal vocabulary adopted by each to interpret the human- 1 “L’essenziale”, in Il Frontespizio, kind of his time, body to body. As Rosai wrote in 1937, “An artist will ap- April 1937, XV, 4, pp. 287–88. 2 Ibidem, p. 287. pear like a horrible day, one of those black, cold, bitter days of winter with 3 See N. Naldini, De Pisis. Vita solitaria di un poeta pittore, Turin: Einaudi, 1991, piercing, frenzied rain that lashes your face and body like hurled handfuls p. 278. 4 Ibidem, p. 21. 5 See Arte moderna in Italia 1915-1935, exhibition catalogue (Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, 26 February – 28 May 1967), Florence: Marchi e Bertelli, 1967. 6 Ibidem, p. V.

115 CARLO SISI THE UNIVERSE IN A LEAF. ROSAI AND DE PISIS of thorns.”7 The image of inclement if not indeed not hostile nature here Florence on the other bank of the Arno”.14 On the occasion of the Ferrara is a metaphor of a state of mind seeking to identify in the torments of exhibition of 1951, Arcangeli instead composed an intense description of art — in the striving to attain a “peak of beauty” at the cost of bearing the De Pisis’s style focusing on the late paintings. Though not on show, these cross of inspiration — the true mission of the artist as against the vanity provided him with stimulus to emphasize the artist’s feverish creativity, of prizes and “fleeting glory”. Starting from decadent, pubescent ideas something never extinguished even in the agonies of his last illness. A and a stubborn identification with Leopardi, De Pisis noted his intention sort of lyrical diary, alternating between excitement, sorrow and even tor- to live in solitude in his diary (“How happy I am here in my dimly-lit room, ment, consigned to the painting that De Pisis defended against the evil of all enclosed and attentive. The tall, golden oil lamp spreads a mellow light the world, the ill-starred events, the fragility of man. As testified in Nico that is dear to me. I ask and my hundred things answer, understanding Naldini’s passionate biography, the painter possessed not only a glowing me and loving me.”8) and to enjoy the “poverty” of his days, albeit sus- palette but also a “vital human sense” of the disasters of life and fragile tained by the consoling resource of a vastly rich literary background and beauties on the threshold of hope, as is evident above all in the portraits — a constant monologue between himself and the appearances of the world 1. Ottone Rosai, Self-Portrait, 1944. of old people like St Benedict Joseph Labre (Ljubljana, Narodna Galerija), 9 Private collection so that perception is heightened (the “need to console bare solitude” ) beggar children, young people of that tragic era — painted “so as to pre- and the painting becomes an isolated mirror that reflects the iridescent vent the loss of their apparition, swept away as they were by death”.15 magma of things (“storms in nothingness”) as well as the astonishment of Rosai also painted portraits of great psychological insight, both of friends so much wonder imprisoned on the canvas. involved in his circle of affections and literary passions and of the poor In years coinciding with De Pisis’s lyrical animism, Rosai’s dream was but friendly people in the streets of the Oltrarno area of Florence, captur- therefore “to paint the universe in a leaf”, i.e. to instil the nature poring their individual profiles in an expressive, anti-graceful style, varying trayed with the sense of time, the intimate correspondence that brings from the serious to the facetious to the point where the demand for truth the artist and the things depicted together so as to obtain “the perfec- breaks through the trenches of the paradigmatic and sometimes of the tion of nature, the contribution of one of his own faces to nature itself”.10 lawful and the honest. Parronchi speaks of this with intense involvement, Evoked also by Rosai as the primary deuteragonist and translator of re- drawing attention to the depiction of a man praying (Uomo che prega, ality into shapes and colours, the poet was for De Pisis an “errant drop 1938, private collection) and its similarities to the contemporary reve- and tear / that reflects the treasure of the world”.11 Flowers too could relations of Rouault; the Tondini series of circular portraits showing “his veal themselves pleins des larmes, expressing the dramas and antinomies friends as though through a reversed telescope with their humanity pre- of the twentieth century through their extraordinary chromatic variety. served intact”; the many works in which sleep is seen as disarticulation of For Rosai, everything that might appear a flaw in the work of art instead the body, the deadening medicine of the poor, an image of death that has proves to be “its greatest virtue in that the drama of the thing represented something in common with the “wine” of Baudelaire, a poet read in his will lie precisely in the visibility of such defects” and men will therefore youth and particularly dear to him.16 This rugged and human depiction of “have the gaps to fill clearly evident before them”.12 In the critical anthol- marginality or the most intimate and intractable affection is represented ogy of Francesco Arcangeli’s writings on subjects ranging from romanti- in the Iannaccone collection by the portrait of the artist’s father (Ritratto cism to Art Informel,13 Morandi, Rosai and De Pisis are aligned in a se- del padre, also known as L’artigiano or L’intagliatore [The Wood Carver] quence that appears in keeping with the circumscribed poetic archipelago [W. NO. 69]. Through the synthesis of the profile and the dense coagulation delimited by Ragghianti within the figurative civilization of the twentieth of chromatic substance, the monumental portrayal of this silent figure century, not least because those of the fifties offer us the result of mili- emphasizes the “primitive” and “anti-graceful” approach developed tant involvement, a first-hand chronicle of events and appraisals brought by the early avant-garde and well understood by those who, like Rosai, to attention in the decade when the two artists died, De Pisis in 1956 and sought to depict everyday life with modern sensibility in the expressive Rosai in 1957. medium most congenial to them. As Carrà wrote with understanding and Arcangeli recalls being surprised on a quasi-official occasion to see Rosai fellow-feeling: “Rosai sought to translate the actions and appearances in “such sudden solitude, to sense the gentleness dwelling in that huge of people into painting with austere severity, to eliminate everything in body”, and thinking of the miracle of so many works touched by poetry them that is transient and finally attain an essential chromatic and formal being painted by “those enormous hands, the terrible hands of an ogre harmony.”17 or strangler”. While watching him appear like a fish out of water in the Rosai lucidly plumbed the depths of his own features in numerous telling 14 F. Arcangeli, Dal romanticismo..., cit., bustle of the society event, he imagined him in another, more appropri- 7 “L’essenziale”, cit., 1937, p. 287. 1977, p. 273. self-portraits, stripping himself of all protection against the world outside 8 N. Naldini, De Pisis..., cit., 1991, p. 36. 15 N. Naldini, De Pisis..., cit., 1991, p. 269. ate context, leaning “against a parapet of his river, in a doorway of his 9 Ibidem, p. 72. 16 A. Parronchi, “Il cielo di Rosai”, in with no fear of appearing defenceless, distressed, furious or desperately 10 “L’essenziale”, cit., 1937, p. 287. L’Approdo Letterario, VI, 11 (1960), 11 See F. Arcangeli, Dal romanticismo pp. 6 –7. all’informale. Dallo “spazio romantico” 17 See P. Pacini (edited by), Ottone Rosai. al primo Novecento, Turin: Einaudi, 1977, Opere dal 1940 al 1950, exhibition p. 286. catalogue (Cortina d’Ampezzo, Milano, 12 “L’essenziale”, cit., 1937, p. 287. Prato, 26 December 1985 – 4 March 13 See note 11. 1986), Florence: Farsetti, 1985, n.p.n.

116 117 CARLO SISI THE UNIVERSE IN A LEAF. ROSAI AND DE PISIS alone, undertaking courageous introspective explorations that have been together with them I then felt the need to add their surroundings, taking compared to those by other pitiless dissectors of the human condition like an interest in the resulting architectonic whole.”22 At the same time, the Otto Dix and Francis Bacon.18 Unlike De Pisis, who rather entrusts his im- memory of a childhood spent on the outskirts of the city brought with age as an artist to literary metaphors supported by a laboratory made up it the fragrance of nature observed with loving curiosity (“Every animal of the classics of the international aestheticism, Oscar Wilde above all, as became a discovery, every lane and gully a world to make my own.”23). a potential vehicle of “Orphic and pantheistic ecstasies”. In painting, his Regarded by the Macchiaioli as material for formal experimentation, na- portrait of a young gentleman in gloves with a stick (Ritratto di giovane ture was instead transformed through Rosai’s explorations into abstract gentiluomo coi guanti e il bastone, 1932, private collection, [FIG. 2]) could in and ruggedly monumental space. Having devoted himself to art with fact correspond to the image of the aristocratic young painter known in sincere non-systematic passion and the aid of reading that ranged from all his unpredictable metamorphoses from the photograph album, where the French Symbolists to Kipling and Wilde, he decided as early as 1912 he appears as a nineteenth-century page, a humanist, “à la Balzac”, a to make his debut “as a hooligan” in accordance with the dictates of a Roman carter and, more daringly, half-naked and tattooed at the Parisian youthful exuberance that displayed evident allegiance in those circum- Bal des Quat’z’Arts.19 The photographic sequence also corresponds to the stances to the nascent precepts of the Futurism championed by the jour- 2. Filippo de Pisis, Ritratto di giovane places of his first poetic adventure — Ferrara, Rome, Paris — and to his gentiluomo coi guanti e il bastone, 1932. 4. Filippo de Pisis, I grandi fiori di Casa nal Lacerba. Rosai’s first show, held in Florence in 1913, brought him into crepuscular, sensual, fantastic roots embedded in the odds and ends junk Verona, private collection Massimo, 1931. Rome, private collection contact with Marinetti, Boccioni and Carrà but led above all to the appre- he discovered in the attics of Palazzo Calcagnini, the first of the realms ciation of Soffici and the right to contribute toLacerba with writings of of bibelots that were to be reproduced in all his subsequent residences “whore-mongering, jailbird lyricism”,24 examples of transgressive will at with their ironic lights and pathetic shadows, almost like the pondered the service of a programme of institutional revolution that was see Rosai, and reiterated installation of a metaphysical, magical chamber. In any in headlong step with the times, play the successive parts of the pro-war case, having begun painting in 1916, the young man from Ferrara could agitator, storm trooper and Fascist subversive. The tragic death of his fa- have hardly avoided contact with the arcane philosophy of the De Chirico ther marked a painful hiatus burdened — as can be seen from his letters — brothers and at least some notion of the celibate machines of Dada, as by a sense of loss and futility. It was, however, also a regenerating trauma demonstrated by his the first papiers collées and the ironic intent of titles for the evolution of his painting, which registered an intense period of vi- such as “Hysterical Still Life”, which announced a desire to go beyond his tal creativity culminating in the monumental depiction of figures playing initial cultural province with knowledge that was to lead in time to the the game of toppa (Giocatori di toppa [“Toppa” Players], formerly part of [FIG. 3] imaginative variants of his still lifes. De Pisis spent five years in Rome, 3. Ottone Rosai, Giocatori di toppa, 1928. the Banca Toscana collection in Florence ), shown at the 1928 Venice initially cultivating the profile of a man of letters as more appropriate to Florence, Banca Toscana collection Biennial, of which the Iannaccone collection holds a more rarefied and his debut as a poet (I canti della Croara, 1916). A meeting with Armando anguished version [W. NO. 73]. The visual field is radically simplified, reduced Spadini then prompted him in 1923 to trying his hand at painting (“bella to a looming backdrop of buildings without light or a breath of air. The pittura”), which proved insufficient but led to a new understanding of an- players are clustered together in the foreground in an almost conspiratori- cient art to be approached with aggressiveness and all the senses in the al circle, their profiles caught in an impenetrable, equivocal coagulation, form of neo-seventeenth-century art of contemporary sensuality and in the two standing figures being halfway between onlookers and accomplic- the name of Titian, Magnasco, Goya, Delacroix and Manet.20 De Pisis was es, almost actors in a derisive allegory of life. to find a second home in Paris, the place to untangle the intricate knots of In the early thirties, after the turbulent years of political militancy and a sensibility eager to establish a dialogue with living art, to “faire ce que artistic controversy, the former internal revenue building at Anconella l’on voit du premier coup”21 and to resolve the intellectual inclination to offered Rosai almost Franciscan shelter in which to atone for his earlier be modern without, however, erasing the images, passions and nostalgia dissipation and devote himself entirely to painting in rigorous solitude. developed during his formative experience. As he wrote to Berto Ricci on 30 April 1932, “Confined to the house you His contemporary Rosai did not live his youth in magical chambers or know on the city outskirts, I feel like the miraculous survivor of a ship- metropolitan settings but rather fed his proletarian imagination in the wreck forced to get through the days required to end his life, which are day-to-day confines of his father’s workshop, where he discovered the as long and unending as moments spend under torture. I will measure the figurative potential of men engrossed in work and the evocative concat- boundless immensity of the sky inch by inch, I will count all the innocent enations offered by this industrious organism. As he wrote in an autobi- 22 “Artisti italiani: Ottone Rosai”, flowers of the earth, I will reconsider my sins and those of others one by 18 Ibidem. in Il Frontespizio, 4 April 1937-XV, p. I. 25 ographic sketch in Frontespizio, “I began to take a pencil and draw those 19 See “Biografia per immagini”, 23 Ibidem. one until I have finally obtained my constant desire and found God.” in A. Buzzoni (edited by), De Pisis, 24 See S. Capecchi, “Linee per una men in their various attitudes, working, resting and during meals, and exhibition catalogue (Ferrara, Palazzo biografia”, in G. dalla Chiesa, R. Monti, Meanwhile, De Pisis was living in Paris on Rue Servandoni beside the Massari, Museo d’arte moderna A. Parronchi, P. Pananti (edited by), e contemporanea “Filippo de Pisis”, Ottone Rosai nel centenario della 29 September 1996 – 19 January 1997), nascita. Opere dal 1919 al 1957, Ferrara: Ferrara Arte, 1996, pp. 255–91. exhibition catalogue (Florence, Galleria 20 F. Arcangeli, Dal romanticismo..., cit., Pananti, 18 March – 15 June 1995), 1977, pp. 279–82. Florence: Pananti, 1995, p. 33. 21 N. Naldini, De Pisis..., cit., 1991, p. 283. 25 Ibidem, p. 35.

118 119 CARLO SISI THE UNIVERSE IN A LEAF. ROSAI AND DE PISIS church of Saint Sulpice and the much admired frescoes of Delacroix, a profiles, encased in their sheaths of clothing like dark, ineffable chrysa- “sweet attic” reached by some deadly flights of stairs that did not, how- lises, or adopt the gestuality of neighbourhood life but without lapsing ever, put off either the artist’s friends or the various guests who would into colloquialism and rather adopting a solemn formal rituality that sug- later contribute in various ways to his hagiography, including Palazzeschi, gests ideas ripened in the presence of lofty models, experienced as the Longhi, Brandi and Contini, who gazed in wonder or amazement on be- natural forefathers of a primordial and spontaneous mankind. According holding the reconstituted and always gripping “melodramatic chamber”. to Arcangeli, Rosai saw the artists of the past as the “living flesh of his Many noted the influence of Impressionism on his painting but, accord- people”,30 consubstantial matrices capable of permeating the humble he- ing to Brandi,26 with constant “efflorescences” of a Venetian (Tiepolo and roes of the present in temporal continuity, thus exploding the interpretive 5. Ottone Rosai, Natura morta con fiasco Guardi) and more generally Italian nature, as though the tribute due to e frutta, 1933. Private collection misunderstanding of his “little figures”, which must instead be ascribed the French sediment became rather a mordant for approaches already to the authenticity always alive in archaic and plebeian Florence. The ripened on the Adriatic and corroborated precisely by a visual legacy of frescoes of Masaccio in the Carmine were for him evidence of the possible renowned colouristic tradition. While some Metaphysical overtones still 6. Filippo de Pisis, Lungosenna agli Invalidi and natural continuity with the contingencies of life, where we perceive linger in many of the still lifes painted between 1926 and 1928, the col- (Lungosenna al Pont Neuf), 1931. Milan, “the feeling of the poor, wretched Florentine day spent for the first time Pinacoteca di Brera ours are evidently influenced by ranges picked up in the studios of Soutine in that new space”, as Longhi wrote, nearly in harmony with Rosai. This and Matisse, with lights that dazzle the senses but without ever eluding is evident above all when the same critic broadened the figurative horizon the earthly substance of the things represented. As Francesco Arcangeli of the stories of St Peter and St Paul in literary fashion with elements of wrote in this connection, “[...] the things have weight, at least for one last modernizing introspection: “[...] and they speak to us of nothing other time, before yielding to this solemn plundering of the cosmos.”27 Balanced than leaden mood of the late afternoon, devoid of events, with an old man between material evidence and chromatic effusion, flowers were among preaching, seated outside the door, a youngster in a cloak who vents his the favourite subjects of De Pisis, who delighted during his childhood in bile, brushing the fresh lime of the tenement with his shoulder; a mid- picking huge bunches for collections, declaiming their scientific names dle-class lady lost in thought on the threshold as she returns home…”31 and botanical families and species, convinced among other things that Timeless atmospheres and states of mind, suspended in the controlled great subtlety of spirit was required to appreciate such beauty, a message cadences of form, evoking everyday rituals whose sequence was intended of sensual happiness from the very heart of nature. He thus saw flowers to assume the narrative function of secular “parables”. As demonstrated as living creatures to capture on canvas during the brief transit of their in coherent parataxis by the works of the Iannaccone collection — L’attesa existence: sometimes sumptuous (e.g. I grandi fiori di Casa Massimo [Big [Waiting] [W. NO. 68], I fidanzati [The Betrothed] [W. NO. 71], All’osteria [In the Flowers at Casa Massimo], 1931, private collection [FIG. 4]); sometimes sub- Tavern] [W. NO. 72] — with their scenes of life suspended in space and time, missive to their fleeting destiny (Il gladiolo fulminato [The Struck Glad], almost as though generated by a metaphysical spirit weighed down by the 1930, private collection) and therefore painted in autumnal hues and with fatigue of living, bitterly “acquainted with grief”. the same forebodings as in the equally empathetic flower painting by As seen in the canvases published by Ragghianti in 1954, Rosai’s Florence Mario Mafai. is an intractable, impenetrable city of jagged edges and “mute, forbidden” “I am the motionless bee / sipping this nectar / painfully”. De Pisis wrote buildings, one that can prove frightening when it takes up the conven- these lines in a poem on a bunch of flowers,28 where the sorrowful ad- tional circuit offered to the commerce of “beauty”. The artist glides over verb warns us of the unquiet alternation between the joy of conquest and this like a hawk, picking out the austere medieval edifices that constitute creative pessimism shared by many leading figures in twentieth-centu- “the most original and perennial character of his city”, the naked image of ry Italy. One of these was Rosai, who maintained that happy art cannot which regains space, vistas, distances and connections through his drive to exist because a great conquest is immediately followed by the sense of extract their primeval, proportional essence.32 De Pisis described a street limitation, inadequacy, unattainability. As stated above, this must have in Venice to friends as “very beautiful with old rose buildings, tufts of ivy prompted the practice of art as an admission of imperfection and, at the and flowers, a bit like certain lanes on the hill above Florence”. He added, same time, as a school of freedom and courage undertaken by Rosai after “I have never really succeeded in painting Florence. It is a difficult city.”33 the period of avant-garde frenzy, when he resumed contact with anxiety, 26 C. Brandi, “Il pittore Filippo De Pisis”, Difficult probably because it was at variance with the artist’s tempera- in Scritti sull’arte contemporanea, Turin: effort and fear of the pencil and palette in an attempt to rediscover the Einaudi, 1976, p. 258. ment, gradually altered by the opening up of very different panoramas — 27 F. Arcangeli, “Appunti per una storia love he had always felt for “certain creatures doomed to live as though in di De Pisis”, in Paragone, 19 (1951), London, Paris — and finally asserted in the mid-thirties with a furious and p. 38. 29 hiding from life itself”. The figures standing or slipping into alleyways 28 Ibidem. felicitous inspiration heightened by more intimate understanding of the 29 See C. L. Ragghianti, in P. C. Santini in the close-meshed perspective grid of the streets of Oltrarno have stark (edited by), Ottone Rosai. Opere dal plein air of the Impressionists and the exhilarating discovery of Turner’s 1911 al 1957, exhibition catalogue (Turin, Circolo degli Artisti, Palazzo 30 F. Arcangeli, Dal romanticismo..., cit., Graneri, Aprile–May 1983; Rome, 1977, p. 275. Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, 31 Ibidem. July–September 1983; Florence, Palazzo 32 C. L. Ragghianti, “Firenze di Rosai”, Strozzi, 13 November – 18 December in Critica d’arte, 5 (1954), pp. 473–76. 1983), Florence: Vallecchi, 1983, p. 18. 33 N. Naldini, De Pisis..., cit., 1991, p. 254.

120 121 CARLO SISI THE UNIVERSE IN A LEAF. ROSAI AND DE PISIS painting first-hand in England, which prompted works of extraordinary, sometimes exhibited in immature nudes, sometimes concentrated in unprecedented visual compaction. The example of the Impressionists — looks of treacherous enticement, sometimes eluded in a cordial setting providing a powerful bond, as stated above, between the perception of but dense with aesthetic allusions, as in the depiction of a flute player natural appearances and the Venetian sediment of colour — helped De (Suonatore di flauto [W. NO. 29]), and sometimes in drawings that preserve Pisis to interpret the spirit of the city and to see a light or shade at its true the imprint of direct feeling (“living remains”40). In the latter, overtones value, thus interweaving reality and fantasy in his views in an indissoluble of Pontormo remind us of the vast visual culture of De Pisis, an artist in dynamic compound. The term “pictorial stenography”34 has been used in love with reality and its possible metaphors, as when the sudden sight of 8. Filippo de Pisis, Nudino sulla pelle di tigre, this connection to suggest his speed of visual absorption and resulting, 1931. Private collection “smooth knees, large and slightly gleaming” fired his cultured imagina- almost medium-like ability to capture the teeming world around him on tion with the memory of “the torso of the youth kneeling over the water in canvas with a palette perfectly equipped to pick up colours, transparen- the Museo delle Terme”.41 Generated by unmediated possession, Rosai’s cies and dissonances but also noises, smells and the overlapping of voices. adolescents (starting from the large nude in a landscape: Grande nudo [FIG. 9] All this the artist absorbed, intrepidly setting up his easel in the streets 7. Ottone Rosai, Via Toscanella, 1922. nel paesaggio, 1933, private collection, ) have no precedents of high of capital cities; restoring atmospheric lustre to a Milan under threat Private collection degree. The artist’s creative torment indeed robs them of the tenderness of war, as shown, among other things, by his view of Foro Bonaparte (Il of age to emphasize their proletarian marginality through vigorous out- Foro Bonaparte a Milano [The Foro Bonaparte in Milan], 1941) [W. NO. 31] in lines and expressive disarticulation. A sort of “negritude” evoked by the the Iannaccone collection; honing his colours in the cosy studio on Via vocabulary of the avant-garde and embedded in the adventure of everyday Rugabella; painting views of Venice veined with the sumptuous nostalgia life with a hint of challenge so that, as Ragghianti aptly observed, “the of Guardi. An urban triumph with respect to the monumental seclusion of elementary and universal truth of the resurrection of a man given up for Rosai. Some critics have, however, been prompted to connect this appar- lost might emerge from distorted nakedness”.42 ent joy with De Pisis’s psychological and aesthetic complexity, his simul- 9. Ottone Rosai, Grande nudo nel paesaggio, In commemorating Rosai’s death with the feeling of a poet, Carlo Betocchi taneously blithe and desperate condition, alone in the thick of life, fated 1933. Private collection confirmed the lyrical fraternity to which the artist aspired in his life, the to grasp the ungraspable with intermittencies that sometimes blocked his syncretism of words and colours that was peculiar to many leading fig- hearing and generated a dramatic creative and sentimental void (“[...] but ures of the twentieth century and that brought to Betocchi’s mind visual behind these vain appearances / a voice I know. / Terror of death, / of your analogies (“With creative bunches of orris you struck down the colours of mystery, / you touch me less / than the grace of this light, / the tenderness Florence”), apt references to illustrious cultural sources (“you drew your of the plants / barely awakened by spring / with the perfumed breath of nymphs, equal to those of antiquity, through the sky of San Frediano to- air. / Flights, shadows, points, / echoes, notes, nothingness”35). wards the banks of the Arno”) and the painful thought of an irreparable In De Pisis’s studio, a projection of the richly populated attic of his child- end (“A great era of poetry is over. Rosai’s death is one of those worthy hood, some trophies used for painting pointed at the same time to the of Lorca’s lament over the death of a matador”43). What remains of De dark component underlying the Impressionist whirlwind, from the rotten Pisis, another painter intensely drawn to poetry, are the words written in fish (Pesci marci [FIG. 1, P. 206]) picked up on a Parisian rubbish tip to the hare the angst-ridden solitude of Villa Fiorita, his last letter to Olga Signorelli, (La lepre) laid bleeding on his work table and the brightly coloured skel- resonant with echoes of a bygone golden age: “Thank you for the flowers, eton of a lobster hanging on the wall: indications of a human and poetic which were still alive on arrival. I have done as you told me and cut a piece angst that once prompted Giovanni Comisso to speak of seeing “the lac- of the stem […] How many memories! I would like to have happiness for erating beauty of your still life”.36 In his workshop, these offered the key every corolla and stalk I have loved and for […] my life to be lightened. to enter undreamt-of worlds, “ever-changing and indestructible matter, Would that be too much?”44 animal life, the essence of dead things”.37 It was, however, in that inventive forge densely crammed with perishable organic matter that the “metamorphosis of eros and painting”38 took place every time the mystery of the life took on the appearance of an errand boy in a white cook’s apron or a sailor in a blue uniform alongside a patch of a dream-like sky. The young men desired by De Pisis with the same voracious anxiety as Sandro Penna 40 G. Raimondi, introduction to Filippo (“I would like to tear myself to pieces and die for the love of this child, his De Pisis. Disegni, Venice: Cavallino, 1950. red lips clumsy and quivering, his cheeks, his neck as slender and deli- 41 N. Naldini, De Pisis..., cit., 1991, p. 111. 42 C. L. Ragghianti, “Firenze...”, cit., 1954, 39 cate as a lily” ) were captured on canvas with their promise of pleasure, 34 See A.Buzzoni, “Un’idea di De Pisis”, p. 26. in De Pisis, cit., 1996, p. 111. 43 C. Betocchi, “Lamento per la morte di 35 F. Arcangeli, Dal romanticismo..., cit., Ottone”, in 100 opere di Ottone Rosai, 1977, p. 291. exhibition catalogue (Prato, Galleria 36 N. Naldini, De Pisis..., cit., 1991, p. 143. d’arte Falsetti, December 1965), 37 Ibidem, p. 156. Florence, 1965, p. 10. 38 Ibidem, p. 93. 44 See N. Naldini, De Pisis..., cit., 1991, 39 Ibidem, p. 43. p. 283.

122 123 The Painting of Reality. The Shift to Realism in the Roman Painting of the Thirties

fabio benzi

The Collezione Giuseppe Iannaccone, the historical section of which contains a series of masterpieces of Italian painting of the thirties in Rome, Milan and Turin, is oriented in terms of taste towards certain particular areas of the multifaceted Italian panorama. It is indeed this great variety that makes the Italian art of the interwar period — in which the Fascist dictatorship had not the slightest effect on a whole range of aesthetic choices including abstract art, Futurism, Expressionism, tonalism and Surrealism — a truly unique case as well as one of the most expressively free and interesting focal points at the European and indeed international level during those years. Due precisely to its freedom 1. Renato Guttuso, Crocifissione, 1940–41. Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna of dialogue and ideas, Italy was then unquestionably the national context of the greatest richness and quality after the incomparable Parisian scene, with which it appears in any case to have maintained constant dialogue.1 The first palpable rift in this lingua franca was to come before the outbreak of World War II with the appalling institution of the Fascist racial laws in 1938. Paradoxically enough, however, a degree of increasingly precarious freedom of expression was to continue with the protective support of some elements of the regime. An award was indeed given at the fourth Bergamo Prize in 1942 to the Crocifissione [Crucifixion] of Renato Guttuso [FIG. 1] (then already close to communism2), which explicitly cites the Picasso of Guernica, a formal and ethical example for 3 1 See F. Benzi, Arte in Italia tra le due anti-fascist intellectuals in those years. Guerre, Turin, 2013. 2 While Guttuso’s adoption of antifascism One of these various dialectical strands is examined here, namely the fo- is hard to date precisely, the Crocifissione proves quite explicit in this cus on reality that developed simultaneously in the two major Roman — sense. Mirella Serri suggests that the turning point came in 1941; see M. Serri, or rather Italian, given their influence at the national level — schools of I redenti, Milan, 2005, p. 216. 3 See M. De Micheli, “Morlotti”, in painting: the tonalism of the École de Rome or Scuola romana (Roman Pattuglia, II, no.7-8, May-June 1943: “[...] an example to be combined with School), with Cagli, Cavalli and Capogrossi, and the expressionism of the power of Guernica: the strongest, most emotional and heroic Picasso, the the School of Via Cavour, with Scipione, Mafai and Raphaël. The Roman Picasso that presents his stature to the world with no effusiveness or visions scene was in fact definitively established as most modern and vital of paradise”. Attention should also be drawn in this connection to the Primo in Italy in the mid-thirties. After the attempt to instil new life into the manifesto di pittori e scrittori, written in 1943 by Morlotti, Treccani, Vedova, Novecento Italiano movement with muralism, Sironi himself, its champi- De Grada, De Micheli and Morosini but not published until 1947 in Numero, no. on, recognized that “the Roman group of Cagli, Capogrossi, Cavalli, the 8–9: “We recognize one another only in love and hatred. Picasso posed this late Scipione and Mafai as well as the sculptors Fazzini and Crocetti have question in 1937 with Guernica. We do not see Picasso as the most authentic this time the honour of upholding the most brilliant and vital standards of representative of those with a complete impact on life and are certainly not Italian art […] In this Quadrennial, it is the Roman group that reaps the about turn him into a new academy. We recognize in Picasso’s attitude a move greatest harvest of attention and, with its vigour, keeps alight the flame beyond the intimism and personalism of the expressionists. We see reflected of faith in modern art that is neither warmed-up leftovers nor a pitiful in Picasso’s canvases not his personal 4 struggle but that of his generation. sham. Here, Rome is the bastion of the art of today.” The images of this painter are a challenge and a banner for a thousand men. The painting not as revelation but as the projection of our will.” 4 M. Sironi, “II Quadriennale d’arte nazionale”, in La Rivista Illustrata del Popolo d’Italia, February 1935.

125 FABIO BENZI THE PAINTING OF REALITY

Pirandello, Guttuso, Ziveri and Melli, the painters included in the part of entirely to still life and portraits of his wife. A vision of exclusively chro- collection discussed here, all started out in fact in the Roman school of matic and compositional order makes his works masterpieces of highly tonalism and were all — except Melli — ultimately to take part in the shift sophisticated and lucid formalism in which reality is laid out as though on towards realism of the end of the decade: Pirandello, a friend and com- an abstract grid of colours in a vision, like that of his companions, which panion of Capogrossi and Cavalli as from their time as pupils of Felice displays the angst of a tragic decade in closed, enigmatic, chrysalis-like Carena (1922); Ziveri, who drew vital sustenance from the tonalism of forms. The splendid work La lettura [The Reading], 1942 [W. NO. 51] is a para- the École de Rome before taking up realism in the second half of the 4. Giuseppe Capogrossi, Gita in barca digm of tonalism. Based on chromatic harmonies in shades of brown and (I canottieri; Partenza in sandolino), 1932. thirties; Guttuso, who started from the peculiar encaustic and “citrine”5 Rome, Claudio and Elena Cerasi collection violet heightened by a combination of primary colours (blue, red and yel- tonalism of Cagli to move beyond his early work under the influence of low), the delicate relationship between the two figures — his wife and a the Novecento group; Melli, who returned to the debate on contemporary friend7 — is set in an almost abstract framework of reflections. The image 2. Corrado Cagli, I neofiti, 1934. art after years of pictorial inactivity as a signatory of the manifesto of Rome, private collection of intimate and almost crepuscular realism must be seen in the context Primordialism in 1933 together with Cavalli, Capogrossi and Cagli, and of the tormented psychological and existential situation of a Jewish artist played his part in the same tonal genesis of the Roman school. who had contributed until 1936 to Fascist periodicals that had been pub- Based on stark expanses of colour devoid of outlines and shadows as lishing anti-Semitic articles since 19348 and had even painted a portrait against the volumetric classicism and chiaroscuro of the now exhaust- of Mussolini in 1937 but fell victim to the racial laws in 1938 and was pro- ed and deposed Novecento Italiano, tonalism had become the common, hibited from public exhibition of his works. modern approach by the mid-thirties. In the same way, regardless of their Let us now consider Pirandello, Guttuso and Ziveri, three very different differences, all the young artists who had adopted it and helped with their figures who sought at the same time to move beyond tonalism with a more own personal contributions to make it the dominant style were now in- immediate representation of reality. cluded in the “Roman school”. Though coined for the group of tonal art- Fausto Pirandello, the oldest of the three, began by painting rural and ists who exhibited work in Paris in 1933 (Cagli, Capogrossi and Cavalli), pastoral subjects of an archaic character after the manner of Carena but the term served as from around 1935 to identify the broader generation imbued them from the outset with tormented, anguished carnality of a of painters born in the first decade of the century — and therefore in their “distasteful” realistic nature that projected him at a very early age into thirties during the thirties — who had made tonalism their common means an autonomous dimension, almost like a disturbing precursor of Lucien of expression. As early as 1940, however, in a review of the exhibition Freud. He moved as early as 1928 to Paris, where the “Italiens de Paris” of the Mostra del Sindacato romano [Rome Fascist Union of Fine Arts] 3. Emanuele Cavalli, Il solitario, 1936. Rome, were endeavouring to develop their own response to Surrealism and in- in Primato, Guttuso already felt that the label had become overly vague private collection deed laying claim through De Chirico, in defiance of Breton’s arrogant and that it was necessary to identify its two clearly distinct component anathemas, to the “paternity” of the movement and hence also to its cor- parts, one “lyrical-romantic”, led by Scipione and Mafai, and one char- rect interpretation and development in the Italian sense of Metaphysical acterized by “an almost abstract love of tonal space”, led by Cavalli and Art. The young Pirandello tried to find a foothold and an outlet in this Capogrossi.6 context, as attested by a postcard to Cavalli in 1929,9 and the mixture While the years after 1933 saw a succession of exhibitions (biennials, of Metaphysical and Surrealist art blossoming there was unquestionably quadrennials, exhibitions of the Fascist Union of Fine Arts, etc.) in which his primary focus apart from intense interest in Picasso and Braque. The tonalism established itself, the personal visions of Guttuso, Pirandello fresco-like surfaces of Campigli and Tozzi, the impenetrable mystery and and Ziveri, bound by common views on art and life, gradually diverged inexplicable presences of De Chirico and Savinio, the monumental figures from those of Capogrossi and Cavalli, who instead became increasingly of Picasso and the palette-knife Cubism of Braque are elements he picked tangential in the pursuit of shared ideals of tonal and magical abstraction, up avidly and considered deeply.10 This context also helps to explain the allegories of a world dominated by hermetic melancholy. Melli instead re- mysterious emanations of “auras” and ectoplasms present in many of his mained close to them with his focus on an isolated, primarily formal form enigmatic drawings of the period as well as paintings like Interno di mat- of tonalism. Imbued with a dominant sense of composition and form by his tina [Morning Interior]. One work of this Parisian period is La lettera [The Secessionist background and involvement with the journal Valori Plastici, Letter], 1929 [W. NO. 59], in which paint is used as autonomous, “sculptural” 7 Not his daughter, as erroneously claimed he attached no particular importance to the theme of the painting as such, by C. Gian Ferrari (in Various Authors, matter, with the illusionism of Braque’s Cubism halfway through the dec- Una Caccia amorosa. Arte italiana tra le an object of mythic and esoteric meaning and interest for his friends of due guerre nella collezione Iannaccone, ade, but with a sense of objective reality that is almost enigmatic in the Milan, 2009, p. 80). Melli had no children. the École de Rome. His works are harmonious and complex compositions 8 The magazine Il Quadrivio; see F. Benzi, explicit paradox of three-dimensional and mimetic painting. Arte..., cit., 2013, p.264. of carefully studied tonalities and the subject matter is confined almost 5 An adjective aptly applied to Cagli’s work 9 See the appendices in F. Benzi, The first presentation of his work took place after his return to Italy by Melli (“atmosfera ‘citrina’ generale”), Emanuele Cavalli, Rome, 1984. in “Visite ad artisti: Corrado Cagli”, 10 He himself cited Picasso, Derain, Braque in Il Quadrivio, 23 February 1936, which and De Chirico as among his ideal describes its dominant colour very masters in an interview of the period: effectively. R. Vailland, “Le fils de Pirandello est 6 R. Guttuso, “La X Mostra Sindacale peintre à Montparnasse”, in Paris-Midi, del Lazio”, in Primato, 15 May 1940. 8 October 1928.

126 127 FABIO BENZI THE PAINTING OF REALITY in 1931 at the Galleria di Roma. An exhibition of five Milanese and five Pirandello’s silent alienation, far removed from the complex psycholog- Roman artists had been conceived in 1932 by the acute and original Pier ical tangles to be glimpsed in the work of his father Luigi. His raw vi- Maria Bardi (whose gallery was then the focal point of avant-garde art sion of reality predates that of the end of the decade, expressed in still in Rome, as it had been earlier in Milan and Turin11) as a sort of “game lifes as scaly and iridescent as flotsam and jetsam, portraits and figures of football” between two teams12: the new Milanese artists and the new immobilized by petrifying anxiety, bathers arrayed like souls in an ex-

“Roman school”, an initial meeting and exchange of ideas between the two 6. Renato Guttuso, Fuga dall’Etna, 1940. istential purgatory, groups of naked men and women arranged in serial most promising young Italian trends. The more heterogeneous Milanese Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna compositions on the shore, exposed to a grey, ashen light. The existential 5. Fausto Pirandello, La tempesta, 1938. group consisted of Birolli, Sassu, Bogliardi, Ghiringhelli and Soldati. The Rome, private collection sense of these paintings of bathers — which not only prompted Guttuso Romans unquestionably formed a far more closely-knit group and con- to write a memorable article in 1941 but also inspired his renowned and stituted an authentic “team”. Friends since their period at the school of dramatic works of war (Gott mit uns, 1944–45) and certainly also the ag- Felice Carena in the early twenties, Cavalli, Capogrossi and Pirandello itated, expressionist masterpieces of his first great period of maturity had also aroused the interest of critics already with the shows and work like Fuga dall’Etna [Escape from Etna], 1940 [FIG. 6] — is summed up as developed together. The winners of the match (four paintings per artist) follows in his own words: “These tortured characters go around in their were unquestionably the Romans, champions of a new style that was to non-human form. They are neither men nor women, despite the cruellest revitalize Italian art in the thirties. Well aware of the various new Italian accentuation, but figures from other planets on bare, barren clay beneath trends of the time, Bardi was convinced of the importance of the Roman cloudless grey skies where even the storms are unlike those of this world. group, which promised to take concrete shape as the spearhead of art in Land, sky, sea, animals, men and women, all dried and cracked by stifling those years, and realized its potential in terms of originality and inno- midday heat with a distant sun able to send its fire but not its light.”13 vation as well as complementary inventiveness. As he wrote in an article Between 1935 and 1937, in the first mature paintings after his ear- in the Milanese newspaper L’Ambrosiano, “They constitute the real new ly Novecento period, Guttuso was strongly influenced by the work of generation, determined and enthusiastic.” Cagli, which tended in the mid-thirties towards a baroque style influ- 13 R. Guttuso, “Una mostra di Pirandello”, Pirandello, a giant of Italian painting who is still not fully understood, in Primato, VI, 1941. For Pirandello’s enced by Scipione but produced by means of the canonical tonal meth- bathers, see F. Benzi (edited by), Fausto 14 differed from his companions through an investigation of the reality of Pirandello: bagnanti, Rignano Flaminio ods. After participation in a few public exhibitions, he made his debut (Rome), 2010; F. Benzi (edited by), bodies and things that proved alarming and disturbing. After contribut- Fausto Pirandello 1899-1975, London with a group of Sicilian artists that was, by no coincidence, to hold its 2015. For Pirandello in general, ing to the creation of tonalism, he developed it in a highly physical, vi- G. Giuffré, Fausto Pirandello, Rome, first show in Milan (2 pittori e 2 scultori siciliani, Galleria Il Milione, 1984, is still valuable. See also C. Gian sionary, haunted and disquieting form, using the palette knife to shape Ferrari (edited by), Fausto Pirandello. May–June 1934). This is of interest as indicative not only of the broad- Catalogo generale, Milan, 2009. figures in everyday positions and actions but as though frozen in unnat- 14 For this period in Cagli’s career and his ly felt need to escape from the dead hand of Novecento Italiano but influence on the younger generations, 15 ural, rhythmic compositions: figures dominated by immanent anxiety see F. Benzi (edited by), Corrado Cagli also of a significant link between the Milanese and Roman scenes. e il suo magistero, Milan, 2010. 16 of a disturbing, surrealistic nature. Wholly unlike the oneiric surrealism 15 For the connections and relations of The four artists (Renato Guttuso, Lia Pasqualino Noto, Nino Franchina reciprocal influence between the young of Scipione, to which it is sometimes likened, Pirandello’s art explores artists of Rome, Milan and Turin during and Giovanni Barbera, who died prematurely in 1936), naturally led by 11 Opened in 1930 in the building on the thirties, see E. Pontiggia, “Italia a distorted space, always floating on unstable diagonals, the voids that the corner of Via Veneto and Piazza anni trenta: la stagione neoromantica, Guttuso with his forceful personality, were still initially influenced by Barberini, the gallery presented the first l’intreccio delle mostre”, in Various consciousness is unable to fill in its complex relationship with reality. He important show of work by Scipione and Authors, Una caccia..., cit., 2009, the Novecento movement at the beginning of the decade. As early as Mafai the same year and continued to pp. 25–33; F. Benzi, Arte..., cit., 2013. presents a painful human condition of extraordinary spiritual power with promote new art with original choices 16 For the group from Palermo, see F. 1932, however, Guttuso showed work again at the Milione in a group of and a focus on the younger generations. Leone, “Il gruppo dei Quattro di Palermo: 17 no rhetoric through the simultaneously austere and sumptuous handling By 1932 it had already exhibited the ‘Hanno forse il diavolo in corpo’“, six Sicilian artists and laid the foundations of his stylistic renewal on Six Painters of Turin and the Milanese in F. Benzi (edited by), Corrado Cagli..., of paint. The rough, unadorned technique of his painting offers an auton- expressionists as well as the early work cit., 2010. the basis above all of his acquaintance with Cagli. Acting as a driving of the young artists who were soon 17 The very heterogeneous artists featured omous reading of tonalism that moves from the surrealistic figuration of to give birth to the Lombard school with Guttuso were Alberto Bevilacqua, force for his young friends from Palermo, he eagerly drew numerous el- of abstract art. It provided the Roman Leo Castro, Vittorio Corona, Manlio 18 the years around 1930 towards a dazed and crepuscular form of realism artists with an exceptional opportunity Giarrizzo and Mario Mimì Lazzaro ements from this artist, including a striving for the primordial, free, for visibility. Its originality was also noted (the latter associated with Scipione in the second half of the decade. An opponent of psychologism, he did by contemporaries like Corrado Pavolini and Mafai at the time of the birth of the expressionistic painting and the orange-tinted colours of tonalism. The (“A. Pincherle e C. Cagli alla Galleria School of Via Cavour). not, however, pursue the creation of an oneiric reality, like his friends, but di Roma”, in Il Tevere, 18 April 1932): 18 “Self-expression with absolute contacts with Milan, which he kept alive through friendships with Aligi “These shows of young artists that follow sincerity and fellow feeling free from rather the lucid presentation of a condition midway between pure form one another in the gallery on Via Veneto any form of preoccupation be it Sassu and Renato Birolli, made him a physical link not only with the are the only really interesting ones — archaic, neoclassical, metaphysical and bare reality: a paradox that reveals the insoluble dialectic between and indeed practically the only ones or intellectual. Primitives by necessity, friends in Palermo but also with Rome, where he was now in perma- — in the capital, apart of course from the being born in an age of commencement.” 19 suffering matter and sublimating spirit, defeated by the ineluctability of major institutional and national events, Guttuso summed up the group’s nent orbit. Between 1933 and 1934, when their first show took place, which are very different in character and principles in these words in the article existence. significance.” See also F. Benzi, Arte..., “Discorso sulla sincerità: i giovani”, the four young Sicilian artists were already fully formed and mature, cit., 2013, chapters 9 and 10. in L’Ora, Palermo, 10–11 April 1933. Spiaggia [Beach], circa 1940 [W. NO. 60] and La famiglia dell’artista [The 12 This image is one used by Pirandello 19 The Group of Four had in any case like a branch of Roman tonalism but with one eye also carefully trained in a letter to Guzzi (F. Benzi, “Materiali already been formed from the ashes Artist’s Family], 1942 [W. NO. 61] are two of the greatest examples of inediti dagli archivi di Virgilio Guzzi”, in of and in response to the overly on the other end of Italy. In February 1935 they showed work at the L. Stefanelli Torossi [edited by], Virgilio heterogeneous group of artists Guzzi, Rome, 1986), where he recalls presented in the show in Milan, as the occasion and speaks of the group G. Pensabene recalled in his review of five Roman artists “juxtaposed with of the show by the six artists from the same number of Milanese painters Palermo at the Milione (“L’arte nuova in a confrontation designed as a sort of in Sicilia”, in Il Secolo XIX, 19 October match (like a game of football).” 1932).

128 129 FABIO BENZI THE PAINTING OF REALITY

Galleria Bragaglia in Rome, where their expressionism was accentuat- birth of an original period in which crude vulgarity is tempered with ed through contact with Mirko, consideration of Levi and the contem- museum-grade refinement devoid of contrived elegance in evocative de- plation of Scipione, whose work was featured in a posthumous show at pictions of brothels and genre scenes. the 1935 Quadrennial. The period 1935−36 saw Guttuso once again in At the same time, Guttuso, the rising star of Italian art, abandoned the Milan, where he had been called up for military service and developed tonalism of Cagli − which he in any case already interpreted in clearly still closer relations with the expressionists and realists that were soon expressionist terms − and gave violent substance to his paintings, to his to gather around the journal Corrente. Two closely related works be- vigorously carnal nudes of a physicality devoid of embellishment, which long to this period, namely Natura morta con garofani e frutta [Still Life often recall post-Cubist angulations. The sense of flesh and blood in his with Carnations and Fruit] [W. NO. 36] and the Ritratto di Mimise [Portrait of painting and the antifascist political commitment, initially professed in Mimise] [W. NO. 37], both painted in 1937. While the similarity with Cagli’s ambiguous terms, were manifested through citations of Picasso alternat- 7. Alberto Ziveri, Giuditta e Oloferne, 1940. still lifes and portraits — marked in that moment by the influence of Rome, Natale collection ing with contributions to official Fascist journals like Primato. This new Soutine and late baroque overtones — was still evident, the density of approach and expressive power immediately placed him in the vanguard matter was already developing in a vision that was to make Guttuso the of the newer generations. Guttuso quickly broke away from the archaic, intellectual leader of Italian painting in the immediate future. “romantic” vision, from Ziveri’s simultaneously vulgar and cultured real- Ziveri began his tonal period in 1933 but in harmony also with the lyr- ism, in search of explicit social commitment, which went beyond the mor- icism and expressive power of Mafai’s painting. His figures stand out, ally weighty protest of his friends to become implicit political protest. diaphanous and clear-cut, in tenuous tonal combinations and quivering Pathos and commitment, realism and expressionism, were combined in pictorial ductus, as in I giocatori di birilli [Ninepin Players], 1934 [W. NO. 93]. paintings with pure, lyrical colours, broken and syncopated lines, deter- This was a painting he continued to regard as relevant at least until 1936, mining the crucial basis of an embryonic painting of the Resistance and, when he showed it at the Venice Biennial. Around 1937, however, precise- implicitly, one of the platforms for the revitalized Italian art of the post- ly when tonalism had become the dominant style, some young people, war period. including Ziveri, strongly felt the need for a form of expression that was The Sicilian group, now reduced to three by the death of Barbera, held less detached and more in keeping with the dramatic nature of the period its last exhibition in June 1937 at the Galleria della Cometa. Guttuso they were going through and — to a still greater extent — the one they were was now fully independent and his art developed vigorously in a form of inevitably heading towards. realism that took on overtones of marked political commitment through The need was felt with ever-greater clarity for a physical, carnal reality a reworking of Picasso (the citation of Guernica [FIG. 8] in the Crocifissione in whose folds the blood could be discerned (the blood that was already of 1940−41 [FIG. 1] was shattering with respect to what it then meant in being shed in Spain and that would soon flow in the streets of Europe and Italy). An example is provided by the portrait of Mario Alicata (1940 [W. the world), the expression not only of stoic contemplation but also of an NO. 38]), where the realism is moulded but not interrupted in its bodily urgent need for expression and communication.20 circulation by neo-Cubist formal elements that, as stated here at the Virgilio Guzzi, a painter as well as an acute and cultured art critic, the outset, became a metaphorical but explicit declaration of antifascism. close friend of Ziveri and Pirandello, was perhaps the first to crack the Other masterpieces of the Iannaccone collection are still more mature crystallized shell of tonalism, returning as early as 1936 to the most glit- and explicit in this sense, coinciding with the years of creation of the tering Caravaggesque painting of the seventeenth century and the real- Crocifissione [FIG. 1], one of the icons of twentieth-century Italian art: La ism of the nineteenth (Courbet but also Goya), moulding his figures in finestra blu [The Blue Window] [W. NO. 39], Gabbia bianca e foglie [White thick chiaroscuro, searching in the thickness of paint for a new, physical, Cage and Leaves] [W. NO. 40] and Ritratto di Antonino Santangelo [Portrait of expressive density, blazing with light and rich in humours. As always in Antonino Santangelo] [W. NO. 41]. Italy, the enormous heritage of ancient art became a source of stimuli for Moreover, in his role as an agitator, communicator and link between the new stylistic approaches. This is the path eagerly taken by Ziveri, who hitherto independent (if not indeed polemically conflicting, but in any set off in 1937 for the Netherlands and France, studying Rembrandt, case not devoid of exchanges) realities of Rome and Milan, Guttuso be- Courbet and Delacroix, and acquiring a taste for a solid, dramatic, ex- came indispensable for the construction of a national art in search of ev- pressionistic and “romantic” kind of painting. The first paintings of his er-greater detachment from a regime that did not impose aesthetic canons new glittering, expressionist style, albeit still veiled by ancient seven- but fostered the emergence of increasingly radical critics with increasing- teenth-century and academic overtones (Giuditta e Oloferne [Judith and 20 See the exhaustive bibliography in ly dangerous totalitarian assumptions. An example and an effective and F. D’Amico (edited by), Guttuso Holofernes], [FIG. 7]) were presented at the 1938 Biennial. They mark the Pirandello Ziveri. Realismo a Roma, significant term of comparison is provided precisely by Pensabene, who 1938-1943, Rome, 1995. See also M. Argentieri, P. Vivarelli (edited by), Gli anni del Premio Bergamo. Arte in Italia intorno agli anni Trenta, Milan, 1993; A. Masi, P. Vivarelli (edited by), Artisti Collezionisti Mostre negli anni di Primato. 1940–1943, Rome, 1996.

130 131 FABIO BENZI THE PAINTING OF REALITY praised the youthful innovations of the group of four in 1932 and then in introverted and autobiographical, midway between the impassibility of 1937 raged against the Jewish, Bolshevik, expressionist internationalism Hopper and seventeenth-century painting, between carnal realism and of the best new trends in Italian art. A sign of changing times and the am- French expressionism (Kisling). Ziveri and Melli, like many other artists biguity of the relationship between art and Fascism, now on the point of of their generation, were to suffer sometimes dramatic moments of formal collapse after many years of laborious equilibrium. 8. Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937. Madrid, crisis and paralysis. Some of them, however, like Pirandello and Guttuso, Roman realism triumphed in 1940 with an exhibition held at the Galleria Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía found the strength to continue, through different and more modern ap- di Roma under the critical aegis of Guzzi, who wrote the presentation, proaches, the same exploration of colour and form, expression and ges- with work by Ziveri, Guttuso, Montanarini, Tamburi and the sculptor ture. Pirandello’s decidedly Soutinesque Natura morta con strumenti musi- Pericle Fazzini. The introduction clearly explains the abandonment of to- cali [Still Life with Musical Instruments], circa 1942 [W. NO. 62]) is instead the nalism and the search for a new realistic vitality: “A desire to approach first step in a new formal direction where deformed and petrified objects and penetrate that is determined at all costs to represent this reality in already offer a glimpse of the new perception of reality apparently born a new equilibrium where the sense of style can, so to speak, plunge into out of chaos of which Venturi spoke23 with reference to the works of the the objective existence of things. No longer the reality of dream but the post-war period, now decidedly and modernly decomposed by neo-Cubist dream of reality and indeed, since we are not afraid of words, a new re- elements and crossed with Soutinesque deformations. alism.” The stimulus for this pursuit of a “new realism” unquestionably reflected the demands put forward by the Milanese journal Corrente − with which the Roman art scene engaged in fruitful exchanges of ideas − in an important editorial in December 1938.21 While not abandoning tonalism, Pirandello dug deeper into the pictorial substance and tore it to pieces, as he did the bodies of bathers in contorted positions like something out of Dante’s Inferno, as he wildly disrupted objects and landscapes in a calm fury, a lucid understanding of the immanent drama. This introverted position made him a second focal point, after Guttuso, in the network of relations with the Milanese Corrente movement, in whose exhibitions he also took part. In September 1943, when the Rome Quadrennial was still open (the scheduled closing date in July was postponed due to the extremely confused political and military situation with events like the bombing of the San Lorenzo district on 19 July and the arrest of Mussolini on 25 July22), German troops entered and occupied Rome. This obviously marked the end of an era extremely rich in terms of dialectics and aesthetics, always in close dialogue with Europe, which looked in its final stages to Picasso’s Cubism and realism as expressions of opposition to Fascism and Nazism. It was the end of one of the most lofty, complex and tormented periods in Italian art but also the beginning of new explorations that sought in the enthusiasm of antifascism to proceed radically beyond and forget a politically contradictory period ending in the disaster of war. In the alternation of these different tendencies and the constant exchanges between artists that were often different but fired with a similar yearning for new creation, the war intervened like a clean and inexorable break. The post-war period was to see the disintegration of these disparate but nevertheless harmonious investigations, depriving a pictorial vocabulary of such richness and complexity of its justification and potential. The 21 “Corrente”, in Corrente di Vita Giovanile, swansong of that context came perhaps in 1945 with Ziveri’s Il postribolo I, no. 20, 15 December 1938. 22 I was informed of this otherwise [The Bawdy House] [W. NO. 96], an interior of sumptuous realism but by now unknown fact by Cipriano Efisio Oppo’s daughter Eugenia. The image of the huge vessel of the Quadrennial, laden with paintings and sculptures, being forgotten and abandoned in the general confusion, set adrift in the inexorable 23 L. Venturi, “Fausto Pirandello”, current of the times, is like something in Commentari, V, 1, January−March out of dramatic poetry. 1954, pp. 52–53.

132 133 Animating the Painting with Vibrations of Life: the School of Via Cavour, 1927–33

paola bonani

“I don’t think any other painters can say that they have been loved, praised and followed every day in their works of that period as much as Mafai and Scipione were by us. The feeling of solidarity we had for them is unequalled. We were better acquainted with the genius of Antonietta Raphaël, Mafai’s wife, who was really like a mythological oracle between the two painters.”1 This is how Libero de Libero recalls the deep understanding established in the late twenties between the artists of the School of Via Cavour — Gino Bonichi, who adopted the name Scipione in 1929, Mario Mafai and Antonietta Raphaël — and many of their contemporaries among the Roman writers and intellectuals. The first to realize the shattering innovation of this painting were precisely their young contemporaries, including De Libero, Leonardo Sinisgalli and Luigi Diemoz. More mature and established figures like Giuseppe Ungaretti, Bruno Barilli, Vincenzo Cardarelli and Emilio Cecchi, habitués of the renowned Caffè Aragno (where “it was not easy to get a seat”2), soon tempered their initial distrust for the fire of these young artists and acknowledged the incredible singularity and power of their works when Pier Maria Bardi featured Mafai and Scipione in a large-scale show at the newly founded Galleria di Roma at the end of the 1930. The same thing happened with other important figures like Roberto Longhi, Corrado Pavolini and Cipriano Efisio Oppo, all among the very first admirers of the work of Mafai, Raphaël and Scipione. As Libero de Libero recalls, “That was our great period of friendship […] in the company of Scipione, who led us in the discovery of Rome by night, sometimes until dawn […] past Porta Metronia, San Giovanni, the Janiculum. Sitting on the steps of Piazza San Pietro or in Piazza Navona, we heard the flutter of angels flying above our heads. There is a time in your life when the intelligence of memory describes a glowing parabola, and that was it for us. There’s a moment when even the pores of your skin absorb information, events, the spirit of things, and that moment was then for us.”3 A time confined to the handful of years between 1927 and 1933, whose intensity was certainly heightened by the awareness those involved certainly had of its inevitably short duration. This is unquestionably true of Scipione, who had suffered since he was fifteen from a lung disease that periodically confined him to his bed and was to end his life at the age of just twenty-nine. And of Mafai, who had often witnessed his close friend coughing up blood at the end of the long days spent together. During the few years granted to their friendship, this awareness fuelled their desire to live their chosen life as artists to the full with no restrictions. An

1 L. de Libero, Roma 1935, Rome: Edizioni della Cometa, 1981, p. 22. 2 Ibidem, p. 19. 3 Ibidem, pp. 25–26.

135 PAOLA BONANI ANIMATING THE PAINTING WITH VIBRATIONS OF LIFE: THE SCHOOL OF VIA CAVOUR, 1927–33 urgent need that was immediately reflected in the analogous vocation of knew anything about Goya, Velázquez, Brueghel and Piero della Francesca Antonietta Raphaël and reinforced by her innate energy. apart from the odd reproduction? And then there was modern painting, a As Mafai wrote in 1930, “We are a generation of faith and everything we real garden of delights. It’s there that we found Chagall and Kokoschka, do is above all for our own use in accordance with an impulse and enthu- there that we made contact with the painting of Paris.”7 siasm prompted by no self-interest whatsoever.”4 This enthusiasm caught Those explorations among the books were then joined by the tales of the attention of contemporaries at once and is still perceptible today in Antonietta, who returned to Rome in the autumn of 1927 and went to the work of these artists, some significant examples of which are to be live with Mafai on the top floor of a building on Via Cavour. As Raphaël found today in the collection of Giuseppe Iannaccone. remembered many years later, “There was Fascism and the world-wide The paths of Mafai, Raphaël and Scipione crossed in Rome between 1924 1. Scipione, Piramide di Caio Cestio, 1929. economic crisis. All in all, Scipione and Mafai had always lived in Rome or Private collection and 1925, giving rise to deep and complex relations: a friendship of unex- the provinces and were fascinated by my stories, my artistic experiences. pected intensity between Mafai and Scipione; passionate and tormented I had been to Paris before coming to Rome and so I had seen what the love between Mafai and Raphaël; mutual admiration and comprehensible French painters were doing in that period.”8 jealousy for their respective relations with Mafai between Scipione and Raphaël had brought memories with her from Europe of painting com- Raphaël. These bonds generated exchanges of ideas and suggestions in pletely different from the “prudent and orderly” kind then predominant the sphere of painting, where it is not always easy to determine their in- in Rome, produced by movements that were different, as Fabrizio D’ dividual contributions, and unquestionably produced one of the peaks of Amico observes, “but ultimately somehow convergent: a noble academ- twentieth-century art in Rome. icism still nineteenth-century in character, die-hard museum-oriented Mafai and Scipione met for the first time in the second half of 1924 in vocations and a disturbed ‘realism’ capable of combining primitivism, the apartment where Scipione was living with the parents on Via Cola Novecento Italiano and the never extinguished echoes of metaphysi- di Rienzo, confined to bed once again by one of his periodic relapses. cal bedazzlement”.9 The champions of this painting were, for example, On seeing Scipione’s drawings, Mafai persuaded him to enrol as well in Armando Spadini, Carlo Socrate and the younger artists Virgilio Guidi the Scuola Libera del Nudo [Free school of nude studies] at the Rome and Antonio Donghi. Academy on Via Ripetta. “From then on, we never parted. Having grown Raphaël had instead entered into contact in Paris with the colony of Jewish up together, supported one another and been fired by the same ideas, we artists like Rouault, Chagall, Pascin, Soutine and Modigliani, painting could be shuffled like a deck of cards.”5 characterized by glowing colours and a distortion of reality that “does While Mafai hit it off immediately with Scipione, the attraction he and not offend or deface but restores innocence to things”.10 Raphaël felt for one another was due to the great difference between them. “What I said served as stimuli for Scipione and Mafai. They had painting When they met, “she had already travelled through half of Europe. He had in their blood and so hearing from me about the passion and experiences never been out of Rome. She spoke half a dozen languages (badly) and of the Parisian painters gave them strength and comfort. What could we read the Bible to us. He recited Belli’s sonnets to us in Roman dialect.”6 do then in Rome? In the evening, on the terrace of our apartment, Mafai Raphaël and Mafai met in the spring of 1925 at the Rome Academy’s and Scipione would eat a big bowl of spaghetti that they cooked for them- Scuola Libera del Nudo. Raphaël had enrolled in the Academy on arriving selves […] and drink Castelli wine. Then we would go and walk through in the capital after wanderings that took her through Europe from her Rome by night, through the alleyways, and discover the effect of moon- native Lithuania to London, then Paris and finally Italy. light on the Roman buildings.”11 Raphaël did not meet Scipione until a few years later, as he was back in hos- Thus it was that some of the three artists’ masterpieces were born in those pital during the spring of 1925 and spent the summer in Umbria. In the same years, such as Mafai’s Strada con casa rossa [Street with Red House], 1928 period, already expecting her first daughter Miriam, Raphaël went to live [W. NO. 46]; soon bought for the important collection of the musician Alfredo in Montepulciano and then Florence, where she stayed for nearly two years. Casella and now part of the Iannaccone collection), showing the descent While Raphaël was in Tuscany, Mafai and Scipione continued their studies, along one of the streets on the Palatine. The same street was painted by attending the courses in Via Ripetta and spending their evenings in the Raphaël in her Passeggiata archeologica [Archaeological Promenade] [FIG. 2, 7 M. Mafai, “Autobiografia”, in L. Velani library. As Mafai recalled, “We got into the habit of going to the library of (edited by), Mafai, exhibition catalogue P. 236], now in the Pinacoteca di Brera). Comparison of these two paintings (Rome, Palazzo Barberini, March–April art history on Piazza Venezia in the evening. It is there that we began to 1969), Edizioni Ente Premi Roma, Rome: reveals the greater freedom of expression and lesser concern with vocab- De Luca, 1969, p. 18. know the great artists and the lesser ones, observing and analyzing their 8 F. Simongini, “Intervista con Raphaël ulary then possessed by Raphaël’s work, “which accentuates the descent Mafai. Scipione pittore di Roma”, in Vita, work with great attention. We passed works of painting and sculpture Rome, 20 November 1971. of the street in the foreground, increases the curve of the wall and depicts 9 F. D’Amico, “Antonietta Raphaël”, back and forth between us. For us it was a practically unknown world. Who in F. D’Amico (edited by), Antonietta the buildings in almost primitive details, preserving in the background an 4 M. Mafai, in V. Martinelli, Mario Mafai, Raphaël, exhibition catalogue, Rome: Editalia, 1967, p. 9. (Modena, Palazzina dei Giardini, 7 April 5 M. Mafai, “In morte di Scipione”, – 16 June 1991), Bologna: Nuova Alfa in L’Italia Letteraria, Rome, 19 November Editoriale, 1991, p. 7. 1930. 10 Ibidem. 6 M. Mafai, Una vita quasi due, edited 11 F. Simongini, Intervista con Raphaël by S. Scalia, Milan: Rizzoli, 2012, p. 28. Mafai…, cit., 1971.

136 137 PAOLA BONANI ANIMATING THE PAINTING WITH VIBRATIONS OF LIFE: THE SCHOOL OF VIA CAVOUR, 1927–33 array of domes and towers that do not appear in the work of her husband, of colour, but always concentrated within the canons of construction and who is more attentive on the whole to tonal construction and the balance without lapsing into frivolity or vulgarity. / But neither the draughtsman of perspective.”12 nor the constructor nor the painter becomes an artist without the ability to Pavolini had this to say in a long article on Raphaël published in Il Tevere animate his painting with vibrations of life, to give it the immediacy of an in connection with an exhibition of eight female painters and sculptors emotion, to endow it with the colour of some feeling.”18 of Rome,13 “As a Slav, Raphaël is certainly not involved in the problems In short, Mafai called for Italian painting to move from the controlled, that weary her Italian colleagues. She paints Rome ‘as she sees it’, with mock-classical atmosphere of the years of the Return to Order to the expres- her temperament, that is […] This artist feels such a wealth of ranges and sionist and neo-romantic climate in which, as Elena Pontiggia writes, “the shifts in tone in things, places, skies and people that the fabric of her paint- primacy of draughtsmanship and volume gives way to that of colour and light, ing is imbued with ever-changing variety.”14 In the works she exhibited at classical anatomy to free reinvention of the figure, composition governed by the Camerata degli Artisti, like Arco di Settimio Severo all’alba [Arch of number and measure to composition of a more instinctive kind, the perspec- [W. NO. 64] 19 Septimius Severus at Dawn] , now in the Iannaccone collection), the 2. Mario Mafai, Autoritratto, 1930. tive of Alberti to perspective that is primitive or free from rules”. In the late Roman landscape finds “curious translations of an exquisitely Russian fla- Private collection twenties and early thirties, as clearly shown by the works of the Iannaccone vour, as in domes and bell towers, and also in the folksy, archaic rendering collection, this approach was shared by School of Via Cavour in Rome, the of arboreal forms”.15 Imperfect in terms of architecture and perspective, Six Painters of Turin and the Chiarismo and Corrente movements in Milan. these landscapes seem to reproduce “the vision of someone gazing in won- This new trend in painting began to develop in Rome precisely as a result of der on life for the first time”.16 Visions of the city discovered through daily the successes of Raphaël, Mafai and Scipione, above all as from 1929. That walks at dawn when, as Mafai wrote, “the mountains in the background year opened with a group exhibition at the Caffè Aragno in Palazzo Doria, behind the Arch of Severus were a beautiful purple unlike any rare stone. To as Mafai recalls: “A serene Spadinian atmosphere reigned at the Aragno un- have some idea, you have to think of strawberry water-ice.”17 til Professor Longhi decided at a certain point to get up to date by launch- This compositional freedom in the construction of the landscape is also ing the peasant painter Gisberto Ceracchini and the tailor sculptor Quirino found in the spatial arrangement of the component elements of the still Ruggeri, a hybrid mixture of Rousseau and mock-classical primitivism. It lifes, as seen, for example, in Raphaël’s Natura morta con chitarra [Still was precisely Ceracchini, the spearhead of contemporary Roman painting, Life with Guitar], 1928 [W. NO. 63]. Here the objects are arranged with no that asked Scipione and me for works for a show of young painters at Palazzo 4. Mario Mafai, Ragazzo con la palla, 20 immediate and evident connection — as also happens in Scipione’s Natura 1932. Private collection Doria.” It was on this occasion that Scipione and Mafai met Margherita morta con piuma [Still Life with Feather], 1929 [W. NO. 79] — and sometimes Sarfatti, “who had just arrived from Milan with a huge consignment of slip incorrectly between the foreground and middle ground. Novecento paintings, determined to conquer the capital”.21 According to 22 This freedom made up of imprecision and ambiguities that reveal feelings 3. Mario Mafai, Ritratto di Miriam, 1932. Scipione, she bought a portrait from Mafai. Mafai “enchanted us all” and and emotions, which Raphaël then shared above all with Scipione (whose Rome, private collection both he and Scipione appeared to be “furiously intent of finding a new and work is discussed here in detail by Fabrizio D’Amico), is what Mafai regard- more flagrant way to distinguish themselves from the now worn out and ed in that period as indispensable for the complete renewal of an Italian often unappealing official art of the Novecento movement”.23 painting still bogged down in the rigidity of the Novecento movement. 18 M. Mafai, “Intendimenti”, in Il Fondaco, The Prima Mostra del Sindacato Fascista degli Artisti [First Exhibition of anno I, no. 1, Catania, May 1928; As he wrote in May 1928 in the first issue of the Catania-based journal Il now in S. Troisi (edited by), Lazzaro. the Fascist Union of Artists] was inaugurated a few months later on 7 April Opere 1927-1964, exhibition catalogue Fondaco, edited by his friend Mimì Lazzaro, “We Italians have been graft- (Marsala, the former Convento del 1929. Raphaël, Mafai and Scipione showed work together for the first and Carmine, 16 April – 11 June 2000), ed onto that Tuscan form of nude, mock-classical, fifteenth-century art Palermo: Sellerio, 2000,pp. 45–46. only time in room number ten alongside Cipriano Efisio Oppo, Bartoli 19 E. Pontiggia, “Italia anni trenta: la since 1919 (if I am not mistaken), and the result is such rigidity of form that stagione neoromantica, l’intreccio delle Nantinguerra, Alberto Ziveri, Arturo Martini, Wanda and Alfredo Biagini. mostre”, in G. Iannaccone, R. Paterlini it is like being in prison. / The human figures inhabiting these paintings, (edited by), Una caccia amorosa. Arte Raphaël presented Paesaggio [Landscape], Mafai Tramonto [Sunset] and italiana tra le due guerre nella collezione frozen in monotonous abstraction, do not breathe. They resemble plaster Iannaccone, Milan: Skira, 2009, p. 26. Tramonto sul Lungotevere [Sunset on the Lungotevere] [W. NO. 47], and Scipione 20 M. Mafai, “La pittura del 1929”, in Il casts, puppets, dummies. Even landscape, which has a greater sense of 12 F. Fergonzi, “Collezione Jesi”, Contemporaneo, Rome, 1 May 1954, Tramonto [Sunset] and a study of a head in the “black and white” section. in Pinacoteca di Brera. Dipinti p. 7. reality, is bound by certain laws of composition. / Things completely jus- dell’Ottocento e del Novecento. 21 Ibidem. Raphaël’s landscape (better known as Veduta dalla terrazza di via Cavour Collezioni dell’Accademia e della 22 Scipione, “Lettere a Renato Marino tified and of great interest for the Italian painting of the Novecento move- Pinacoteca, vol. 2, Milan: Electa, 1994, Mazzacurati”, in R. Ruscio, L’archivio [View from the Terrace in Via Cavour] [W. NO. 65] and Mafai’s Tramonto sul p. 785. di Renato Marino Mazzacurati nei Musei ment but now this constructive period must end. / Some intelligent artists 13 Otto pittrici e scultrici romane, exhibition Civici di Reggio Emilia, Reggio Emilia: Lungotevere, exhibited together on that important occasion and today re- catalogue (Rome, La Camerata degli Edizioni Diabasis, 1998, pp. 45–46, 49. of the avant-garde feel inclined towards a focus on tone and colour, a need Artisti, 9–24 June 1929), n.p. For the correct dating of Scipione’s two united in the Iannaccone collection, clearly demonstrate the character of 14 C. pav. [Corrado Pavolini], “Mostre letters, see P. Bonani, “La ‘scuola di via for pictoriality. In other words, the draughtsman gives way to the paint- romane. Antonietta Raphaël”, in Il Cavour’. Cronologia (1925-1933)”, their work. Roberto Longhi described it as the “most explosive” of the exhi- Tevere, Rome, 14 June 1929. in F. D’Amico, M. Goldin (edited by), er, the synthesis of forms to delicate tonalities and a certain sensuality 15 Ibidem. Casa Mafai. Da via Cavour a Parigi bition in L’Italia Letteraria on 14 April, a week after the inauguration, in the 16 G. Dottori, “Mostre romane. Otto donne (1925-1933), exhibition catalogue alla Camerata degli artisti”, in L’Impero, (Brescia, Museo di Santa Giulia, 14 Rome, 26 June 1929. January – 20 March 2005), Conegliano: 17 M. Mafai, “11 ottobre [1928]”, in M. Mafai, Linea d’ombra, 2004, pp. 116, 164n. Diario 1926-1965, introduction by G. 23 L. de Libero, “Il mio amico Mafai”, in Appella, Rome: Edizioni della Cometa, Mario Mafai, introduction by L. de Libero, 1984, pp. 45–46. Rome: De Luca Editore, 1949, pp. 8–9.

138 139 PAOLA BONANI ANIMATING THE PAINTING WITH VIBRATIONS OF LIFE: THE SCHOOL OF VIA CAVOUR, 1927–33 now famous article in which he felicitously dubbed the group the “School same light falls on the solid, naked bodies of his Uomini al tramonto [Men of Via Cavour”. Mafai reminded him of the French painter Raoul Dufy with at Sunset], 1932, Ragazzo con la palla [Boy with a Ball], 1932 [FIG. 4]) and the two works shown and Raphaël was “suckled by the same wet-nurse as Donne che stendono al sole [Women Hanging Out the Washing], circa 1933 Chagall”. Theirs was “an eccentric and anarchic art [...] on the borderline of [FIG. 5]). Radiant and solid is also Mafai’s face in the Autoritratto or Doppio that dark and devastated area where decrepit Impressionism is transmuted ritratto [Self-Portrait or Double Portrait], circa 1933 [W. NO 49], which the into expressionistic hallucination, cabala and magic”.24 artist presented at the 1934 Venice Biennial. Looking younger without The acclaim for their work increased also on the occasion of above-men- the moustache, as in another self-portrait signed and dated 1930 [FIG. 2], tioned shows of Raphaël at the Camerata degli Artisti in 1929 and of the face here is endowed with strength and maturity by the relationship 24 R. Longhi, “Alle Belle Arti. La mostra Mafai and Scipione at the Galleria di Roma the following year. De Libero degli artisti sindacati. Clima e opere established with the other face behind it. This can almost certainly be degli irrealisti. II”, in L’Italia Letteraria, describes the latter as an “authentic hurricane in the artistic heavens of Rome, 14 April 1929. identified as his first daughter Miriam (being similar in all respects to the 25 L. de Libero, “Il mio amico Mafai”, Rome, which still, however, displayed its proverbial indifference to ignore in Mario Mafai, cit., 1949, pp. 13–14. portrait of her painted by Mafai in 1932), sleeping in the knowledge that 26 P. M. Bardi, “Mostre romane. an event that instead moved Ungaretti, Longhi, Cecchi, Cardarelli, Barilli L’Arte sacra. Scipione e Mafai”, in her father is looking over her. L’Ambrosiano, Milan, 12 November 25 and Oppo to declarations of boundless praise.” Long articles were pub- 1930; also in Belvedere, Milan, no. 5-6, While Mafai spent long periods in Italy, returning to Paris from time to November-December 1930. 5. Mario Mafai, Donne che stendono al sole, 26 27 lished in the newspapers and magazines of the period by Bardi, Oppo, 27 C. E. Oppo, “Mafai e Scipione alla circa 1933. Private collection time, Raphaël did not return to Rome until the end of 1933, immediately af- Galleria di Roma”, in La Tribuna, Rome, 28 29 30 31 Pavolini, Francesco Trombadori, Michele Biancale, Virgilio Guzzi, 13 November 1930. ter Scipione’s death. In 1931 she also spent some time in London, where she 28 C. Pavolini, “Fatti artistici. Scipione 32 33 Alberto Francini and Alberto Neppi, who had previously been highly e Mafai alla ‘Galleria di Roma’“, in made an unsuccessful attempt with the aid of Jacob Epstein to hold a show Il Tevere, Rome, 17 November 1930. critical of their work in the pages of Il Lavoro Fascista. 29 F. Trombadori, “Mafai e Scipione”, in at the Redfern Gallery and painted Yom Kippur in the Sinagogue (1931–32 [W. Gente Nostra, Rome, November 1930. On the same occasion, Ungaretti introduced Mafai and Scipione to 30 M. Biancale, “Scipione e Mafai alla NO. 66]). Together with the famous painting of her mother blessing the can- Galleria di Roma”, in Il Popolo di Roma, Principessa Marguerite Caetani, who was to purchase several of their Rome, 22 November 1930. dles (Mia madre benedice le candele, 1932 [FIG. 6]), this is one of the paintings 31 V. Guzzi, “Note su Mafai e Scipione”, works (two of which, Mafai’s Tramonto sul Lungotevere [W. NO. 47] and in Civiltà Fascista, Rome, y. I, no. 13, 20 that helped her keep close to her roots while far away from her family. It November 1930. Scipione’s self-portrait [W. NO. 80], are now in the Iannaccone collection) and 32 A. Francini, “Scipione e Mafai alla was produced while she was slowly making up her mind to stop painting ‘Galleria di Roma’“, in L’Italia Letteraria, did a great deal from then on to support Scipione financially in the most Rome, 16 November 1930. in favour of sculpture, an art she began learning in Paris. Scipione’s con- 33 A. Neppi, “Mostre romane d’arte. I pittori 34 difficult years of his illness. Scipione e Mafai alla ‘Galleria di Roma’. dition grew increasingly serious. He was seldom able to leave the hospital Lo scultore Pietro Montana a Palazzo In a letter of December 1930 to Renato Mazzacurati, who had been very Salviati”, in Il Lavoro Fascista, Rome, and painting was practically impossible. He went back to the sanatorium in 15 November 1930. close to the three artists during his stay Rome in the late twenties before 34 Principessa Caetani bought the following Arco at the end of the year and died there on 9 November 1933. works by Scipione over the years: 35 returning to the Emilia region in 1928, Scipione talked about the exhi- Il principe cattolico [The Catholic Raphaël then returned to Rome from London and began to concentrate Prince], 1930, oil on panel, 54 × 37.2 bition and gave his friend the latest news from Rome: “Mafai has been cm, Vatican City, Vatican Museums; intensely on sculpture. In addition to his flowers, Mafai began to paint Autoritratto [Self-Portrait], 1930, living in Paris with Antonietta for a year now. He came for the exhibition oil on panel, a series of demolition scenes, images foreshadowing the imminent war 54 × 37 cm, Milan, Collezione Giuseppe and will be leaving soon. He has lightened his colour a great deal and is Iannaccone — at the time the front and and destruction. The close friendships and bonds established during back of a single panel; Natura morta di fichi [Still Life with Figs], 1930, oil more simple and immediate, but he is still the same Mafai, even without 6. Antonietta Raphaël, Mia madre benedice those first, intense years of work enabled Mafai and Raphaël to obtain the on panel, 44.5 × 50.5 cm, Macerata, 36 his moustache. Antonietta has remained in Paris.” Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di le candele, 1932. Rome, private collection protection necessary during the increasingly violent racial campaigns of Macerata; Piazza Navona, 1930, oil on At the beginning of 1930, having sold the apartment on Via Cavour and left canvas, 80 × 82 cm, Rome, Galleria the Fascist regime, which saw Raphaël as guilty of being not only a Jew Nazionale d’Arte Moderna; Ponte degli their three daughters in the care of their paternal grandmother, Raphaël and Angeli, 1930, oil on panel, 82 × 100 cm, but also a British citizen and therefore an enemy of Italy. They were in unknown collection (formerly Turin, Mafai had moved to Paris, where Mafai’s painting underwent a considerable Galleria Narciso); Il colosseo [The 37 Terza Mostra del Sindacato Regionale fact helped by figures sometimes very closely involved with the regime, Colosseum], circa1931, oil on panel, 35 Fascista Belle Arti del Lazio, exhibition change. In 1932, having seen many of the new works brought by Mafai from × 42 cm, private collection; Meretrice catalogue (Rome, Palazzo delle like Oppo (one of the first to admire their work and the person responsi- romana [Roman Harlot], circa 1930, ink Esposizioni, 1 March – 30 April 1932), Paris for the wall offered to him by Oppo at that year’s exhibition of the on paper, 240 × 170 mm, formerly Falqui pp. 21–22, ill. no. 20 (Alberi d’inverno ble for paying tribute to Scipione with the first posthumous show at the collection, Rome; Ponte Sant’Angelo, [Trees in Winter]). Mafai showed work 37 Fascist Union, Scipione described his friend’s work as completely differ- 1930, ink wash on paper, 225 × 330 in room 4 together with Giuseppe Quadrennial in 1935 in violation of its own statute), as well as the rich and mm, Rome, Galleria Comunale d’Arte Capogrossi (seven works) and Fausto ent: “it is all light in colour. This wouldn’t mean anything because it’s natu- Moderna. She also bought Mafai’s Pirandello (eleven). Mafai presented Luce important collectors Emilio Jesi and Alberto Della Ragione. Tramonto sul Lungotevere, now part of d’autunno [Autumn Light], no. 22, Fiori ral, I’m a lot lighter too, but it’s also limpid and correct in draughtsmanship! the Iannaccone collection, and Tetti di [Flowers], no. 23, Alberi d’inverno [Trees As De Libero wrote, Scipione’s death “left us shattered for a long time, Roma [Roman Roofs], circa 1949, oil on in Winter], no. 24, Fiori al sole [Flowers 39 All in proportion as regards spatial depth. In short, he is remedying all his panel, 35 × 50 cm, private collection. in Sunshine], no. 25, Mattino d’inverno scattered us, dug a trench around us and between us”. His passing 35 In the autumn of 1926, Renato Marino [Winter Morning], no. 26, Pomeriggio flaws and now going in pursuit of reality […] he paints large figures from Mazzacurati arrived in Rome from d’estate [Summer Afternoon], no. 27, SS. brought the brief and intense life of the School of Via Cavour to a sudden Gualtieri in the Emilia region (where he Pietro e Paolo [St Peter and St Paul], no. 38 life with a model and, what’s more, nearly all in sunlight.” was born at San Venanzio di Galliera in 28, Fiori [Flowers], no. 29 and Baracconi end. A school “with no rules, programmes, pupils or manifestos” but one 1907). Having begun his artistic training abbandonati [Abandoned Booths], no. The flowers that Mafai began to paint then and continued to paint all in a craftsman’s shop, he enrolled at the 30. that left a deep imprint on the development of art in Rome during the school of nude studies at the Accademia 38 V. Martinelli, “Scipione e Renato through the decade were bathed in a new light, as seen in Garofani bianchi di Belle Arti on Via Ripetta, where he Mazzacurati pittore (con dodici lettere years to come; an art that “found confirmation of its modern, experimen- became the friend of Mafai and Scipione. inedite di Scipione)”, in Studi di storia 40 con mammole [White Carnations and Sweet Violets], 1936 [W. NO. 50]. And the Mazzacurati stayed in Rome until the end dell’arte in onore di Vittorio Viale, Turin: tal, anti-Novecento vocation precisely in that handful of young artists”. of 1928 and the three artists, together Edizioni d’arte Fratelli Pozzo, 1967, p. 114. with Raphaël, were very close during that 39 L. de Libero, Roma 1935..., cit., 1981, period. pp. 26 –27. 36 Scipione 1904-1933, exhibition catalogue 40 F. D’Amico, Il cuore della Scuola Romana, (Macerata, Palazzo Ricci, 6 July exhibition catalogue (Bologna, Galleria – 15 September 1985), Rome: De Luca d’arte Forni, 28 September – 16 November Editore, 1985, p. 163. 1991), Bologna: Forni, 1991, p. 6.

140 141 The Brief Transit of Scipione1

fabrizio d’amico

The news of Gino Bonichi’s death at the age of just 29 hit Rome in November 1933 like a boulder crashing into a still pool of water. He called himself Scipione, already with the idea of standing like a warrior at the head of something new and great. It was immediately realized that an era — short, intense and blazing in a largely comatose Italy still substantially obedient to the prudent dictates of Ugo Ojetti — was over. A large posthumous show of 22 paintings and 30 drawings was held at the second Rome Quadrennial two years later as an exception to the rule, the national exhibition being specifically for the work of living artists. As stated in the catalogue, “With this show the Quadrennial wishes to honour the memory of the young painter, who had been invited to take part with a large number of works.” As a further exception, it was presented by Oppo himself, the Quadrennial’s creator and ruler, who was deeply moved and fully aware of the measure of the loss. As he wrote on that occasion, “[...] Scipione’s painting was an apparition amongst us, a fantastic and tragic apparition with new and disconcerting overtones, something terribly hurried and dense, like someone with a lot to say in little time [...].” On 10 May 1929, shortly after the inauguration of the first exhibition of the Prima Sindacale del Lazio [Lazio Fascist Union of Fine Arts] and in a period when he still distrusted Oppo, a figure closely involved with the regime but who was soon to become “a friend” and one of those most eager to help him, Scipione wrote as follows to Mazzacurati: “Oppo is on our side and we flatter one another. I believe that the more a Roman movement gathers momentum, the more it will be in his interest to promote it as much as possible.” The exhibition was one of the very first for his painting, which immediately aroused an unexpected curiosity: “The Duce himself took a fancy to my bull [FIG. 1] on the day of the opening.” Gathered together there were the various guiding spirits of what was to be known as the Roman School: Scipione, Mafai and the then unknown Antonietta Raphaël (listed as “Raffael” in the catalogue) as well as Ziveri, making his debut at the age of just 20. Virgilio Guidi, who had been teaching in Venice since 1927, was also featured with seven works because Oppo, who was primarily responsible for choosing the participants, was well aware 1 Reference is made in the text to G. Appella, Scipione. 306 disegni, how much this great painter, though now far away, mattered to the young- Rome: Edizioni della Cometa, 1984, and to M. Fagiolo dell’Arco, er Romans. Then there was Ferrazzi of course and all of the Caffè Aragno V. Rivosecchi, Scipione. Vita e opere, Turin: Allemandi, 1988. Respectively group: Socrate first of all with a huge show (branded by Scipione in an- examining the artist’s graphical and pictorial work, these two exhaustive other letter to Mazzacurati as an “apologist” of “professional bravura”) overall studies also contain the other biographical and bibliographical references mentioned here. Among the rich literature on Scipione, see in particular S. Troisi (edited by), Lazzaro. Opere 1927-1964, Palermo: Sellerio, 2000.

142 143 FABRIZIO D'AMICO THE BRIEF TRANSIT OF SCIPIONE as well as Francalancia, Donghi, Trombadori, Di Cocco, Ianni (admired ablaze (albeit with a hint of caricature that was soon to pollute his ap- here by Roberto Longhi), Bertoletti, Bartoli, Drei, Quirino Ruggeri, Surdi, proach). Or when the same course was taken by Sadun, Scialoja and even Ciucci and the inevitable women artists: Cecchi Pieraccini, Pasquarosa, the meek Ciarrocchi, who were soon to follow different paths but exhibit- Biagini, Quajotto and many others. Practically the only ones missing were ed work at the time together with Stradone, first in Florence and then in Fausto Pirandello, who had been in Paris for two years and was to remain Rome at the Galleria del Secolo. It is no coincidence that Cesare Brandi there for one more, and the future “tonalists” Capogrossi, Cavalli and described the four artists as “on the wrong track” in his well-known pres- Melli. entation of the latter show. Or when, finally and in more general terms, The School of Via Cavour — as Longhi dubbed it at the time (April 1929) in a large part of Roman painting during and immediately after the war — 1. Scipione, Contemplazione (Tramonto), L’Italia Letteraria as a reference to the address of the rooftop home of Mafai circa 1928. Milan, private collection 2. Antonietta Raphaël, Paesaggio romano, at least in the work that kept its distance from the initial move towards and Raphaël — was then enjoying its brief, intense days of splendour. The 1928. Private collection abstraction incubated above all by the young Forma group — took on the hands of the three companions (but how much jealousy Raphaël caused at expressionist character that also informed a period of Guttuso’s work be- the beginning by coming between Mafai and Scipione) produced precari- fore he too adopted a neo-Cubist approach and then became the leader of ous, disrupted landscapes, skewed, collapsing edifices grazed by ghastly, the realist movement. streaked light, still-lifes that mocked tradition and all correct perspective Scipione’s legacy, which had appeared destined to lead the art of his city in their presentation of unlikely combinations of objects (playing cards, of adoption towards an intense, visionary dimension, was as though dead combs and feathers, drapes and guitars), and distorted, alienated por- and buried all through the thirties and the studies produced so far have traits and self-portraits ablaze with intense, visionary expressions. Good, taken only partial cognizance of the sudden and surprising oblivion into solid Roman painting seemed bound to topple beneath the violent assault which such a lofty experience fell. This silence and oblivion obviously re- of that “school” with no desks and no manifestos. (Scipione was indeed to gard Italy, which had encountered Scipione only once (at the 1930 Venice write repeatedly to people like his friend Domenico [Mimì] Lazzaro from Biennial, where his Cardinal Decano [Dean of the College of Cardinals] Catania, also known as “Il Moro”, about the state of near panic in which [FIG. 3], one of the great works of twentieth-century Italian painting, was the old Roman intelligentsia, gathered together in the “mouse-coloured” understood by very few). A similar and less comprehensible silence fell wood panelling and smoke of the third room of the Aragno café, waited also in Rome, however, where an opposite approach of dazed, sacral ges- for the new movement to manifest itself.) 3. Scipione, Ritratto del cardinal Vannutelli tures suspended in limpid, motionless space was born precisely in the (il Cardinal Decano), 1930. Rome, Galleria But fate took a different turn. Mafai and Raphaël set off for Paris, leav- Comunale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea early thirties and became widespread as from 1933−34. It was now the ing their practically newborn third daughter in the care of her paternal tonalism of Capogrossi and Melli that bewitched so many: earlier lead- grandmother. Raphaël was to remain there for over three years, choosing ers like Mafai and future leaders like Guttuso, then still just starting out; to return, by no coincidence, only after the death of her “rival” Scipione. giants previously following their own path and soon to do so again like Since it was “hard for two artists practicing the same art of painting to live Fausto Pirandello; successful standard bearers of their day like Gisberto together. I criticized him and he criticized me [...]”, she devoted her ener- Ceracchini; and lesser figures like Ianni, Monti and Trifoglio. By com- gies to sculpture there with still youthful enthusiasm, deeply impressed parison with them and their painting, which transformed everyday life first of all by the classicism of Maillol, which was to inform a complete re- into eternal, ritualistic acts and in a certain way established a dialogue newal of her previous artistic vocabulary. Mafai also returned from Paris devoid of irreparable contradictions with the Novecento movement pre- a changed artist, described by Scipione as “much lighter in colour” and dominating elsewhere, the “fantastic and tragic apparition” of Scipione “simpler and more immediate”. Due to illness, Scipione had left Rome truly seemed to be no more than the path of a meteor. Even the previous in the meantime for exile in the sanatorium of Arco in the province of Roman school exemplified by Donghi could feel it had been accorded a Trento, where he was to spend the rest of his days apart from a few short new lease of life to some degree after his premature death. intervals allowed him by unexpected improvements in his condition. The exhaustive overview of Scipione’s painting offered by the Iannaccone Despite Cipriano Efisio Oppo’s impassioned testimonial of 1935, collection today encompasses nearly all the salient features of his vision Scipione’s influence on the Roman art scene in the years immediately af- from still life to landscape and compositions with figures. In the painter’s ter his death registered a quick and surprising decrease. Nor was it re- short chronology, the collection focuses on the central years (1929 and vived until much later, at the end of the thirties, when Leoncillo conceived 1930) of a career that was not only temporally limited but also undermined the phantasmal, visionary image informed by Fontana’s ceramics and the by illness. In the long months spent by Scipione in various sanatoriums memory of Scipione that preceded his long neo-Cubist period. Or when in Rome or northern Italy, and especially towards the end, his production Stradone repeated the boundless dreams that had set Scipione’s painting was episodic and restricted exclusively to graphic art. Only some of these

144 145 FABRIZIO D'AMICO THE BRIEF TRANSIT OF SCIPIONE works, the oeuvre of illness, fully attest to the commitment, impetus and Scipione’s highest graphic art. Il cardinale Vannutelli sul letto di morte inventive freedom he usually displayed in his drawing. [Cardinal Vannutelli on His Deathbed] [W. NO. 84] and the Studio per “Gli It was indeed precisely to drawing, circulated above all through the uomini che si voltano” [Study for “Men Who Turn Around”] [W. NO. 85] (both noble pages of L’Italia Letteraria — edited by Angioletti and Malaparte 1930) are preparatory studies (or perhaps second thoughts but in any case under the astute supervision of Enrico Falqui, the editor in chief, with certainly and closely connected with the chronology of the paintings) for whom the artist very frequently exchanged letters — that Scipione large- two of the oil paintings presented in the crucial exhibition at Pier Maria ly owed his reputation, otherwise restricted to the narrow confines of Bardi’s Galleria di Roma. The two images share the lacerated space — his city of adoption, the only place where he had exhibited work with 4. Scipione, La via che porta a San Pietro, 1930. with no centre or stable point of support — that is one of the treasures Rome, Galleria Comunale d’Arte Moderna 5. Mario Mafai, Roma vista dal Gianicolo, sole important exception of his above-mentioned participation in the 1929. Location unknown of Scipione’s maturity. The view swoops down from above on the subject 1930 Venice Biennial. As exhaustively examined in various studies by or suddenly soars upwards and approaches it from below, revealing and Giuseppe Appella, his drawing was the outlet for varied and even con- battering it at the same time. Scipione’s eye looks and is blinded, seizes flicting — despite the brevity of his trajectory — artistic ideas prompt- and forgets, laying bare or concealing features behind the expanse of ink ed by different circumstances. He thus produced works, mostly line of the abyss of shadows in which the forms writhe or grow. Meanwhile that drawings concentrated above all in the early years, that revisit a su- anguished space, now a character itself, floats with no stability. pra-historical classicality or — more rarely — contemporary life (atten- As is known, Scipione had reservations, albeit affectionately expressed, tion has been drawn to unexpected similarities with the early drawing of about the new Parisian approach of Mafai, who exhibited alongside him Pirandello or Maccari); sketches of an erotic character, a genre he grad- in the show at the Galleria di Roma. He thus described his work in a letter ually abandoned as out of line with his new sensibility; studies for or to Mazzacurati as “much lighter in colour, simpler and more immediate”. inspired by his major pictorial compositions; satirical drawings for pub- At the same time, he willingly accepted Mafai’s criticism: “You’re at risk lication above all in L’Italia Letteraria, for which he expressed increas- of remaining a local product. Your baroque effects no longer have any ing concern about the quality of their reproduction, thus demonstrating reason to exist [...].” In short, they exchanged mutual reproaches dur- the importance he still attached to his graphic art; and finally those on ing a lunch with friends to celebrate the exhibition (as Scipione proudly Biblical themes, often the most visionary and dramatic, inspired also noted, the many purchasers included five critics). He unquestionably re- by his intense reading of the Scriptures, esoteric works and Symbolist called with regret the threatening gleams of light and muffled, precarious literature, especially French. And these are just the most frequent forms space of his friend’s work, e.g. in the Veduta dalla terrazza di via Cavour of an assiduous practice to which Scipione unquestionably devoted him- [View from the Terrace in Via Cavour] [W. NO. 65] (1929) and the Tramonto sul self far more than is customary in the case of drawing. Lungotevere [Sunset on the Lungotevere] [W. NO. 47] (1929), and was therefore Black ink was sometimes accompanied by washes, in which case the hail- suspicious of his apparent departure from those elements of risk. storm of minute strokes takes on a less restricted temporal dimension; La flagellazione di Cristo [The Flagellation of Christ] [W. NO. 82] (1929) was the quick, cramped movement of the hand gives way to the impetus of not followed by the picture that Scipione may have had in mind. The draw- the wrist, spreading the brown stain over the sheet as though to extend ing is singular for the host of presences crammed into it, with the white its gasping breath. It is this combination that produced perhaps the most figure of Christ balanced by the juxtaposed diagonal of the torturer on fully accomplished drawings, including for example those catalogued by the right and figures crowded all around to the point of saturating the Appella as nos. 184−194, all datable to 1930. Here Scipione imbues with a space in a wholly anomalous way. It was published on the front page of dreamlike quality the visions of Roman architecture painstaking wrought L’Italia Letteraria (14 July 1929) but Scipione must have been unhappy by his brush, precisely delineating of every nook and cranny, and convey- with the way it came out, being somewhat dark due to the extensive use ing the impression of some slow, dilated melancholy, suffering or threat. of wash. The drawings he subsequently delivered to Falqui were therefore The bridge that spans the Tiber in front of Castel Sant’Angelo, Piazza del certainly less intense but conceived precisely for printed publication, e.g. Laterano and Trajan’s Forum stand out like ghosts against a stormy sky of Il cardinale Vannutelli sul letto di morte [W. NO. 84], which appeared on 30 threatening clouds swollen with rain, their greatness withering, bending, March 1930. groaning and breaking beneath the weight — perhaps — of too many years. The last of the Iannaccone collection’s drawings is La toeletta [The The Colosseum down there in the distance, as though lying in a hollow Dressing Table] [W. NO. 83], a splendid and richly pregnant work in ink. The dominated by a vision from above, suddenly shrinks, almost aligning it- pen moves quickly over the paper to leave the imperfect traces of an every- self with the life of the stunted trees around it. day life excited and transformed by dream: a comb, a flower and hairpins The four very select drawings of the Iannaccone collection belong to standing out against the whiteness of the inclined plane on which they

146 147 FABRIZIO D'AMICO THE BRIEF TRANSIT OF SCIPIONE lie. It is as though those commonplace objects were about to take flight his work finally became frequent and abundant. He was, however, intent in a transformed state, launched into the space that swirls around them, on darker meditations that led him in painting (but not in the drawings for bringing other memories of that secret dressing room: a casket, a screen, L’Italia Letteraria, which were still often marked by sensuality or scath- the swirling space that agitates them, the view captured for an instant ing satire on the official Roman establishment) away from the uncertain from on high and plummeting down onto the objects, the apparently ran- smile always tinged with the almost Surrealistic ambiguity of his view of dom nature of the things assembled in the composition and the implicit things (the ambiguous smile that still encircles and envelops, for example, balance of sensuality and normality. All this recalls the still-lifes painted the two still-lifes of Pierina è arrivata in una grande città [Pierina’s Arrival 6. Fausto Pirandello, Natura morta con sedia in Paris by Filippo de Pisis, no longer under the spell of De Chirico, or the 7. Scipione, Il risveglio della bionda sirena, in a Big City] and Sogno di Giacomino [Giacomino’s Dream] and towards e rose, circa 1939 slightly later works of Fausto Pirandello’s maturity. While no precise rela- 1929. Turin, private collection a bitter feeling of alarm and menace. This was, however, also the period tion can be drawn between one and the other, it is right to recognize the that saw the birth and development of the crucial Apocalisse [Apocalypse] affinity that binds them and makes them so different in approach from series of paintings, with which he reached the peak of his wholly expres- the works of the period. sionist vision. There is an allusion to femininity both in this drawing by Scipione, The year was to open with the pictorial and graphic portraits of the Dean which is unquestionably datable to one of the last months of 1929 (it of the College of Cardinals, where the unquestionable presence of a Goya- appeared in the Almanacco degli artisti. Il vero Giotto in 1930), and in like sense of corruption is still as though held in check by the noble gran- another of the very same period, namely his Natura morta con piuma deur of the figure portrayed. Then, in the same stylistic vein, came Il princ- [Still Life with Feather] [W. NO. 79], another masterpiece of the collection. ipe cattolico [The Catholic Prince] [FIG. 2, P. 302], on the back of which Scipione This in turn borrows − albeit perhaps with an intent that is less allu- painted one of his first self-portraits, now in the Iannaccone collection sive, less disturbing and indeed almost openly playful, like other coeval [W. NO. 80], the first Ritratto di Ungaretti [Portrait of Ungaretti], La meticcia still-lifes, e.g. the one with a sheath dress − some its elements from the [The Half-Caste Woman] and — a lofty pause in the headlong rush to what painting Il risveglio della bionda sirena [The Awakening of the Blonde Oppo called his “impressionist asthma”, “volumetric breathlessness” and Mermaid] [FIG. 7], which in some respects exemplifies an approach already “archaized, Negroid mimicry” — the Ritratto della madre [Portrait of the identified by Sinisgalli as surrealistic. As Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco and Artist’s Mother], which found great favour with those who displayed little

Valerio Rivosecchi write, “Some attributes of the Mermaid reappear in 8. Scipione, Meretrice romana, 1930. liking for the foreshadowed distortions. This was followed immediately by the composition, like the feather, the lemon and the comb.” There is, Mattioli collection golden period of hallucinatory visions of an Eternal City and its Church however, a visible drop in the temperature of those objects, abruptly both prey to the disease of corruption and moral bankruptcy, beginning relegated from the status of hidden symbols to elements of a playful perhaps with the Meretrice romana [Roman Harlot] [FIG. 8] and continuing assemblage displaying all the imagination of Arcimboldo, to the point with the works inspired by his reading of the Book of Revelations. of almost turning the painting into “a mannerist joke”. The Iannaccone collection’s Profeta in vista di Gerusalemme [Prophet in It is Sinisgalli that drew attention to the handling of space that above Sight of Jerusalem] [W. NO. 81] is a greatest of these by virtue of its emotional all makes the numerous still-lifes of those months rare or indeed unique richness and compositional daring. As in the Sesto suggello [Sixth Seal] works in the Italian panorama. As he wrote in 1945, “The objects whirl and Uomini che si voltano [Men Who Turn Around] [FIG. 1, P. 312], the image around a linchpin that is nearly always in the centre of the painting and screams its incurable anguish and boundless terror out of dense dark- describe a sort of spiral over the oval table, an authentic magical table.” ness. To a still greater extent than in these two works, as noted by Valerio Lazzaro recalled the occasion on which the Natura morta con piuma [W. NO. Rivosecchi, Scipione made frequent use of the brush handle to inscribe 79] was born. The two friends met by chance at the Roman market in Via the murky gleam of the night scene in the desert with angst, an approach dei Gracchi and Scipione “was holding two coconuts and still looking for that confirmed him as belonging fully to his era and can be regarded as two lemons ‘as big as breasts’. I had the pleasure of being able to offer him kin to certain works to be produced in the early period of French Art one of truly phenomenal size. He rushed off in childlike glee promising to Informel. As regards Scipione’s trajectory, this connects Profeta in vis- show me what he did with it. He used it for a splendid still life.” ta di Gerusalemme [W. NO. 81] with Le tentazioni di Eva [The Temptations of The Natura morta con piuma therefore dates from 1929, a period in which Eve] and even with the last painting, Caino e Abele [Cain and Abel], which Scipione’s vision was still alternating between nocturnal tensions and mo- “belongs in terms of conception to the period of the Apocalypse”, as he ments of enchanted and sometimes almost playful lyrical abandonment. wrote to Mazzacurati. He went on to write that he was now “freer and The following year, which coincided with his definitive maturity, was a pe- more ecstatic” but had no more time to transmit this new, serene ecstasy riod of greater serenity in which his health appeared to be improving and of the mind to his painting.

148 149 THE COLLECTION Arnaldo Badodi L’armadio

1 Title L’armadio [The Wardrobe] clashes with the impression of abandonment Date 1938 and absence that the room conveys. The crum- Technique oil on canvas pled, empty garments present themselves in Dimensions 54.5 × 43.5 cm all their glitter and splendour, playing ironically bottom right: 38 badodi on the thin line between appearance and reali- 1v verso: ty. The work also appeared in the solo show at Title Abbozzo di una sartoria the Galleria Genova in 1941,6 the Milanese ret- [Sketch of a Tailor’s Shop] rospective of 1969 curated by Marco Valsecchi7 Date 1938 and also, more recently, in the exhibition Camera Technique oil on canvas con vista. Arte e interni 1900–2000.8 Dimensions 43.5 × 54.5 cm R . P.

Sandro Bini summed up the key elements of Arnaldo Badodi’s art in a few words in 1939: 1 S. Bini, “Arnaldo Badodi”, in Corrente di Vita Giovanile, catalogue issue, y. II, no. 6, Milan, “[...] A look at his paintings, where the irony 31 March 1939, p. 5. of the distortion is proportional to the charac- 2 Badodi focused on the subject of distortion and the painter’s work as the expression of his reality ter of the figures — real in their own fantastic in a statement of artistic intent that appeared in world of harmonious absurdity — and the pic- the first issue of the magazine Vita Giovanile (later torial elements are created with equal freedom Corrente) within the context of the dispute between artist and public: “What is this reality demanded of rhythm, will suffice to recognize in Badodi of the artist other than a banal expression intended an orientation of secure positions”.1 The artist’s to force compliance with an apparent order? Given that the relations between nature and mankind iconographic universe is inhabited by figures are as many as there are human beings, since all drawn from reality, which are subjected to a individuals receive particular emotions in relation to their moral complexity, a categorical and unique tireless process of distortion through broad and reality is evidently impossible in art. […] It follows often arabesque-like brushstrokes and the use that distortion is a fundamental principle of art, of unnatural light. This distortion goes beyond and distortion does not mean making ugly, as is commonly claimed today. Given that art is obviously simple linguistic opposition to the Return to not based on metric measurements, distortion Order and monumental figures of the Novecento represents the emotion felt by the individual artist with respect to a theoretical reality. And the greater movement and becomes the expression of an or lesser distortion of a work is certainly not unexpected intimate and personal reality.2 The equivalent to a greater or lesser degree of artistic reality depicted by Badodi lies on the border- merit.” A. Badodi, “Pittura e Pubblico”, in Vita Giovanile, y. I, no. 1, Milan, 1 January 1938, p. 4. line of fantastic invention, where even articles 3 On this occasion, the work was presented with the of clothing can come to life and appear human, title Guardaroba; see S. Bini, Arnaldo Badodi, cit., 1939. It appeared with the title L’armadio as early as happens in L’armadio. The position of the as 1941 in the show at the Galleria Genova; see sleeves makes it look as though the yellow, pol- Arnaldo Badodi in una mostra nelle nostre sale, ka-dot dress is trying to drag itself up from the exhibition catalogue (Genoa, Galleria Genova), presentation by G. Piovene, Genoa: Galleria floor and its hanger looks like a sort of head. Genova, 1941, work no. 2. The handling of colour, where bright reds and 4 L. Anceschi, “Giovani alla Permanente”, in Meridiano di Roma, y. IV, no. 5, Rome, 16 April 1939, p. III. glowing yellows interrupt the predominant to- 5 D. Bonardi, “Artisti che espongono. Quelli di nality based on ochre, is the primary quality Corrente”, in La Sera, y. 47, no. 72, Milan, 25 March recognized by the critics of the period. Shown 1939, p. 3. 6 Arnaldo Badodi, in Una mostra..., cit., 1941. at the first Corrente exhibition in the spring of 7 M. Valsecchi (edited by), Arnaldo Badodi, exhibition 1939,3 L’armadio was the object of numerous, catalogue (Milan, Galleria Eunomìa, opened 29 November 1969), Milan: Edizioni Franco Sciardelli, important observations. Luciano Anceschi de- 1969. scribed it as “vivid”4 and Dino Bonardi drew at- 8 C. Gian Ferrari (edited by), Camera con vista. Arte e interni in Italia dal 1900-2000, exhibition catalogue tention to the young painter’s gift for handling (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 18 April − 1 July 2007), colour.5 In actual fact, this use of bright colours Milan: Skira, 2008.

152 153 Arnaldo Badodi Ballerine

2 Title Ballerine [Ballerinas] subordinated to a tonal dominant, the colour of Date 1938 all his paintings is made up of an extraordinar- Technique oil on canvas ily rich combination of hues and dense web of Dimensions 65.5 × 49.5 cm brushstrokes that create a sort of soft thickness bottom right: 38 badodi into which the figures sink as though into a layer of silence. And there they flounder, as the air to Arnaldo Badodi’s Ballerine (1938) is a reworking breathe gradually runs out.4 It is this figure that of a previous painting on the same subject [FIG. 1] reveals the bitterness of the painter’s reflections. in which the pictorial space is structured to form The world of ballet is indeed just one of the many a sort of triptych.1 In particular, the artist takes microcosms that Badodi explored to express the up the left side of the composition with some ambiguities and pettiness of contemporary hu- variations, eliminating any reference to the con- manity. The flat, drained shapes of the bodies re- text and focusing almost photographically on call certain paintings by Mafai, like Ragazzo con the figures. His groups of figures are full of a la palla a terra [Boy with a Ball (on the Ground)] pervasive anguish. [FIG. 2] (1932). The “melancholy gynaeceum”2 is made up of R . P. ballerinas clad in various shades of bright red, displaying the painter’s interest in chromatic nu- ances. Their expressions suggest that they are 1 Ballerine (1936−37), probably exhibited in the GUF upset about something happening outside the solo show of 1937. See M. Falciano, Arnaldo Badodi space of the painting, as one seeks in vain to e “Corrente”, Rome: El Ma, 1995, pp. 102−03. 2 E. Pontiggia, in E. Pontiggia, N. Colombo (edited comfort another by placing an arm somewhat by), Milano anni Trenta. L’arte e la città, exhibition awkwardly around her shoulders. The only danc- catalogue, (Milan, Spazio Oberdan, 2 December 2004 − 27 February 2005), Milan: Mazzotta, er — perhaps the teacher — who appears to 2004, p. 228. show no interest is also the only one dressed in 3 Ibidem. 3 4 Eunomia, catalogue of the exhibition at the art white, with “disjointed puppet-like arms” and an gallery, via dei Bossi 2/a, from 29 February 1969, elusive, ironic expression. While unquestionably curated by Marco Valsecchi.

1. Arnaldo Badodi, Ballerine, 1936–37. 2. Mario Mafai, Ragazzo con la palla (a terra), 1932. Private collection Rome, private collection

154 155 Arnaldo Badodi Il biliardo

3 Title Il biliardo [Billiards] intimism is a fundamental component of his Date 1940 matrix, it is legitimate to discern a direct legacy, Technique oil on canvas albeit adapted differently to the period, from the Dimensions 69 × 49.5 cm Lombard Scapigliatura movement. Given the bottom left: badodi 40 understanding now established of the innovative situation of the Scapigliati, this intimism is Arnaldo Badodi displays a predilection for therefore anything but querulous with all its ech- common folk worn down by their daily routine. oes of remote solitude and despair”.5 His eye is sympathetic and good-natured, dis- R . P. tinguished by “Chaplinesque irony of deep pathos, the indistinguishable blend of humour and compassion unforgettably expressed in 1 M. Valsecchi, in Arnaldo Badodi, exhibition the famous dance with bread rolls in The Gold catalogue (Milan, Galleria Eunomìa, opened Rush or the closing shots of The Circus, when 29 November 1969), Milan: Edizioni Franco 1 Sciardelli, 1969. the Little Tramp is alone on the endless road”. 2 M. Falciano (edited by), Arnaldo Badodi e The billiard hall is depicted from a slightly ele- “Corrente”, Rome: El Ma, 1995, sheet pp. 318-319. vated viewpoint to explore all of the figures in 3 “Badodi appears to experience the same condition in intuitive harmony with Otto Dix’s Billiard Players, their different poses. Standing around the table, which represents a cynical humanity immersed in three men smartly dressed in black are enjoying a reality pervaded by ‘absence of the self’, which alludes to Van Gogh and the disturbing, hallucinatory their evening’s amusement. The scene is bathed atmosphere of his Night Café [...]”. M. Falciano, in a cold, unnatural light that certainly does not Arnaldo Badodi..., cit., 1995, p. 105, note 145. come from the disproportionately large and or- 4 The show, curated by Marco Valsecchi, was the third posthumous exhibition of work by the painter, nate chandelier over the table. “There is nothing who died young on the Russian front. The first funny about the obvious clumsiness of the fig- took place in Milan at the Galleria Sant’Andrea shortly after the war; see Mostra personale del ures. A certain detachment can be sensed on pittore Arnaldo Badodi, exhibition catalogue (Milan, the part of the painter, who has no wish to yield Galleria Sant’Andrea, opened 24 November 1945), to current events. His consciousness refuses to Milan: Galleria Sant’Andrea, 1945. The second was held at the Venice Biennial of 1948 in room accept an inimical period and is determined to XXXVI, curated by Raffaele De Grada: XXIV Biennale reject this negative reality”.2 di Venezia. Catalogo, 1st ed., Venice: Edizioni Serenissima, 1948, pp. 151−52. Badodi probably felt caught up in the general 5 M. Valsecchi, Arnaldo Badodi, cit., 1969. Mascherpa European spiritual crisis of the pre-war years, makes the following observation: “It is perhaps in finding inspiration in the cynical humankind de- this sense rather than any influence of the style of Tranquillo Cremona that we should understand picted in the works of Otto Dix, including a draw- his avowed allegiance in principle to the Lombard ing of 1920 on the same subject [FIG. 1].3 Writing Scapigliatura movement, if this too is to be seen ultimately as a moral reaction against rhetoric in connection with the show held in Milan at of a celebratory and nationalistic character the Galleria Eunomìa in 1969,4 Valsecchi and (even though the rhetoric of the Risorgimento had very different motivations).” G. Mascherpa, Mascherpa instead underline a derivation “Nei clowns di Badodi un mondo amaro”, in from the Lombard Scapigliatura movement. “If Avvenire, y. II, no. 288, 17 December 1969, p. 5.

1. Otto Dix, Billiard Players, 1920

156 157 Arnaldo Badodi Caffè Il suicidio del pittore Donna al caffè

4 Title Caffè [Café] critic was to characterize all of the artist’s short

Date 1940 but intense career, as can be seen in Caffè, 1 Published in Paris in 1886 as the fourteenth novel Technique oil on plywood which Badodi painted in 1940 on the back of in the Rougon-Macquart series. Dimensions 48 × 58 cm his Suicidio. Here the artist addressed a crowd 2 V. Bucci, “Artisti che espongono. Due giovani”, in Corriere della Sera, y. 62, no. 24, Milan, 28 bottom left: badodi 40 scene, departing from the “contemplative vision” January 1937, p. 3. The double solo show held at verso: and “post-Impressionist approximation” of Aligi the Ugo Pepe branch of the GUF in Milan featured work by Badodi and the sculptor Eugenio Barozzi. [FIG. 1] 3 4v Title Il suicidio del pittore Sassu’s Il grande caffè (1936–1940) . 3 R. De Grada, in Arnaldo Badodi, exhibition [The Painter’s Suicide] The space is devoid of perspective coherence catalogue (Milan, Bottega di Corrente, 22 February Date 1937 and so crowded that the figures are practically − 5 March 1941), Milan: Edizioni di Corrente, 1941. A black and white photograph of the painting Technique oil on plywood “wedged” into one another.4 A dreary atmos- appeared on the inside front cover of the catalogue. Dimensions 58 × 48 cm phere of indifference reigns in the café, how- 4 E. Pontiggia, in E. Pontiggia, N. Colombo (edited by), Milano anni Trenta. L’arte e la città, 5 Title Donna al caffè [Woman at the Café] ever, as the customers appear completely un- exhibition catalogue (Milan, Spazio Oberdan, Date 1940 aware of the presence of others. They do not 2 December 2004 − 27 February 2005), Technique oil on panel look at one another or talk even when sitting at Milan: Mazzotta, 2004, p. 228. 5 Ibidem. Dimensions 40 × 30 cm the same table. The paradox of this scene of 6 E. Mastrolonardo, “Nota su Arnaldo Badodi”, bottom right: badodi 40 collettive recreation reveals the solitude of the in Meridiano di Roma, y. IV, no. 4, Rome, 26 January 1941, p. IV. everyday life of the urban middle class, a loneli- 7 This show, which followed others of work Il suicidio del pittore recalls the scene in Émile ness emblematically expressed by the haunted by Birolli, Migneco and Paganin, was part of 1 a series launched by the gallery in December Zola’s novel L’Œuvre where the artist Claude fixity of the expression of the man in the centre 1940 to promote its artists. Badodi’s show Lantier hangs himself in his studio in front of his of the composition. While the influence of Ensor (February−March) featured only his most recent great unfinished work with the paint still wet on [FIG. 2] and his works full of masked figures is ap- works, including eight drawings. A photograph of Caffè appeared on the inside front cover his palette on the table. Some iconographic el- parent, the Belgian master’s irreverent irony is of the catalogue. See Arnaldo Badodi, cit., 1941, ements appear to suggest a crucifixion scene, toned down. “In actual fact, the Baroque confu- work no. 1. 8 The show in Genoa was held shortly after the one almost as though the artist’s death were to be sion of the scene is accompanied by no feeling in Milan (29 March − 9 April) within the framework seen as a sacrifice for the community. The na- of merriment or even a lyrical atmosphere. The of fruitful collaboration between the two galleries kedness of the body and the position of the head absence of someone, for a moment or forever, initiated by Stefano Cairola, then director of the Galleria Genova. It also included less recent thus recall a Christus patiens [FIG. 4] and the in- is silently recalled by the empty chair in the fore- paintings like L’armadio with a view to making credulous woman at its feet a Mary Magdalene. ground”.5 A bitter metaphor of abandonment. all of the artist’s work better known in the city. See Arnaldo Badodi in una mostra nelle nostre sale, Among the grieving figures, the man in the right This choral representation also allowed Badodi exhibition catalogue (Genoa, Galleria Genova), corner looking away from the corpse with his to experiment with his flair for colour, as Enotrio presentation by Guido Piovene, Genoa: Galleria hands on either side of his face is a direct cita- Mastrolonardo noted at the time: “In the Caffè Genova, 1941, work no. 9. tion of Munch’s The Scream [FIG. 3] . the violent reds of the chairs animate the entire The innovation of Badodi’s painting lies in dis- scene with shrill notes and reflections, creating tortion to the point of caricature and the choice a great bustle among the figures inhabiting a of colour, where the surreal yellow and red of lyrical atmosphere full of sounds and echoes”.6. the clothes stand out like slashes against the The work was shown in 1941, first at the Bottega predominant livid tonality. As Vincenzo Bucci di Corrente7 and then at the Galleria Genova wrote in his review of the Gruppo Universitario in a show organized and presented by Guido Fascista exhibition in Milano (1937) at which the Piovene, whose introduction stressed funda- work was shown: “Badodi’s painting is informed mental importance of colour in Badodi’s works: by a predisposition to consider reality in the “His was an evocative red that wounded the light of ‘everyday tragedy’, as can be seen not instincts and seemed to signify more than was only in the choice of certain subjects, like the actually there on the canvas, with a sensuality suicide of a painter, but also in the crepuscu- that is not open but allusive. All of his colours lar gloom of the colours with their dull, muted had, however, the intensity of colours bathed in shades. Curious and not devoid of a certain rel- unnatural light in dark, closed places”.8 ish is the contrast between the sombre spirit of The woman at the back of the café in a hat, a this painting and the intentional or involuntary yellow dress and a dark fur displays evident humour introduced into the artist’s figuration by similarities with the small portrait that Badoni his penchant for distortion, sometimes going also painted in 1940, formerly in the collection over the top into caricature”.2 of Enrico Brambilla Pisoni. The tendency towards distortion noted by the R . P.

1. Aligi Sassu, Il grande caffé, 1936-1940. Lugano, 2. James Ensor, Self-Portrait with Masks, 1899, detail. Fondazione Aligi Sassu e Helenita Olivares Komaki City, Aichi, Japan, Menard Art Museum

158 159 4v

3. Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893. Oslo, 4. Giunta Pisano, Crocifisso, 1250–54, detail. Bologna, Nasjonalgalleriet Basilica di San Domenico

160 161 Arnaldo Badodi Il circo

6 Title Il circo [The Circus] humankind in all its variety, a spectrum of emo- going after his toy horse, which has fallen onto Date 1941 tions, colours, feelings and characters common the ground. Nearby, two powerfully-built, threat- Technique oil on canvas and visible to all and sundry. The white Pierrot ening policemen seem to terrify a man in a night Dimensions 55 × 70 cm with a resigned air and not even one tear left shirt who looks like the painter. If artists were bottom left: badodi to shed has thrown his hat into the corner on objectively frightened and distraught about the the right and his young female companion, war, which all too often involved them directly, it “I am not talking today about the circus as a again clad in white with a green mask over her is also true that they could sometimes, through spectacle but about the life, habits, ways, con- eyes, is lost in thought and apparently unaware their works and their sensibility, sit in a corner ventions, and language of the circus folk. If dis- of the confusion reigning in the background. and observe the circus of life from a different an- tant planets launched an investigation to learn Completely impervious to the magic of the spec- gle: “Two seasons in one: corn in the fields and the secrets of the Earth and its inhabitants, to tacle, the spectators are crowded together, all equestrian circuses on the city outskirts. The examine the virtues, privileges and characteris- bald like the Duce and identical. A man in the green clown has ripened to gold in the coun- tics of the Earth and its people and find out in corner on the right, the only one with thick, curly tryside”.2 The work was included in the solo what way they differ from all the other worlds hair, is insulted and ridiculed by a bullying indi- show of 1941 curated by Raffaele De Grada at scattered throughout the universe, I would pres- vidual who grasps him by the throat, as though the Bottega di Corrente in Milan and then at the ent the circus as encapsulating the essence of to suggest that the animals in the Big Top are Galleria Genova.3 our world and its denizens”.1 This is the subject not the exotic elephants or ferocious lions but R . P. that Arnaldo Badodi used, at a time when it was human beings. There is, however, a way out of better to be too old or young for military ser- all this for Badodi, as indicated by the man and vice, to represent what terrified the regimes of woman embracing and kissing passionately 1 M. Gallian, “Circo reale italiano”, in L’interplanetario, Milan, 1 February 1928, p. 1. Hitler, Franco and Mussolini: outcasts and rov- in the crowd despite all the confusion, jostling 2 Renato Birolli, Taccuini (1936-1959), edited by E. ers enabled by their work to tell awkward truths and violence. The painting has numerous layers Emanuelli, Turin: Giulio Einaudi Editore, 1960 p. 56. 3 G. Piovene, in Arnaldo Badodi in una mostra nelle through jokes and laughter, to enjoy melancholy beneath which, upside down, there is another nostre sale, exhibition catalogue (Genoa, Galleria freedom from dictatorial impositions between scene set in a park [FIG. 1]. A man, perhaps a Genova, 29 March − 9 April 1941), Genoa: Galleria somersaults and vulgarities. This painting is a priest, reads a newspaper on a bench while a Genova, 1941. Held only a few days after the one at the Bottega di Corrente, the show was designed grotesque, transparent and living synthesis of worried mother holds her child to stop him from to represent Badodi’s work as a whole.

1. Arnaldo Badodi, Il circo, 1941, X-ray

162 163 Arnaldo Badodi Ragazza

7 Title Ragazza [Young Woman] and solitude of those years, so difficult political- Date 1941 ly but also demanding for his painting, now well Technique oil on canvas on the way to definitive maturity. Marco Falciano Dimensions 39.5 × 55 cm suggests that the underlying melancholy of bottom right: badodi the painting is rooted in the symbolic portraits of Giorgio de Chirico [FIG. 1] and Mario Sironi In his introduction to Arnaldo Badodi’s solo show despite the disappearance of “the emblems of of 1941 at the Galleria Genova, Guido Piovene geometry, the vanishing lines of perspective dis- identified a watershed in the artist’s work: “The tance and the gleam of crepuscular light, and Genoa show falls at this point in Badodi’s art the relinquishing of any claim to metaphysical […] The guiding model of Novecento themes detachment”.5 Initially presented in the show has almost completely disappeared. Badodi’s held at the Bottega di Corrente in Milan and then art develops in the total freedom required for at the Galleria Genova in 1941, the work also ap- such a full and generous rejection of beautiful peared more recently in Milan in an exhibition form”.1 Having abandoned “the jaded carnivals, on Milanese portraiture of the thirties curated by the closed rooms where furniture, clothes and Elena Pontiggia in 2010. even human figures take on an ambiguous, R . P. questioning appearance, the masks, puppets and circus clowns”,2 his work is divided between a broad gallery of female portraits and a 1 G. Piovene, in Arnaldo Badodi in una mostra nelle nostre sale, exhibition catalogue (Genoa, series of still-lifes with arabesque lines. Galleria Genova, 29 March − 9 April 1941), Genoa: The female portraits, most of which feature a Galleria Genova, 1941. The show took place a few days after the one at the Bottega di Corrente and model called Anita, are characterized by melan- was designed to present Badodi’s work as a whole, choly, faraway expressions.3 In this painting of from the self-portrait of 1934 to this Ragazza. 2 Ibidem. 1941, the young woman has stopped reading, 3 Interest also attaches in this connection to some struck by thoughts that she seems reluctant to drawings whose terse, agitated lines accentuate reveal, as suggested by the way she avoids di- the sense of melancholy expressed by the female faces. See for example the reproductions rect eye contact with the viewer. Badodi displays in M. Falciano, Arnaldo Badodi e “Corrente”, far more gentleness here than in other portraits Rome: El Ma, 1995, pp. 245−46 and 248−49. 4 4 See for example his Ritratto di Anita, in Ibidem, of the same period, almost as though seeking p. 200. to express through her eyes his own anxieties 5 Ibidem, pp. 339−40.

1. Giorgio de Chirico, Due figure mitologiche (Nus antiques - Composizione mitologica), 1927. Rovereto, Mart, Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, L.F. collection

164 165 Arnaldo Badodi Soprabito su divano

8 Title Soprabito su divano vital instincts and that pervades his vision like [Overcoat on a Sofa] a diffuse and elusive state of angst”.1 Badodi Date 1941 paints a part of himself, the part bound up with Technique oil on canvas his soul, his constant feeling of disquiet in a Dimensions 60 × 70 cm world that was soon to send him to the front, a bottom right: badodi 41 spirit caught in a spider’s web represented by the gloves on the floor, the last bulwark against A curious explorer of the female world, Arnaldo barbarity, and the empty overcoat. This recalls Badodi was fascinated the atmosphere con- a more recent work by the young Italian artist jured up by needles, thread, fabrics and col- Francesco Gennari entitled Il corpo torna alla ours, which reminded him of the tailor’s shop terra, l’anima torna al cielo (con una macchia where his mother Gardenia worked. It was with d’amarena nel cuore) [The Body Returns to the this world in mind that he produced Soprabito Earth, the Soul Returns to the Heavens (with a su divano, where a small interior structurally Sour Cherry Stain on its Heart)] [FIG. 3] (2011), defined only by a sofa and a little red book- which seeks to look at humankind and its des- case full of books conveys the impression of a tiny: “[...] He knew that his body wanted to re- setting rich in emotions, not least through the turn to the earth and evaporate there through use of bold colours and terse brushstrokes. entropy, that his soul wanted to return to the As also happens in Ragazza in riposo [Young heavens. He knew that only his skeleton would Woman Resting] [FIG. 2], Badodi’s magical and remain, only the apparition. And yet he decided melancholy animism enables him to tell stories to undertake this journey with a stain of sour without making any concrete statements, just cherry syrup in his heart”.2 Badodi’s work was hints of possible readings. As in Van Gogh’s shown in 1939 at the first exhibition organized Bedroom in Arles [FIG. 1], we can thus imagine by the journal Corrente di vita giovanile (Milan, our own interior. Worn out after a day’s work Palazzo della Permanente) and then in the exhi- in the drabness of the city, without even taking bition of the Corrente group held in 1963 at the off his overcoat, which is divided in two by a Centro Culturale Olivetti in Ivrea, which then bright blue scarf, a man lies down on a cosy launched a number of major initiatives aimed sofa, leaving his black hat in the corner and primarily at Olivetti personnel and their families his gloves on the floor, and rests his head on in that period. The events were sometimes held a green cushion. He tries to read an art book during the workers’ lunch break, which then before falling into the arms of Morpheus but is lasted a couple of hours, near the factory (in unable to keep his eyes open and drifts off to the Salone dei 2000) or in the canteen to fos- sleep. There is a clash between the bold, bright ter greater participation. The workers thus had colours and the unquiet, problematic, sensitive the opportunity to visit shows by contemporary content. What emerges in this painting is the avant-garde artists like Arnaldo Badodi. “intimate turmoil of personal history and cul- R . P. tural epoch into which the heterogeneous suggestions of the culture of the time flow in the adventurous aspiration to penetrate and con- 1 M. Falciano, Arnaldo Badodi e “Corrente”, Rome: dense them, coordinating them with his own El Ma, 1995, p. 75. 2 Francesco Gennari, quotation taken from the natural faculties. A turmoil that manifests itself website of the Johnen Galerie, where the artist held as psychic disturbance deeply immersed in the a show from 28 October 2011 to 23 February 2012.

1. Vincent van Gogh, Bedroom in Arles, 1888. 2. Arnaldo Badodi, Ragazza in riposo, 1941. Private 3. Francesco Gennari, Il corpo torna alla terra, l’anima Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum collection torna al cielo (con una macchia d’amarena nel cuore), 2011. Milan, Collezione Giuseppe Iannaccone

166 167 Renato Birolli L’Arlecchino

9 Title L’Arlecchino [Harlequin] the painting of Carrà, Sironi and Tosi, Birolli

Date 1931 was not convinced that art should annihilate 1 Edoardo Persico (Naples, 8 February 1900 − Milan, Technique oil on canvas life rather than recount it. “He is fully aware of 10 January 1936), an art critic and writer who played Dimensions 84 × 56 cm the question of the crisis of roles, the possibility a key part in the Corrente movement. 2 Renato Birolli, Taccuini (1936-1959), edited by bottom left: R. Birolli 31 of motivating choices and decisions of cultural E. Emanuelli, Turin: Giulio Einaudi Editore, 1960, definition”.4 The canvas of the servant Harlequin p. 157. 3 R. Birolli, “Il dramma”, in Taccuini 1930-1933, Born in Verona in 1905 and trained as a book- now appears ready from top to bottom: a youth partially republished by G. Baratta in Yale Italian keeper, Renato Birolli decided at the age of 23, with hair so blond as to be almost white, two Studies, vol. I, 1980. on being expelled from the Accademia d’Arte dots of cobalt blue from the eyes and a mel- 4 Z. Birolli, Renato Birolli, general catalogue with foreword by Z. Birolli, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1978, p. 11. Cignaroli, to leave his hometown definitive- ancholy twist of the coral-red mouth to recall 5 R. Birolli, “Scritti di Renato Birolli”, in Collana d’arte, ly for Milan, where he stayed with his sister at the painter’s pensive expression. A Harlequin edited by Duilio Morosini, Edizioni di Corrente, directed by Ernesto Treccani, copy no. 450, Milan, number 47 Corso di Porta Vittoria. It was by without the traditional black mask, without any- March 1941, p. 59. no means easy for the young painter at first to thing covering his face, as though Birolli wanted 6 The artist also added numerous brushstrokes to the adapt to occasional and poorly paid work as an to show us the man beneath the comic figure, part of the canvas he initially wanted to show but not to the part with the legs and the fish, which can insurance salesman, press agency reporter and the melancholy behind the laughter, and hence still be seen in their initial sketch-like state. decorator. Through a whole range of cultural to disturb and perplex us. The large bunch of 7 Gerardo Dotttori (Perugia, 11 November 1884 − 13 June 1977), Italian Futurist painter. attractions, including exhibitions at the Palazzo flowers does of course clash somewhat with 8 G. Dottori, “Pittura alla Galleria di Roma”, della Permanente and shows at galleries like the slender figure of the clown, who is evident- in L’Impero, 21 May 1932. the Milano and Bardi, the city soon helped him, ly struggling awkwardly to hold that triumph of however, to play an active part in its avant-gar- thick brushstrokes, which appear eager to leave de circles. Birolli took it to heart when the critic the canvas. “We often find a yellow or deep blue Edoardo Persico1 called for “worker artists” to on his brush and feel that there is no mediation rise above the “low commercial” and “profes- between those colours and our temptation. Do sional” aims of the contemporary cultural envi- we check whether they contain an irremediable ronment, people with a “humble” but “rigorous” form among so many remedies of indolent ex- attitude “whose life is something serious and pertise? (Ensor’s ‘masks’ are born like that. All ethically motivated”. It was precisely Persico’s the others, including mine, are literature or ob- views that led Birolli to take a significant step jects) […] Every question that is not completely forward in 1930−31, a sort of revolution above resolved thus prepares another problem for art all in the use of colours, which no one else in (the theatre of unresolved Shakespeareans)”.5 Milan had yet adopted. As he recalled in his Taking up the poetic lines of Matisse, Birolli de- notebooks of 1936: “Around 1929−30−31 I cided to depart definitively from the painting of started covering what was called medieval his Milanese colleagues in pursuit of a highly canvas (pure hemp) with a thin layer of zinc personal vision which led him to paint beautiful white, leaving the marks in charcoal exposed. arabesques in the background. The two-dimen- While the white was still moist, I painted on this sionality of Harlequin, like a piece of thin, wavy layer, thus obtaining light, vibrant hues almost material stuck on the wall like as collage on the like fresco. [XVIII, 20]”.2 Thus it was that he pro- wall, enabled him to make room for pure colour. duced this Trionfo dell’Arlecchino, first shown Everything is richly adorned in pastel shades: in 1932 in the group exhibition at the Galleria the clothing, the flowers of course, the rug, the del Milione in Milan. The inspiration, almost plant in the background and the wall decora- certainly come from the Harlequin by Cézanne tions. Having second thoughts before delivering [FIG. 2], the father of the avant-garde, served him the work, Birolli folded the canvas and placed 1. Renato Birolli, Arlecchino, 1931. Milan, to present a figure enabled by his profession to it in a smaller frame,6 thus concealing the fish L. Figini collection tell awkward truths free from dictatorial imposi- on the right, which recall the decorations in the tions. “Perhaps the most humble, the most re- early Christian catacombs, as well as the signa- mote, the least worthy of mention in any history ture and date in the lower left corner. The work of civilization, but with a drama in your art, i.e. ex- was not well received in the press, however, and pressing content in perfectly appropriate form, Gerardo Dottori7 accused Birolli of “ridiculous as asserted by Carlo Carrà, referring implicitly to disguises as a primitive, with the infantile grace the modern artist’s need for human expression, of painters from the catacombs or elementary for drama. But when people are not faced with school pupils […] Seeking a new virginity, Birolli a Goethe, a Bellini or a Masaccio, they will not strives for poor, laboured, shaky draughtsman- understand what and how great the drama of a ship, filling his puppets with maudlin tints”.8 modern artist can be, not even if it is identified What others said mattered little to the artist, as in that of Christianity”.3 Though convinced that the revolution of colour was now under way. there would have been no artistic rebirth without R . P.

2. Paul Cézanne, Harlequin, 1888–1890. Private collection

168 169 Renato Birolli Periferia (Grottammare)

10 Title Periferia (Grottammare) this?! As flat as colonial landscapes with their [Outskirts (Grottammare)] huge squares and disproportionate outlets Date 1932 yearning for the countryside. All sky and dis- Technique oil on canvas harmony. All countryside in the evening and all Dimensions 54 × 53 cm children”.2 The empirical view, which makes the bottom left: R. Birolli 932 work all-enveloping, is depicted in the hottest hours of the day, when the unbearable heat In a conversation with the collector Giuseppe reigns in these deserted squares, where the Iannaccone, the artist Aligi Sassu recognized sunlight beats down on every surface with such this work as a view of an attractive seaside power as to create bright and almost dazzling town in the Marche region where Renato Birolli colours that are extremely vibrant. Enveloped used to stay in the period 1930−32 with friends in an atmosphere of dazed lucidity, Birolli cap- like Sassu himself, Fiorenzo Tomea, Atanasio tures the power of the sun, which practically Soldati and Pericle Fazzini. nothing can withstand. Every wall and street “For the landscape, I will see that of the takes on a yellow hue while the palms of vig- Apennines and the coast from dawn until arrival. orous green are interrupted only by a shrine as I hope you will have arranged a room for them, blue as the sea. cheap but not filthy and full of lice […] But try The immobility of the composition, contrasting to fix things so that I don’t have to depend too with the brightness of the colour, is indicative much on the staff, because I’m already much of tranquillity and serenity with respect to the too inclined to be friendly towards them with no absence of human beings. The artist shows us prejudices. What’s that one like? A bit of a pen- that there can be infinite beauty without the hu- guin, isn’t he? In short, I want freedom of action, man presence in what he calls “active solitude”, not dependency! […] I’ve decided to bring the which “is and has always been nothing other ‘monumental’ easel and three stretchers I made than love. Yes, love for an albeit modest spiritual myself. If they don’t want them on the train, I’ll condition, a desire for utility, and optimism that throw them out into the fields or smash them on makes us true children of nature”.3 the guard’s head, no disrespect to officialdom R . P. intended. I’ll be armed to the teeth with the tools of the trade. I’ll frighten you. I’ll swan around in an impeccable seaside suit, speak English and 1 Renato Birolli, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Archivio paint imperturbably with the air of a great man di Scuola Romana, October−November 1997), texts by Z. Birolli, G. Bruno, P. Rusconi, Archivio who known his onions until Tomea comes up, di Scuola Romana, Rome, 1997, pp. 51−52. unmasks me as an Italian from Verona and tells The original manuscripts of Renato Birolli are me to knock it off in Venetian dialect. We’ll laugh now in the Gabinetto Scientifico Letterario G.P. Vieusseux, Florence. but we’ll make the penguins weep”.1 2 Ibidem. It was his passionate spirit that led him to com- 3 R.Birolli, “La solitudine attiva”, 1952 (unpublished); now in Z. Birolli, R. Sambonet (edited by), Birolli, pose this view: “[…] Who will say enough of Milan: Feltrinelli, 1978, p. 94.

1. Period postcard with a view of the church and Piazza 2. Renato Birolli, [Grottammare], 1932. Milan San Pio in Grottammare (Marche region)

170 171 Renato Birolli Tassì rosso

11 Title Tassì rosso [Red Taxi] with coloured spaces, almost placing the ex- They found practically nothing to hold onto in the ideas of the thirty-year-old painters.” Ibidem, Date 1932 treme, piercing properties of a colour in the pp. 17−18. See also the catalogue of the recent Technique oil on canvas position of a symbol. Having abolished all ra- exhibition curated by Elena Pontiggia at which Dimensions 58 × 60 cm tionality in construction, we [Birolli and Sassu] the painting was shown: E. Pontiggia (edited by), Il Chiarismo. Omaggio a De Rocchi. Luce e colore bottom right: 32 R. Birolli endeavoured, almost at the very limits of our re- a Milano negli anni trenta, exhibition catalogue sponsibility as painters, to develop a new vision (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 16 June − 5 September In 1932, the year he painted Tassì rosso, Renato of the world in a procedure and with different 2010), Milan: Skira, 2010. See also E. Pontiggia, V. Birolli (edited by), Renato Birolli. Figure e luoghi, 5 Birolli was very close to Edoardo Persico means”. Comparison with the urban views of exhibition catalogue (Turin, Museo Ettore Fico, and oriented towards the primitivism and the Mario Sironi [FIG. 2, P. 174], based on the juxta- 9 March − 26 June 2016), Turin: Edizioni Museo naïveté with a religious background advocated position of volumetric masses, reveals all the Ettore Fico, 2016 (the painting was shown at the exhibition). by the Neapolitan critic in the wake of Lionello freshness of Birolli’s aesthetic revolution: “The 3 E. Pontiggia, in E. Pontiggia, N. Colombo (edited Venturi’s Gusto dei primitivi.1 Though akin to space is constructed on an upward slope with by), Milano Anni Trenta, L’arte e la città, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Spazio Oberdan, 2 December Chiarismo in his flattening of volume, frontal no classical perspective, through juxtaposed 2004 − 27 February 2005), Milan: Mazzotta, 2004, views and use of a wet, white ground, Birolli surfaces. The red inlay of the taxi, the strip of p. 122. was “neither a Chiarista nor from Lombardy”.2 pavement skirting the wall like a necklace of 4 Renato Birolli, Taccuini 1936–1959, edited by E. Emanuelli, Einaudi, Turin, 1960, p. 30. The “diffuse whiteness” of this and other co- pink quartz, the buildings with no foreshorten- 5 R. Birolli, then in G. Marchiori, Z. Birolli, F. Bruno eval paintings is more probably related to the ing […] The buildings are seen only from the (edited by), Renato Birolli, exhibition catalogue Ravenna mosaics, which he had gone to see a front, like the backdrop in a theatre”.6 (Verona, Palazzo della Gran Guardia, July−August 1963), Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1963, p. 9. 3 few years earlier and wrote about in his note- There are three different versions of Tassì rosso 6 E. Pontiggia, in Milano Anni Trenta..., cit., 2004. books: “San Vitale, Sant’Apollinare Nuovo and [FIGS. 1-3],7 all dating from the same year and most 7 See Z. Birolli, R. Sambonet (edited by), Renato Sant’Apollinare in Classe had the property of probably painted after the major group exhibi- Birolli, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1978, p. 188, illustrations 47, 48 and 50. being both container and content. I partook tion held at the Galleria del Milione in February 8 E. Pontiggia, in Milano Anni Trenta..., cit., 2004. of their concavity as much as they converged 1932, where none of them was shown.8 This ver- Birolli took part on this occasion together with in me. Beneath that green wave studded with sion, which Birolli gave to his sister Maria, was Aligi Sassu, Corrado Cagli, Gianni Cortese, Luigi Grosso, Fiorenzo Tomea and Giacomo Manzù. rubies as big as apples, I glimpsed a geomet- not published until 1960, when it was shown at Carlo Carrà wrote as follows in his review of this ric expression: green + green + gold = white. the Galleria Gian Ferrari in an exhibition of work show of “very young” painters: “Birolli is rather an This was the spiritual result, the immaculacy of by the Corrente group.9 expressionist of colour veined with Fauvism, which means that he seeks to offer us painting forged in 4 that Byzantium on the Adriatic”. The artist’s or- R . P. the fire of the imagination”. C. Carrà, “Esposizioni igins in the Veneto region emerge in his choice milanesi”, in L’Ambrosiano, y. XI, no. 35, Milan, 10 of colours full of a light that involves the entire February 1932, pp. 3−4. See also R. G. [Raffaello Giolli], “Esposizioni milanesi”, in Cronache latine, surface. The taxi in the foreground stands out 1 The first edition was published in 1926 in Turin, y. II, no. 7, Milan, 13 February 1932, p. 6; G. P., with its red bodywork in this panorama of unreal where Venturi held the chair in art history and “Mostre milanesi”, in Le Arti plastiche, y. X, no. 4, Milan, 16 February 1932, p. 2. chromatic tonalities, where the streets are yel- Persico was resident as from the beginning of 1927. 2 Elena Pontiggia, in Il chiarismo, Milan: Abscondita, 9 Mostra storica di “Corrente”, the first in a long series low and the pavement pink. Colour constructs 2006, pp. 66−99. Persico had already noted the of Milanese exhibitions paying tribute to the Corrente the image with no shadow, volume or depth, distance of Birolli and Sassu from the painters who movement, which was abandoned in the immediate then gathered at the Caffè Mokador in Milan (later post-war period by most of the critics and most of with a purely allusive, symbolic, lyrical function: known as Chiaristi): “In the Mokador, these two the figures involved. See Belvedere, Bollettino della “I tried to grasp a new process of construction young men always looked like fish out of water. Galleria Gian Ferrari, no. 5, Milan, 1960.

1. Renato Birolli, Taxi rosso nella neve, 1931. 2. Renato Birolli, Il taxi rosso, 1932. Alessandria, 3. Renato Birolli, Taxi rosso, 1932. Milan Private collection A. Ghiron collection

172 173 Renato Birolli La città degli studi

12 Title La città degli studi [Città degli pink and the trees the cobalt green of Veronese, Studi, the Milan Universiy District] soaring in the middle of the street like ballerinas. Date 1933 The blue streets are made up of lines that seem Technique oil on canvas to drift like coloured souls in the wind, the in- Dimensions 67.5 × 84.5 cm significant grey lampposts are transformed into bottom right: R. Birolli 1933 streaks of Titian red and the building of Cézanne orange and emerald in the background of the “Just think, if Milano Centrale were covered in scene seems to float in a cobalt blue sky broken plants, like a roof garden, Milanese aesthetes only by a full moon rising over the block known would no longer regard the stone beneath as a as the Kremlin. “Renato Birolli was attracted rath- debt to be paid to posterity but as an element of er by the mechanical, technological appearance the above-mentioned nature, a hill with no other of the building, by the picturesque image of this attributes than that of a woodland train station. It curious architectural pastiche in the popular im- is the history of human presumption that bestows agination as the symbol of an unreal modernity. an excess of content-based attributes on stone”.1 The edifice continued to represent suburbia as a This thinking underlies Renato Birolli’s depiction whole for Birolli also in the years when his work in 1933 of a corner of the Città degli Studi district changed direction”.4 “And if Birolli’s depiction with a building on Via Colombo in a bold contrast of the Milanese suburbs presents, as has been of yellows, reds and blues. His urban views differ said, a hypo-cultural scene, stripped of citations, from those of Sironi: “Here the buildings are not symbols and allegories, as against the hyper-cul- metaphysical and never too distant from man, or tural scene of De Chirico, there are, as the artist perhaps too close to him. [Sironi] walks sadly stated, obscure presentiments hovering in that through these streets, elsewhere decked out in countermelody to Metaphysical art”.5 As Birolli flowers on a Sunday. Yes, you can at least have wrote, cities are the libraries of the world and your own Sunday, your own holiday, the silence sometimes its uniform. of a day that redeems the entire city as well of R . P. the soul from the drab, purple weight of the six days preceding it. The miracle of the Impression- ists is their invention of seven Sundays, seven 1 R. Birolli, “Scritti di Renato Birolli”, in Collana d’arte, holidays, a week. Art is the enemy of social prob- edited by Duilio Morosini, Edizioni di Corrente, lems, making them all look beautiful (it is not by directed by Ernesto Treccani, copy no. 450, chance that people love it so much)”.2 Mixing Milan, March 1941, p. 33. 2 Ibidem, p. 37. imagination and the new architecture of Gigiotti 3 Firenze, Gabinetto Scientifico Letterario G. P. Zanini with his idea of economical housing, like Vieusseux, Archivio contemporaneo Alessandro Bonsanti, Fondo R. e R. Birolli, now in Una the building at number 52 Via Pellegrino Rossi realtà visionaria. La pittura di Birolli dagli esordi in Milan with its façade of geometric expanses all’amorfismo (1924-1937), in E. Pontiggia, of red, yellow, white and grey, Birolli creates his V. Birolli (edited by), Renato Birolli. Figure e luoghi 1930-1959, exhibition catalogue (Turin, Museo own Sunday. He wrote to Tomea in May that he Ettore Fico, 9 March – 26 June 2016), Turin: had just finished a landscape of the university Edizioni Museo Ettore Fico, 2016, p. 31. 4 P. Rusconi, Eldorado, Dossier n. 3, Milan: Skira district, “the best achieved so far, I think”, and editore, 2000, p. 10. received this reply: “Like me, you know the 5 S. Troisi (edited by), Mediterraneo. Mitologie della figura nell’arte italiana tra le due guerre, exhibition sweet suburbia of Milan, surprising, chaste, new catalogue (Marsala, Convento del Carmine, 13 July and simple”.3 In his works, the pavements are − 5 October 2008), Palermo: Sellerio, 2008.

1. Period postcard with a view of Piazza Leonardo 2. Mario Sironi, Paesaggio urbano, 1925–28. Milan, da Vinci in the Città Studi district of Milan Museo del Novecento

174 175 Renato Birolli La nuova Ecumene

13 Title La nuova Ecumene number of traditional examples close to hand make it possible to identify the Nuova Ecumene [The New Ecumene] precisely in Rome. We will judge Bonichi better as the “vision of Ezekiel in a suburban land- Date 1935 at his next show and confine ourselves here to scape” mentioned by the artist in a letter to Technique oil on canvas noting that the painting, for all the discussion Giuseppe Marchiori in January 1935.6 The work Dimensions: 136 × 155.5 cm it may prompt, is among those looked at most was shown as Visione di Ezechiele [Vision of bottom right: B. 1935 eagerly”.4 Ezekiel] in the summer of that year in an exhibi- Birolli was so impressed by the work as to ab- tion of work by young contemporary Italian and Ecumene was the word used in ancient Greece, sorb it fully, which he did precisely in the central French painters in London7 and as Nuova ecu- with a sense of shared belonging, for the whole figure of the Nuova Ecumene. The cardinal los- menica the following year in the VII Mostra del of the inhabited world as against the uninhab- es the magnificence of reverent religious feel- Sindacato Interprovinciale Fascista di Belle Arti ited. The group in Birolli’s La nuova Ecumene ing, however. He is devoid of Christian symbols [7th Exhibition of the Fascist Union of Fine Arts] is gathered in a timeless, surreal, sun-drenched and his tiara lies on the ground. He is a secular at the Palazzo della Permanente in Milan. It was landscape that does, however, include some ref- cardinal and some of his features seem to republished for the first time with its present title erences to places that then formed part of the call those of Lionello Venturi, the critic who first in the first monograph on the artist by Sandro artist’s everyday experience, such as the distant inspired Birolli with his words on Giorgione, Bini in 1941.8 green domes recalling those of the Ronzoni focused attention on the modern revolution R . P. chemical works on the outskirts of Milan. For of colour, kept abreast of developments in Renato Birolli, La nuova Ecumene represents Europe and recognized the expressive power of “the land of the new painting, in which a broth- Scipione’s painting. 1 E. Pontiggia, in E. Pontiggia, N. Colombo (edited erhood of young artists united by a common This canvas of considerable size constitutes an by), Milano Anni Trenta. L’arte e la città, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Spazio Oberdan, 2 December 2004 1 poetic and expressive ideal is born”. The young assertion of Birolli’s programmatic intentions – 27 February 2005), Milan: Mazzotta, 2004, p. 122. figure standing with a book by Pascal in his and marks a definitive turning point in his paint- 2 Letter from Renato Birolli to Giuseppe Marchiori, now in D. Morosini, “Birolli: liberare e redimere”, hands can be recognized as the artist by his ing. The power of his new approach now rests in L’arte degli anni difficili (1928-1944), Rome: unquestionable resemblance to the self-portrait exclusively on the bright, fiery colours that set Editori Riuniti, 1985, pp. 131–32. [FIG. 1] of 1934: “I read Campanella, and when I the composition ablaze in the Nuova Ecumene: 3 L. Venturi, Giorgione e il giorgionismo, Milan: Hoepli, 1913. really cannot face any more cold morality, I read “I believe in romanticism with no prefix, using 4 L. Venturi, “Recensioni”, in Belvedere, no. 5-6, Pascal and other sublime visionaries who saw colour to give my vision the power of cantus May–June, Milan, 1930. 2 5 L. Vitali, “Dove va l’arte italiana”, in Domus, n. 108, the universe struck by a multiplicity of graces”. firmus and regarding all the other schools as Milan, 1936, pp. 54–55. The figure on the painter’s left can be identified non-fantastic and metaphorical. I therefore be- 6 Letter from Renato Birolli to Giuseppe Marchiori almost certainly as his close friend Sassu, while lieve in Delacroix as against Ingres, Renoir as dated 22 January 1935, now in F. Bartoli, “L’età felice e il primo viaggio a Parigi”, in F. Lanza the two figures on the far right of the painting, against Puvis de Chavannes, Rosso as against Pietromarchi (edited by), Renato Birolli 1935, immersed in nature and a timeless atmosphere the Italian sculpture of his time, Picasso as exhibition catalogue (Verona, Galleria dello Scudo, 18 October – 23 November 1996), Verona: Galleria of contemplation, are almost certainly Manzù against abstract art and Martini as against him- dello Scudo, 1996, pp. 109–10. and Tomea. Observation of these two young fig- self. I am not referring to any form of romanti- 7 The Franco-Italian Exhibition was held at the ures brings to mind Giorgione’s Tempest, a re- cism in the historical sense. The question is not Wertheim Gallery in July 1935. The other artists included Mario Mafai, Carlo Levi, Corrado Cagli, 5 production of which hung on the wall of Birolli’s historical but aesthetic”. Francesco Menzio, Aligi Sassu, Cipriano Efisio studio. The artist’s drawing in ink on photo- The similarities with the incandescent col- Oppo, Fausto Pirandello, Alberto Ziveri, Fiorenzo Tomea, Giorgio Morandi and Afro. [W. NO. 14] graphs of the male figure with the staff on the ours of the sky in I poeti [The Poets] , 8 F. Lanza Pietromarchi (edited by), Renato Birolli left side and the hair of the woman and the bush which was completed in the same period, 1935, cit., 1996. on the right was clearly prompted by reflection on what Lionello Venturi wrote about this painting: “For the first time in Italian art, the figures do not escape their setting, as they are pictured by an imagination intent on the impression of a landscape. In short, this is no longer a painting of figures in a landscape but a landscape with figures […] The shepherd, gipsy, soldier or whatever he might be — his staff does not have a pointed end and he is therefore hardly military in appearance — leans on his staff […] He gazes straight ahead unseeingly and his long hair accentuates his dreamy character”.3 As regards the figure constituting the fulcrum of the work, a historical reconstruction suggests that it originated in 1930 at the Venice Biennial, where Birolli was present by invitation for the first time with two works. There he had the opportunity to see the only work on show by Scipione, the Cardinal Decano [Dean of the College of Cardinals] [FIG. 2], which almost certainly saw again during his trip to Rome two years later. In addition to its extraordinary expressive quality, what intrigued him about it was the Roman artist’s ability to blend ancient and modern, not in the sense of a return to tradition, however, but as an act of renewal. As his friend the critic Lionello Venturi wrote: “There could be 1. Renato Birolli, Self-Portrait, 1934. Milan, 2. Scipione, Ritratto del cardinal Vannutelli no more perilous leap into the unknown than private collection (il Cardinal Decano), 1930. Rome, Galleria Comunale this portrait of Cardinal Vannutelli, given the d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea

176 177 Renato Birolli I poeti

14 Title I poeti [The Poets] would meet in Birolli’s studio on Piazzale Susa Date 1935 to talk freely about the need for an aesthetic re- 1 E. Pontiggia, in Artisti di Corrente 1930/1990, Technique oil on canvas newal not confined to formal questions but also exhibition catalogue (Busto Arsizio, Museo Dimensions 90 × 108 cm possessing an ethical basis. The painter was delle Arti di Palazzo Bandera, 16 November 1991 − 1 March 1992), Milan: Vangelista, 1991, p. 9. bottom left: R. Birolli 935 very close at the time to Salvatore Quasimodo 2 R. Birolli, in Various Authors, Pittura d’oggi and the Hermetic poets, who “changed my way (Collezione del Vieusseux), Florence: Vallecchi, 1954, pp. 23−46. After the Chiarismo of his early works, Renato of dreaming reality. A word that seemed to burn 3 Letter from Renato Birolli to Aligi Sassu dated Birolli brought “Lombardy back to colour”1 as at some point in a verse suggested an infinity 18 January 1935; now in F. Lanza Pietromarchi (edited by), Renato Birolli 1935, exhibition from 1934, finding new masters in Van Gogh of values of a coloured space, almost a prolon- catalogue (Verona, Galleria dello Scudo, and Ensor to attain a chromatic vibration of gation of the life of a colour”.6 The four figures 18 October − 23 November 1996), Verona: evocative and lyrical character. As he himself are in any case deliberately unrecognizable, Galleria dello Scudo, 1996, pp. 126−27. 4 E. Pontiggia, Artisti..., cit., 1991. stated, this choice “was romantic, regarding being intended to represent the condition of in- 5 M. De Micheli, “L’arte d’opposizione e d’impegno Europe as a temptation for modern man, some- tellectuals in their essential role of transforming politico e sociale in Europa dall’inizio del 1900 alla 2 7 fine della seconda guerra mondiale”, in F. Russoli thing advanced and truly progressive”. “the vision of reality into myth”. The one seated (edited by), L’arte moderna, 14 vols., Milan: Fabbri, As he wrote to his friend Aligi Sassu in January figure can be seen as a citation of Manet’s Le 1967. 1935: “I have finished the painting of the Poets, Déjeuner sur l’herbe [FIG. 1] or a river god from 6 R. Birolli, lecture delivered at the Gabinetto Scientifico Letterario G. P. Vieusseux, Florence, which you saw sketched in tempera. It is drawn an engraving of Marcantonio Raimondi after a in 1954; now in Renato Birolli 1935, cit., 1996, p. 58. with violence but also love. I have obtained four drawing by Raphael [FIG. 2], works that Birolli was 7 E. Pontiggia, Artisti..., cit., 1991. 8 F. Bartoli, “L’età felice e il primo viaggio a Parigi”, fundamental blacks and the entire landscape is able to study closely in reproductions provided in Renato Birolli 1935, cit., 1996, pp. 30−38. overwhelming. The steel is tempered, all that by “a privileged intermediary”, namely Lionello 9 Birolli showed three works: I poeti, Paesaggio remains is to disembowel the riff-raff”.3 Birolli Venturi.8 mistico and Visione di Ezechiele. 10 See C. L. Ragghianti (edited by), Arte Moderna expresses his joy at having found that effective The work was selected in the February of the in Italia, 1915-1935, exhibition catalogue contrast between the intense black of the figures’ same year for inclusion in the Exhibition of (Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, 26 February − 28 May 1967), Florence: Marchi e Bertolli, 1967. suits and the incandescent light of sunset after Contemporary Italian Painting organized by 11 E. Pontiggia, A. Paglione (edited by), Sassu e striving for so long. The two chromatic areas are Dario Sabatello to make the latest develop- Corrente 1930-1943. La Rivoluzione del colore, horizontally divided by a strip of emerald green ments in Italian art known across the Atlantic. exhibition catalogue (Chieti, Palazzo de’ Mayo - S.E.T. Spazio Esposizioni Temporanee, 25 July on which a few timid trees “à la Dufy”4 grow, It was also shown in 1967, in an exhibition of − 7 October 2012), Turin: Allemandi, 2012. accentuating the visionary quality of this subur- Italian art the following summer at the Wertheim 12 E. Pontiggia, V. Birolli (edited by), Renato Birolli. Figure e luoghi, exhibition catalogue (Turin, 9 ban landscape. On the bank of an incandescent Gallery on London and then in the exhibition Museo Ettore Fico, 9 March 2016 − 26 June 2016), river, in which the yellow of the setting sun is Arte moderna in Italia 1915−1935 in Florence Turin: Edizioni Museo Ettore Fico, 2016. vigorously reflected, are four smartly-dressed curated by Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti.10 I po- young men, gathered together as the “young eti has appeared in two exhibitions curated by antifascist intellectuals” did at the time accord- Elena Pontiggia, one in Chieti in 201211 and the ing to Mario De Micheli.5 In actual fact, the title other in Turin in 2016.12 seems rather to recall how artists and writers R . P.

1. Édouard Manet, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, 1862–63, 2. Marcantonio Raimondi, after a drawing by Raphael, detail. Paris, Musée d’Orsay Giudizio di Paride, 1515-1516, detail. Menaggio, Villa Mylius-Vigoni

178 179 Renato Birolli Il caos

15 Title Il caos [Chaos] condition in which I found myself and mani-

Date 1936 fested in this way. This climate does not remain 1 R. Birolli, Metamorfosi. 46 disegni, introduction Technique oil on canvas closed, defined and buried in the painting but by S. Bini, Milan: Campografico, 1937. Dimensions 110 × 90 cm expands to signify a vaster, external condition, 2 Sedici Taccuini di Renato Birolli. Con dieci disegni e una nota di Umbro Apollonio, Genoa: Posizione, bottom left: R. Birolli ’36 far more connected with the world than any real- 1943: now in Renato Birolli, Taccuini 1936-1959, istic reference would be”.3 edited by E. Emanuelli, Turin: Einaudi, 1960, p. 21. 3 C. Maltese, “Cultura e realtà nella pittura di Birolli”, For Renato Birolli, 1936 was a year of intense ex- Birolli gave the work in 1938 to the critic Sandro in Commentari, y. I, no. 1, Le Monnier, Florence, perimentation and reflection on his work leading Bini, who wrote to him as follows: “Dear Renato, January 1950, pp. 43−49. from Il caos to the Metamorfosi drawings.1 The since you gave me Caos, I no longer know 4 Bini continued: “I liked to think, for your happiness and painting, that I must be forgotten. But perhaps first references to the painting appeared in his where friendship should begin”.4 I am excluding myself for these six pages of notebooks in the spring of 1936: “My painting Another version of the painting, dated 1937 [FIG. 1], yours as not only a pretext for the call of Milan and friends, for which you only return and write is like a seed at first, amorphous with respect to was bought four years later by the collectors to yourself. I have begun the Mantegna and the future plant. A painting at its birth is a heap Boschi and Di Stefano together with other works am gradually organizing the Van Gogh. His of dense, uncorrupted forces of great specific by the artist, some for “a bowl of lentils”, as he effectiveness will remain beneath it all, as subtle as our sorrow. Thank Marchiori for me. I’ll write to him weight, hard to spread out in a space that does bitterly put it.5 The list of the works shown in soon. I’m still waiting for a reply from Giacomo. I’ll not cripple their initial strength. I would say that 1938 at the Galleria Genova includes one on start the campaign on 1 August, perhaps with him. Meanwhile, I’m delighted with Il caos. As you see, the work has no figurative aim at first, the imagi- the same subject, whose title Caos (3a scena) the discourse begins and ends with painting. The nation as yet makes no efforts of logic. This may [Chaos (3rd scene)] suggests the existence of geometric capacity of our friendship is understood in the extreme negative. And since everything falls have led me to some representations of chaos a third version of unknown whereabouts, which within the harmony of our existence, Il caos again and other paintings of 1936”.2 may even have been destroyed subsequently by tested an extreme of our intelligence and flair for In the tangle of lines that crowd the composi- the artist himself.6 It was this first version that painting. The yellows of Van Gogh are full, hard and glowing with alchemical clarity; the dismay remains tion, some human figures can be discerned was published the same year in an article in Il in our inability to project ourselves beyond human seeking in vain to scale a wall of rock and plum- Tevere as an example of “foreign, Bolshevik, sense.” G. M. Erbesato (edited by), Carteggio Bini- 7 Birolli, Neri Pozza Editore, Vicenza, 1986, p. 28. meting one by one into an infernal region where Jewish” art. As Birolli wrote bitterly to Giuseppe 5 F. Lanza Pietromarchi (edited by), Renato Birolli those who have preceded them lie helpless. The Marchiori, “Il Tevere of 24–25 November includ- 1935, exhibition catalogue (Verona, Galleria Dello scene is made still more tragic by the accentu- ed a full-page attack on Jewish, Bolshevik art. Scudo, 18 October − 23 November 1996), Verona: Galleria dello Scudo, 1996, p. 94. ated gestures of those summarily sketched The photographs show works by Carrà, De 6 Renato Birolli, Giacomo Manzù in una mostra nelle human beings. It is only the man standing and Chirico, Cagli (poor soul), Cingeri, Terragni, nostre sale, exhibition catalogue (Genova, Galleria Genova, 12–18 October 1938), Genoa: Galleria looking at the viewer, perhaps intended to repre- a few abstract artists and yours truly (Chaos). Genova, 1938 (work no. 7). sent the artist, that offers some glimpse of hope, You should get yourself a copy and read the filth 7 “Tutto nulla e qualche cosa. Straniera one last chance to emerge from the primeval spewed out by these pox-ridden spies and arse bolscevizzante e giudaica”, in Il Tevere, y. XVII, no. 23, Rome, 24-25 November 1938, p. 1. chaos into which humanity has collapsed. Birolli bandits”.8 [FIG. 4, P. 42] Birolli’s unprecedented 8 Letter from Renato Birolli to Giuseppe Marchiori thus depicts chaos in order to arrive at its op- disintegration of form was indeed a far cry from of 30 November 1938; now in G. Marchiori, Z. Birolli, G. Bruno (edited by), Renato Birolli, exhibition posite, distorting matter to the point where form the rhetorical return to the “purity of Italian art” catalogue (Verona, Palazzo della Gran Guardia, disintegrates out of “a need for order and clar- hailed by the article after the introduction of the July−August 1963), Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, ity as well as living contact with reality”, writes laws for the defence of the Italian race. 1963, p. 28. 9 XXX Biennale Internazionale d’Arte di Venezia, Corrado Maltese. Birolli was to provide confir- This was the version chosen by Marco Valsecchi exhibition catalogue, Venice: Stamperia di Venezia, mation almost ten years later in his comments for the retrospective organized a year after the 1960, pp. 34−41. 10 See A. Negri, S. Bignami, P. Rusconi, G. Zanchetti 9 on photographs of Il caos and Eldorado (1935 painter’s death at the 1960 Venice Biennial. (edited by), Anni Trenta. Arti in Italia oltre il [FIG. 3, P. 93]): “The figurative elements are imper- It has since been shown in numerous exhibi- fascismo, exhibition catalogue (Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, 22 September 2012 − 27 January 2013), sonal. The reality lies not in the precise shape tions, including those organized in Florence by Florence: Giunti, 2012. they take but in the evident condition or climate Antonello Negri (2012−13)10 and Turin by Elena 11 See E. Pontiggia, V. Birolli (edited by), Renato in which they are immersed, anguished or hap- Pontiggia and Viviana Birolli (2016).11 Birolli. Figure e luoghi, exhibition catalogue (Turin, Museo Ettore Fico, 9 March 2016 − 26 June 2016), py. I was real in the physical and dialectical R . P. Turin: Edizioni Museo Ettore Fico, 2016.

1. Renato Birolli, Il caos (n. 2), 1937. Milan, Museo del Novecento

180 181 Renato Birolli Le signorine Rossi

16 Title Le signorine Rossi wearing a dress of cobalt blue and a red scarf in cold hues against a wall of vibrant red. Who [The Misses Rossi] around her neck. The decoration on the right is are they? So precise in his depiction of the wom- Date 1938 painted in strokes of the same sea blue as he en in the foreground, the painter leaves these Technique oil on canvas used in 1938–39 in Maschere [Masks] [W. NO. 17]. figures as indecipherable presences in the can- Dimensions 100 × 120 cm The fingers of her left hand are touching her chin vas, reflections of himself and the viewers. As bottom right: birolli 38 and the combination of this curious pose and a Birolli wrote in 1936, “We will have innocence in serious but also engaging expression mesmer- expressions not dazed but of penetrating won- A philosopher of colour, Renato Birolli was “in izes the viewer. A beauty that is enigmatic but der, conditioned by our partiality in seeing and full possession of his poetic and fantastic pow- also ready to reveal itself. To do so, she not only feeling, because the human instrument is typi- ers, his capacity to modulate colour and make looks towards the viewer but has also removed cal and distinct”.4 Wonder fills the senses of the it absolute through fusion and measured ap- her hat to pose for her beloved and placed it on painter, who peers in fascination at these women plication, to instil it with germinative stimuli so the tablet to the right to make up a still life. A with their fragrance of everyday femininity, and that it appeared to capture the imprint of things jug, a piece of fruit on a white tablecloth and a his Ro’ alone appears to be aware of the ob- and blossom stupendously” between 1934 and curtain that seems intent on invading the fore- server’s artful gaze. The Misses Rossi, painted 1938.1 It was also in this period, no longer very ground as a citation of Still Life with a Curtain in cool hues with almost corpse-like white skin, young and having acquired a certain degree [FIG. 2] by Cézanne that Birolli had seen on a doe not lead us back semantically to their sur- of experience, that he played a key part in the trip to Paris in November two years earlier. name, literally “red”, which is certainly a symbol newly-founded journal Vita Giovanile, later re- “Cézanne’s painting seems to have made grand of passion and throbbing life. But Birolli knows named Corrente di vita giovanile and then sim- decoration impossible and even to make us be- life, he feels it in colour, and it is precisely in red ply Corrente, becoming a source of inspiration lieve that it has never existed in art. The works that we can perceive it gushing vital and power- for younger artists. Added to all this was love, as of Chardin and Cézanne prompt us in looking ful on the walls of the room. 1938 saw a closer relationship with the woman at all other paintings to use the stratagem of R . P. who was to become his wife by the end of the isolating a section at random to see whether year, Signorina Rosa Rossi, known to everyone its figurative meaning derives from a choice of simply as Ro’. She is the figure in the centre of formal elements and rhythmic cadences or from 1 R. Tassi, “Il colore e il canto di Birolli”, in P. Vivarelli this happy scene of everyday life. Rosa is sitting internal pictorial power”.3 Cézanne’s substantial, (edited by), Birolli, exhibition catalogue (Verona, Palazzo Forti and Galleria dello Scudo, 23 February with her sisters Gianna and Rinalda, to the left geometric white becomes a soft tablecloth of – 31 March 1990), Milan: Mazzotta, 1990. of whom is their cousin Carla Rossi, who was to clouds in Birolli’s work. The former’s curtain of 2 Renato Birolli, Taccuini 1936-1959, edited by E. Emanuelli, ninth notebook until 1 December marry Beniamino Joppolo in 1942. The colours solid material is transformed by the latter into a 1936, Turin: Einaudi, 1960, p. 64. used are true, living and happy, and the paint- Matisse-like two-dimensional plane with four ob- 3 Ibidem. 4 Renato Birolli, Taccuini 1936-1959, edited by ing is “extremely gentle, far from what a black servers peeping out, dummies, voyeurs or curi- E. Emanuelli, second notebook, Turin: Einaudi, and white reproduction would suggest”.2 She is ous spectators moulded in colour that stand out 1960, p. 25.

1. Renato Birolli in his studio on Piazzale Susa, Milan, 2. Paul Cézanne, Still Life with a Curtain, 1899. with Le signorine Rossi behind him St Petersburg, Ermitage

182 183 Renato Birolli Maschere

17 Title Maschere [Masks] Brescia, to whom it was given on 31 January Date 1938−39 1939,8 the work must already have been sold by Technique oil on canvas 1941 to Emilio Jesi, as indicated by the refer- Dimensions 63 × 77.5 cm ence in the monograph published the same year bottom left: Birolli 38 by Corrente to the “Raccolta della Lanterna” in Genoa, the public name used by the Jesi family While Renato Birolli drew on the iconogra- for their collection because of the racial laws.9 phy of the mask as from the early thirties, it is It was first shown in a group exhibition at the Maschere, conceived at the end of 1938, that Galleria dell’Annunciata in 1972, as attested by constitutes the most interesting, pondered a label still attached to the back.10 and “hallucinatory”1 episode in the series. In R . P. announcing his immediate plans in a letter of 30 December 1938 to Giuseppe Marchiori, he spoke of starting work on a painting of masks 1 G. Ballo, Pittori italiani dal futurismo ad oggi, Rome: “borne by the wind over the tops of two bare Edizioni Mediterranee, 1956, p. 184. 2 Letter from Renato Birolli to Giuseppe Marchiori; trees of cerulean purple against an olive-green now in G. Marchiori, Z. Birolli, F. Bruno (edited sky. For the masks I want a pale yellow that is by), Renato Birolli, exhibition catalogue (Verona, Palazzo della Gran Guardia, July−August 1963), 2 hard to distinguish at first”. Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1963, pp. 26−27. The With its deliberate symbolism, the painting was letter also establishes that the work was certainly clearly influenced by the work of Ensor, an ex- painted between 30 December 1938 and 31 January 1939, when it entered the Feroldi collection. The plicit reference to which was published in 1941 date 1937 was instead given in the first monograph among the writings chosen for the monograph on the artist: Sandro Bini, Renato Birolli. Trenta tavole in nero, una a colori e cinque disegni, Milan: by Sandro Bini: “We often find a yellow or deep Edizioni di Corrente, 1941, pp. 98−99. blue on his brush and feel that there is no medi- 3 S. Bini, Renato Birolli, cit., 1941, pp. 57−60. ation between those colours and our temptation. 4 G. Marchiori, Z. Birolli, F. Bruno (edited by), Renato Birolli, cit., 1963. Do we check whether they contain an irremedi- 5 E. Pontiggia, in E. Pontiggia, N. Colombo (edited able form among so many remedies of indolent by), Milano Anni Trenta. L’arte e la città, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Spazio Oberdan, 2 December expertise? (Ensor’s ‘masks’ are born like that. All 2004 − 27 February 2005), Milan: Mazzotta, 2004, the others, including mine, are literature or ob- p. 224. 3 6 Ibidem. jects)”. As Birolli wrote to Marchiori, his inten- 7 As confirmed by Marchiori in Renato Birolli, cit., tion in this work was “to provide food for thought, 1963, p. 28. The collection of Pietro Feroldi was to stimulate and revitalize the spirit”.4 The four unanimously recognized in the thirties as providing a significant and indeed crucial overview of Italian masks represent “the faces of the eternal human painting after 1910 and had already been shown at comedy, grotesque, hypocritical figures” and al- the Galleria del Milione in 1933−34). See “Mostra Protesta del Collezionista”, in Bollettino della lude to the falsity and duplicity of contemporary Galleria del Milione, no. 20, Milan: Galleria del events in Italy.5 Birolli’s vision does not, however, Milione, 1933. See also G. Piovene (edited by), La appear to be embittered. The “roaming” of the raccolta Feroldi, Edizioni del Milione, Milan, 1942. 8 G. Marchiori, “L’avventura di Birolli”, in G. Marchiori, masks over the plain is a gradual descent, a fall, Z. Birolli, F. Bruno (edited by), Renato Birolli, cit., suggesting that falsehood too can be unmasked. 1963, p. 28. 9 See S. Bini, Renato Birolli, cit., 1941. The atmosphere is lightened and made lyrical 10 “Galleria Annunciata – Milano; Autore: Renato also by the choice of colours modulated “on the Birolli; Titolo: Maschere; N.: 26184; T.: olio; F.: elegiac notes of blues and greens”.6 79 x 65”. The reference to the exhibition of 1972 was established by research in the archives Painted for the collector Pietro Feroldi7 from of the Galleria Annunciata.

184 185 Renato Birolli Paese a Monluè Gineceo

18 Title Paese a Monluè completely from the dictates of the Novecento the canvas round to paint something else. Monluè [Landscape at Monluè] movement. Birolli studied and absorbed the work was an old hamlet on the outskirts of Milan by Date 1939 of Ensor and Van Gogh as well as the subject the church of San Lorenzo, which could then be Technique oil on canvas matter of neoclassical masters like Delacroix and reached on the number 35 tram and maintained a Dimensions 65 × 70 cm Ingres, such as the harem. While the latter pre- rustic character.3 The landscape shows bushes, a bottom left: 39. Birolli sented sensual, ivory-skinned women in closed road and a low wall in the foreground and a path verso: rooms, however, Birolli revolutionized the han- running past a farmhouse in the background. In 18v Title Gineceo [Gynaeceum] dling of the theme with darting, radiant bodies in this rural area, the course of the river Lambro Date 1934 an earthly paradise, thus looking forward to the “was deviated by a large dam and forced to drop Technique oil on canvas subject of his great masterpiece L’età felice [The into a deep pool that expanded to form a small Dimensions 70 × 65 cm Age of Happiness], 1936. As Testori commented artificial lake with a sort of beach”.4 Frequented in bottom left: R. Birolli 1934 in an article of December 1942 in the periodical the summer months by Milanese factory and of- Pattuglia: “Magic begins to seep with unbeara- fice workers, this spot had already been depicted “I am constantly compared to what surrounds me ble artfulness into his chromatic ardour. Magic of by Birolli in Eldorado (1935), where some of the but do not realize that my colour also changes. I colour, attempted precisely as for an amorous op- nudes from Gineceo reappear in the lower sec- advance into the countryside. Its green is now of eration required to establish the exact realization tion. There is a glaring difference between the two a different nature. I think I will be green too”.1 One of the objects’ dreamed-of fate, can thus readily works. While an atmosphere of fable and Testori’s side of this canvas presents Gineceo (1934) and be identified in Tassì rosso [Red Taxi] [W. NO. 11] magic can still be seen in 1935, there is a marked the other Paese a Monluè (1939). The subject of and Città degli studi [Città degli Studi, the Milan change four years later. “In Monluè, when spring the gynaeceum, a section of a house used exclu- University District] [W. NO. 12], both 1932, or the sings its song, we will drink again, immediately, sively as women’s quarters in ancient Greece, was Gineceo [Gynaeceum] of 1933, where a gentle immediately”.5 Birolli wrote these words in a letter addressed repeatedly by Birolli in both oils and moon calms the frenzy of the lost women.” This to his friend Sandro Bini from the San Vittore pen- pastel between 1933 and 1935. These two works is the same nocturnal gynaeceum. As is known itentiary in Milan, where he had been imprisoned document the painter’s transformation, his great- from the artist’s notebooks, one day in 1942 he for political reasons. On the one hand, the artist’s er awareness of his art and above all the power of “got rid of the remaining work of the last decade, political, social and private life all influenced his colour. His acquaintance and then friendship with taking over sixty canvases off their stretchers and work. On the other, 1936 saw the publication of Edoardo Persico, contact with Antonio Banfi, pro- soaking them for reuse”.2 Birolli destroyed the a key work not only for art criticism but also for fessor of history of philosophy at Milan University works that he regarded as no longer in line with Birolli’s art, namely Cézanne. Son art – Son œuvre as from 1931, and collaboration with Carlo Carrà his artistic vision and therefore not worthy to exist. by Lionello Venturi. “Cézanne was regarded as for the periodical L’Ambrosiano, where he worked In the light of this, it is surprising that he did not a precursor of Cubism and no one understood as from the early thirties, all led him to break away dissolve these nudes in water but simply turned how the subversive revolution of colour could come from him. Birolli sensed, however, perhaps still obscurely, the great power and the great innovation of the relationship between colour and structure”.6 Birolli studied not only the master’s geometry but also his tonality: “he mixes light and dark ochres, perhaps with a bit of black and white or white and cobalt blue, because I see a diffuse slivery tonality. Extremely gentle painting, a far cry from what black and white would suggest”.7 The provenance of the work from the collection of Ernesto Treccani provides confirmation of the very close ties between Birolli and the founder of Vita giovanile in the second half of the thirties. R . P.

1 Renato Birolli, Taccuini 1936-1959, edited by E. Emanuelli, Turin: Einaudi, 1960, p. 112. 2 Ibidem, p. 101. 3 P. Rusconi, Eldorado, Dossier n. 3, Milan: Skira, 2000, p. 5. 4 Ibidem. 5 G. M. Erbesato (edited by), Carteggio Bini-Birolli, Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1986, p. 14. 6 R. Tassi, “Il colore e il canto di Birolli”, in P. Vivarelli (edited by), Birolli, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 30 September − 12 November 1989), Milan: Mazzotta, 1989, p. 27. 7 Renato Birolli, Taccuini 1936-1959, cit., 1960, p. 64.

18v 1. Bathers at Monluè, period photograph

186 187 Renato Birolli Signora col cappello

19 Title Signora col cappello [Lady in a Hat] a slender green stem that recalls Mafai, another Date 1941 talented young artist, who wrote as follows in his 1 Renato Birolli, Taccuini (1936-1959), edited Technique oil on canvas diary: “[...] If I paint those flowers as withered, it by E. Emanuelli, Turin: Einaudi, 1960, p. 104. 2 Renato Birolli, Taccuini (1936-1959), edited Dimensions 84 × 57 cm is not out of regret. The regret begins when they by E. Emanuelli, Turin: Einaudi, 1960, notebook top left: 41. Birolli are still fresh and inevitably die and wither little of 12 July 1941, p. 82. by little.” The rose also appears to shed light on 3 Renato Birolli, Taccuini (1936-1959), edited by E. Emanuelli, Turin: Einaudi, 1960, notebook 11, “It is necessary to find the dimension of the the slightly ambiguous friendship between the p. 74. painting, which is the possible dimension of artist and his model, who wrote to him as fol- 4 Exhibited at I mostra della Nazione, Florence, February 1940. 1 that black”, notes Renato Birolli. “Black (good lows: “I was very happy when you started the 4 De Chirico, Autoritratto con turbante, 1954, if derived from charcoal but not necessary, as second portrait in the spring. It was a tacit rec- oil on canvas, 24.8 × 19.7 cm. it can be imitated by mixing yellow, red and onciliation that did me good. It is wonderful to 5 Renato Birolli, Taccuini (1936-1959), edited by E. Emanuelli, Turin: Einaudi, 1960, notebook blue). Steer clear of asphalt. I am not afraid of be always in harmony with the beings that live in of 12 July 1941, p. 81. working on many figures rather than a series of our spiritual world [...] Then you stopped work 6 Florence, Gabinetto Scientifico Letterario G. P. Vieusseux, Archivio Contemporaneo objects, equating the terms solely as a matter on your painting and I felt that I was of no more Alessandro Bonsanti, correspondence Renato of colour”.2 This is the colour Birolli used to the use to your art [...] It is not art that must serve Birolli – pianist Enrica Cavallo, 23 October 1942. Fondo Renato e Rosa Birolli, RB.I.106.3. full, leaving no room for drawing, to paint this but I that must serve art, and in posing I was 7 Florence, Gabinetto Scientifico Letterario G.P. portrait of the pianist Enrica Cavallo. The face happy to be useful to you, like the green vase, Vieusseux, Archivio Contemporaneo Alessandro has a stern expression. The small black eyes are like the sunflowers, like all the objects in your Bonsanti, correspondence Renato Birolli –a Emilio Jesi, 15 September 1941, 00.45 hours. Fondo grim, almost cartoon-like, especially because ‘theatre’, certain that I did not inspire you in the Renato e Rosa Birolli, RB.I.253.6. of the curved left eyebrow. The nose is barely ordinary sense, that I did not influence your art suggested and the fleshy mouth is sulky. “The through values extraneous to it, but was simply head ivory and the background pale yellow with an ‘object’ a combination of lines and colours iridescent streaks of cobalt green. The setting that could help you, very directly, in your crea- is such an unusual mixture that it is hard for the tive work. I would so like to become once again ivory to remain within the confines of the head. a pure object for you and your painting and suf- I understand how colours can force a painter’s fer only because I can do nothing about it”.6 The hand and drive him to generalize the model for work was shown in 1941 at the Bergamo Prize, an effect to relish. The lure of pure decoration where it was bought by the collector Emilio Jesi, is always knocking at the door”.3 Careful not to who wrote as follows: “Dear Renato, I am just lapse into decoration, Birolli encloses the yellow back from Bergamo and hasten to give you ochre body in a fine black dress with the edges briefly my impressions. The jury wanted a show of a white slip showing. With her elbow on the at an emotional level reminiscent of sugared wa- back of the chair, her hands almost joined, pink ter (Farinacci intervened with Bottai to approve nail varnish and a golden bracelet, the woman and purchase a painting by Lilloni) [...] The priz- is sitting with her legs crossed of a chair whose es were certainly not awarded justly, as always green colour recalls Birolli’s Ragazzo con there were factors and compromises in play that l’aquilone [Boy with a Kite], 1943 [FIG. 2]. She have nothing to do with art [...] The first prize wears a black hat, something Birolli considers should have gone to you, as you presented the in his notebook of July 1941 in connection with three works of greatest merit. We’ll talk about De Chirico’s self-portrait in a turban4 [FIG. 1]. “Let this later [...] The lesser prizes were awarded for it be said straight away that various conditions works that were either insignificant or deserved 1. Giorgio de Chirico, Autoritratto con turbante indiano, are required to wear a hat of any kind or nature. better (as in the case of Menzio) in such a way circa 1938. Location unknown Here are some of them. First, the right head for as to justify the indignation of all honourable a hat. Second, a belief in that hat. Third, the people (and there are many in Bergamo) for conviction that it makes you look better. Fourth, your exclusion. In any case, I had the impres- really looking better. Fifth, it must be a real hat, sion that you cannot be awarded a prize [...] The one that rests naturally on the head, because if portrait [of Enrica Cavallo] is the most absolute the hat is right but does not sit right on the head, and complete of the three works and I am very it means that the head is wrong (painting in rela- happy to possess it. You should, however, have tion to an object at the expense of the remaining another look at the face (more uncertain than figurative wealth). And then, if the hat is exotic other parts and perhaps slightly cold) and the or out of fashion, it does not matter whether the hands, which are overdrawn. Conclusion: I have artist suffers at least the wonder of the relations, great esteem and great friendship for Birolli and it does not matter whether a sentiment takes it can therefore end by telling him that his art will upon itself to illustrate our need for madness or be really great when he learns (as he certainly shelter from poverty. As in Rembrandt”.5 Lying will) to sacrifice a bit of intelligence to love”.7 on the table in the background is a pink rose with R . P.

2. Renato Birolli, Ragazzo con aquilone, 1943

188 189 Jessie Boswell Marina

20 Title Marina [Seascape] member of the Six. It is, however, distinguished Date 1929 by the original choice of a downward view that Technique oil on cardboard eliminates the sky from the composition, almost Dimensions 33 × 34 cm as though to plunge into the depths of the sea. bottom left: [Jessie] Boswell The painting entered the Iannaccone collection in 2014 with an essentially Turinese history of Jessie Boswell painted this seascape in 1929, a provenance and was included in the exhibition key year in her artistic career that also saw par- I Sei Pittori di Torino 1929–1931, organized by ticipation in the first show of the Six Painters of Mirella Bandini to mark the 70th anniversary of Turin at the Casa d’Arte Guglielmi in January fol- the Six’s first show.2 Two labels on the back of lowed by their exhibitions in Genoa and Milan. the work attest to its appearance in two other re- The artist took part in the group — from which cent exhibitions held in Turin, one in 2004 at the she broke away in 1930, a year before it dis- Galleria del Ponte3 and the first show exclusively solved — with an artistic culture developed first devoted to Boswell’s work held five years later in her native England and then in the studios of at the Sala Bolaffi.4 Felice Casorati and Mario Micheletti in Turin. In A.A. her case, the responsiveness to European influences that characterized the Six focused on the British naturalistic painting of Walter Richard 1 M. Bandini, “I Sei di Torino: un impegno civile, una cultura europea”, in M. Bandini (edited by), Sickert and Spencer Gore (whose influence can I Sei pittori di Torino 1929-1930, exhibition be seen in the play of light in her interiors) as catalogue (Turin, Mole Antonelliana, 6 May − 4 July well as French Impressionism, known through 1993), Milan: Fabbri Editori, 1993, pp. 26−27. 2 See M. Bandini (edited by), I Sei Pittori di Torino shows at the Durand-Ruel gallery in London.1 1929-1931, exhibition catalogue (Aosta, Museo This painting appears to display the influence Archeologico Regionale, 24 April − 4 July 1999), Quart: Musumeci, 1999. Marina was also shown the of Monet’s seascapes, albeit filtered through same year at the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio in her own pictorial sensibility. The impression of Bra; see M. Bandini, L. Riccio (edited by), Boswell, Chessa, Galante, Levi, Menzio, Paulucci. Opere dal a view dominated by the natural element is ren- 1924 al 1973, exhibition catalogue, Bra: Fondazione dered through thick brushstrokes and dabs of Cassa di Risparmio, 1999. paint, the cold hues of the sea being softened 3 See S. Testa (edited by), I Sei di Torino. Per i quindici anni della Galleria del Ponte, exhibition by the earthen colours of the cliff. The work catalogue (Turin, Galleria Il Ponte, 7 May also displays a certain affinity with the equally − 26 June 2004), Turin: Galleria Il Ponte, 2004. 4 See I. Mulatero (edited by), Jessie Boswell, intimist and tonal paintings on the same subject exhibition catalogue (Turin, Sala Bolaffi, produced in 1928 by Nicola Galante, a future 17 March − 10 May 2009), Turin: Bolaffi, 2009.

190 191 Luigi Broggini Testa di ragazzo

21 Title Testa di ragazzo [Boy’s Head] Broggini’s studio until his death or at least until reservations about the work, which he described as “irresolute in style” but also “animated by effective Date 1932−35 the seventies, as shown by some photographs expression” (P. Torriano, “La mostra del Sindacato”, Technique bronze sculpture [FIG. 1],8 and was then inherited by his son and in L’Illustrazione italiana, y. LXIV, no. 9, Milan, 28 February 1937, pp. 218−19), while Attilio Podestà Dimensions 28 × 17 × 20 cm sold to the Iannaccone collection. Broggini nev- praised its “formal purity” and “lofty spirituality” on the neck: 932 Broggini er took an active part in the Corrente group or (A. Podestà, “VIII Mostra del Sindacato regarded himself as a member even though he Interprovinciale Fascista di Belle Arti”, in Il Secolo XIX, Genoa, 13 March 1937). This version of Testa After attending the lessons of Adolfo Wildt at did show work in its second exhibition, held in di ragazzo, now in a private collection, presents the Accademia di Brera, Luigi Broggini reacted December 1939.9 As Emilio Radius wrote in his some cracks on the nose, ears and neck. For a comparison of the plaster and the bronzes, see against the classicism of the Novecento group review, “Broggini, a singular sculptor with an Broggini e il suo tempo, cit., 1998, pp. 46−47. and looked elsewhere. Testa di ragazzo is a key original personality and eccentric temperament, 5 See A. Gatto (edited by), Luigi Broggini, exhibition work of this period. The child’s stark expression belongs more to himself than to the Corrente catalogue (Milan, Bottega di Corrente, 5−17 April 1941), Milan: Edizioni di Corrente, 1941, work no. 10. 10 of wonder conjures up an archaic world, recall- group, of which he is simply a guest”. 6 See A. Gatto (edited by), Luigi Broggini e Italo ing both the Louvre Seated Scribe1 and certain R . P. Valenti in una mostra nelle nostre sale, exhibition catalogue (Genoa, Galleria Genova, 15−28 May works of Etruscan sculpture in a rereading of 1941), Genoa: Galleria Genova, 1941, work no. 5. pre-classical Mediterranean culture. In this re- A photograph of the sculpture appears on the inside turn to archaism, the sculptor shares the prim- 1 As pointed out by Elena Pontiggia in E. Pontiggia front cover. Attention was drawn to the work on that occasion also by Attilio Podestà, who published itivism of the Chiaristi, prompted by friendship (edited by), Broggini e il suo tempo, Uno scultore nell’Italia degli anni ‘30 tra chiarismo e Corrente, a photograph in Emporium (A. Podestà, “Luigi with Edoardo Persico. The realistic accentua- exhibition catalogue (Civitanova Marche Alta, Broggini e Italo Valenti”, in Emporium, y. XLVII, tion of the ears saves the face from immobile church of Sant’Agostino, 5 July − 27 September no. 9, Bergamo, September 1941, p. 141), and by 1998), Milan: Skira, 1998, p. 46. Broggini saw the Giovanni Testori, who described it as “perhaps the nobility, however, making it closer to us, more work in Paris during his stay of 1929−1930: “[...] finest of the series of portraits by virtue of the drive human and contemporary.2 The image suggest- let us return to the primary reason that led me to for serenity and light found in the expression and Paris, namely its modern painting. Italy has a way the head as a whole, which is constructed with ed is that of a late nineteenth-century street ur- of believing wonders about people and things from a firmness that is truly rare in Broggini.” (G. Testore chin in the Lombardy of the late Scapigliatura other countries that is something really peculiar. [Testori], “Lo scultore Broggini”, in Via Consolare, movement inspired by the models of Medardo One hundred are ready to confirm what has no. 5, May 1941, p. 6). The bronze was recently actually been seen and accredited by one. As one exhibited in Milan at the exhibition Il Chiarismo: Rosso. The date 1932 on the neck of the figure of this hundred, I arrived there with my head full of omaggio a De Rocchi. Luce e colore a Milano suggests some ambiguity as to the time of exe- Picasso, Matisse and Braque but was glad after a negli anni Trenta (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 16 June − 5 September 2010), catalogue edited by E. 3 bit to end up in the Louvre. Let me explain. Apart cution, as Alfonso Gatto gives its date as 1935. from Utrillo, Picasso and company all let me down, Pontiggia, Milan: Skira, 2010. Broggini probably began work on it in 1932 and some more, some less, to the point that I no longer 7 See. L. Caramel, C. Pirovano (edited by), Galleria then took it up again a few years later, given that felt able to swear by them on looking at their works d’Arte Moderna. Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, […] In short, I went to Paris enchanted by them and Milan: Electa, 1973, p. 15. The gallery had already the initial version in plaster was first shown at returned disenchanted, sure that I now have more bought Broggini’s La Vittoria (1933), a work in the 1937 VIII Mostra del Sindacato interprovin- faith in Corot than Picasso, in Rodin than Maillol. polychromatic plaster, the year before, which (It may have been like that before too, but I would is indicative of the interest in his work among ciale fascista di Belle Arti di Milano [Exhibition never have admitted it to myself.)” L. Broggini, in contemporary critics. of the Fascist Union of Fine Arts in Milan]4 and Stagioni, Bollettino della Galleria Santo Spirito, 8 See the photograph of the artist’s studio in then in 1941, first in the solo show at the Bottega Milan, March 1947; now in E. Pontiggia, Broggini Broggini, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Galleria e il suo tempo, cit., 1998, p. 153. delle Ore), edited by A. Gatto, Milan: Edizioni di Corrente5 and then at the Galleria Genova in a 2 E. Pontiggia, in Broggini e il suo tempo, cit., 1998. delle Ore, 1977. joint show with Italo Valenti.6 There are two ver- 3 A. Gatto, Luigi Broggini, Milan: Edizioni del Milione, 9 On this occasion, Broggini presented Ragazza allo 1940, [pl. 30]; published also in the edition of 1944, specchio (Ragazza al sole); see G. Piovene, sions in bronze of this work which is considered pl. 22. in Corriere della Sera, y. 64, no. 290, Milan, the most published of Broggini, one bought by 4 See VIII Mostra del Sindacato interprovinciale 7 December 1939, p. 3. the Galleria d’Arte Moderna of Milan after the fascista di Belle Arti, exhibition catalogue (Milan, 10 E. Radius, “Artisti che espongono. Luigi Broggini”, 13 February − 14 March 1937), room XII, work in Corriere della Sera, y. 66, no. 92, Milan, 17 April above exhibition7 while the other remained in no. 209, p. 49. Piero Torriano expressed some 1941, p. 3.

1. The artist’s studio with the sculpture now in the 2. Detail of the inside front cover of the catalogue Luigi 3. Cover of the catalogue of the exhibition Luigi Broggini Iannaccone collection visible in the background Broggini e Italo Valenti in una mostra nelle nostre sale, at Ernesto Treccani’s Corrente Bottega degli artisti Galleria Genova

192 193 Luigi Broggini Ballerina

22 Title Ballerina found favour with contemporary critics such part of the artist’s own collection, was includ- Date 1938 as Guido Piovene, who wrote as follows about ed in the Corrente retrospective organized by Technique bronze sculpture his nudes: “The author delights in working on Marco Valsecchi in Milan in 1963.6 It also ap- Dimensions 32 × 19 × 17 cm the surface with the slightest of distortions, al- peared recently in the exhibition L’artista, il po- on the base: Broggini most like a gleaming, whimsical iridescence”.2 eta at the Palazzo della Permanente in Milan.7 And Giulio Trasanna: “Woe betide us and him It is interesting to note that Broggini’s work in The small bronze Ballerina is one of the series if it were smoothness and mass that pleased some way looks forward to that of the young of female dancers and figures produced by him [...] Only the facile develop normal syn- contemporary artist Banksy, who draws on pe- the sculptor Luigi Broggini as from the second taxes devoid of quick, problematic accents”.3 riod images to present a further evolution of his half of the thirties. The study of the ballerina in The influence of his Roman period lingers on ungainly ballerina standing in a gas mask on a movement, a subject explored in depth in the in this period, especially in the study of poses, heap of rubble [FIG. 2]. figurative arts, demonstrates his interest in the so that Broggini’s ballerinas were described as R . P. dynamism of poses, the surface of the material “modern maenads”: “[...] While the subject im- sculpted and effects of light. Broggini sought mediately brings Degas to mind, there are also to complete the path taken by Medardo Rosso Dionysian echoes in these works. It is no coin- 1 E. Pontiggia, “Luigi Broggini. Vitalizzare la materia”, at the turn of the century by pursuing a form cidence that a version again produced in 1938 in E. Pontiggia (edited by), Broggini e il suo tempo. of Impressionism in keeping with the new cul- should show a ballerina playing a pipe, some- Uno scultore nell’Italia degli anni ’30 tra chiarismo e Corrente, exhibition catalogue (Civitanova Marche tural context of his day. The airy ballerinas of thing unthinkable in the dancers of Degas but Alta, church of Sant’Agostino, 5 July Edgar Degas that Broggini studied in Paris in fully in line with the idea of vital, dithyrambic − 27 September 1998, Milan: Skira, 1998, 4 pp. 11−23. the early thirties thus lost their proverbial bal- dance suggested by Broggini in his works”. 2 G. Piovene, “Artisti che espongono. Broggini”, ance in clumsy, precarious poses and their skin Elena Pontiggia also discerns an almost ex- in Corriere della Sera, y. 65, no. 52, Milan, became a rough, uneven patina: “Broggini pro- plicit reference to the child seeking to escape 29 February 1940, p. 3. 3 G. Trasanna, “Broggini”, in Augustea, y. XV, no. 9, ceeds through successive castings, through from the serpent’s coils to his father’s right in Rome, 15 March 1940, p. 7. rivulets and veils of matter that transform the the renowned Laocoonte [Laocoön] [FIG. 1].5 4 E. Pontiggia, in E. Pontiggia, N. Colombo (edited by), Milano Anni Trenta. L’arte e la città, smoothness of the skin into a rugged terrain The sculptor did in fact produce numerous exhibition catalogue (Milan, Spazio Oberdan, that is simultaneously vulnerable and sensu- drawings based on that classical sculpture. 2 December 2004 − 27 February 2005), Milan: al”.1 This dynamic effect offers the sculptor an The existence of different versions of this work, Mazzotta, 2004, p. 222. 5 Ibidem. interplay of matter and light enabling him to ex- all bearing the same title Ballerina and dating 6 See M. Valsecchi (edited by), Gli artisti di amine the human body as a whole, externally from the period 1938−39, makes it impossi- “Corrente”, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 25 September − 20 October 1963), Milan: moulding its internal fragility and vulnerabil- ble, in the absence of photographs of the time, Edizioni di Comunità, 1963. ity. The expressionism attained in this period to identify those that were actually exhibited 7 See F. Gualdoni, A. Pellegatta (edited by), L’artista, il poeta, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Palazzo della by his modelling, characterized by an “an- to the public. It is, however, certain that the Permanente, 12 November 2010 − 9 January 2011), ti-graceful” alternation of forms and hollows, bronze in the Iannaccone collection, formerly Milan: Skira, 2011.

1. Laocoonte, second century b.C., detail. Vatican City, 2. Banksy, Ballerina with Action Man Parts, 2005. Musei Vaticani Milan, Collezione Giuseppe Iannaccone

194 195 Luigi Broggini Figura al sole

23 Title Figura al sole [Figure in the Sun] woman, whose realistic hat suggests agricul- Date 1938−39 tural work, a moment of everyday naturalness Technique bronze sculpture in the heat of the sun, of abandonment in a ges- Dimensions 43.5 × 29 × 13 cm ture that brings the viewer “into the story”3 of on the base: Broggini this figure. “The impulsive action is as though blocked in a sort of silent stupor, the stupor of The second half of the thirties saw Luigi Broggini the figure on beholding herself but also — and move away from the Novecento sculptural ap- the fact that the work has always had two ti- proach of classicism and volumetric synthe- tles is indicative — wonder at the splendour sis and towards a rugged, hollowed out kind of the sun, which Broggini represents indirect- of modelling influenced by the Impressionist ly, leaving it to be sensed through the light in work of Degas and Aristide Maillol, itself de- which the figure is bathed”.4 The plaster cast rived from Matisse, and the Lombard school of the work was shown in the second Corrente of Medardo Rosso. “The initial temptation is exhibition, held at the Galleria Grande, Milan, to speak of French Impressionism, but this is in December 1939, where it was listed in the in fact something substantially different from catalogue as Ragazza allo specchio [Young Impressionist sculpture. Here light does not Woman at the Mirror]. The bronze was owned cleanse and only consumes the surfaces. It by the artist and left to his son before entering even determines the skeleton of the statue, out- the collection of Antonio Stellatelli, where it re- lined in space with the sudden speed of a flash mained until it was bought for the Iannaccone of lightning. The valiant, dynamic form of his collection in 2010. It recently appeared in the female nudes, bathers or dancers, manifests exhibition Corrente. Le parole della vita. Opere itself like the crack of a whip, more chromatic 1930-1945 at Palazzo Reale in Milan.5 than physical, coloured with its own luminosi- C.T. ty”.1 Alfonso Gatto, who had met Broggini and the circle of poet friends — including Salvatore Quasimodo, Raffaele Carrieri and Leonardo 1 M. Valsecchi, “I nervi delle donne scolpite Sinisgalli — through Domenico Cantatore and da Broggini”, in Tempo, 15 April 1954; quoted in L. Cavallo, “Luigi Broggini, itinerario critico”, was now his most faithful critic, commented in Luigi Broggini opere 1929-1945, Milan: Edizioni on his personal room at the Venice Biennial Galleria il Mappamondo, 1990, p. 24. 2 A. Gatto (edited by), Broggini, Milan: Edizioni delle two years later: “I believe that visitors to this Ore, 1977, n.p.n. Biennial will be surprised by their encounter 3 Ibidem. with Broggini’s sculptures, still ‘natural’ with- 4 E. Pontiggia (edited by), Broggini e il suo tempo. Uno scultore nell’Italia degli anni ’30 tra chiarismo out naturalism and ‘real’ without realism, tak- e Corrente, exhibition catalogue (Civitanova Marche ing them into a story and the act of being and Alta, church of Sant’Agostino, 5 July 2 − 27 September 1998), Milan: Skira, 1998, p. 68. doing”. The artist’s reserved and observant 5 See M. Pizziolo (edited by), Corrente. nature, traits abundantly confirmed by friends, Le parole della vita. Opere 1930-1945, exhibition emerges in this bronze, which physically cap- catalogue (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 18 June − 7 September 2008), Milan: Skira, tures an instant of stolen intimacy of a young 2008.

196 197 Luigi Broggini Paesaggio romano con figura sdraiata Paesaggio romano con statua di Nettuno Donna che allaccia la calza

24 Title Paesaggio romano con figura author’s hand is obviously guided by the sculp- pen suggests colour as it makes and unmakes sdraiata [Roman Landscape tor’s eye, a vision subsequently translated into this sky. The stroke has a turbulent energy of its with Reclining Figure] the dynamism and fluidity of the future works in own. Some drawings are impromptu and do not Date 1932 terracotta. The drawings in the Iannaccone col- go beyond the jotted note. A current of electric- Technique ink wash on paper lection address one of the sculptor’s favourite ity circulates, however, even in the most mod- Dimensions 330 × 240 mm subjects, namely the reclining nude, in a pose est, the smell of a short-circuit. It is clearly the bottom left: Roma 1932 Broggini recalling the celebrated Paolina Bonaparte of drawing of a sculptor. The statues of Rome catch 25 Title Paesaggio romano con statua Antonio Canova [FIG. 2].4 The Paesaggio romano fire on contact with the air, the black blots of the di Nettuno [Roman Landscape con statua di Nettuno (1933) in particular would equestrian compositions spread out, squashed with Statue of Neptune] suggest that Broggini spent a longer period in flat by a constantly simmering atmosphere”.9 Date 1933 Rome than that of his grant. Another possibility, R . P. Technique ink wash on paper put forward by Elena Pontiggia, is that the draw- Dimensions 320 × 220 mm ing was produced later precisely because the bottom left: Broggini Roma 1933 artist was interested “not in direct vision but in 1 The prize of 10,000 lire was awarded to him by a jury made up of Carlo Carrà, Giovanni Marchini 5 26 Title Donna che allaccia la calza fanciful memory”. The third drawing, Donna che (who had become his teacher after the death of [Woman Fastening her Stocking] allaccia la calza (1937), is based on the bronze Wildt), Mario Sironi, Romano Romanelli and Giorgio Nicodemi, superintendent of the department Date 1937 of that name produced by the artist the previous of fine arts, for L’acquaiola, a statue for a fountain. Technique pencil and wash year [FIG. 1]. Broggini concentrated in particular 2 L. Broggini, “Viaggio a Roma”, in Bollettino Dimensions 350 × 250 mm on the nude, displaying an interest in drawing dell’Annunciata, no. 26, Milan, 8−21 June 1957. 3 Giovanni Anzani described Broggini’s drawings bottom right: Broggini 1937 not only monumental views of Rome but also the as “singularly Scipionesque” in “Dissenso e intimacy of certain closed places animated by opposizione nella cultura figurativa milanese degli anni Trenta”, in M. De Micheli (edited by), Corrente. After his trip to Paris, the second experience of female profiles, whose transposition into plastic Il Movimento di Arte e Cultura di Opposizione the early thirties to influence Luigi Broggini’s art suggests in the rough and corroded physical- 1930-1945, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Palazzo work and iconography was a two-year stay in ity of bronze the enticing female sensuality only Reale, 25 January − 28 April 1985), Milan: Vangelista, 1985, p. 36. Rome (1931−32) on a grant awarded by the hinted at on paper. “All or nearly all of Broggini’s 4 E. Pontiggia (edited by), Broggini e il suo tempo. Tantardini Prize.1 Drawing was the technique on drawings represent a closed, intimate place, a Uno scultore nell’Italia degli anni ’30 tra chiarismo e Corrente, exhibition catalogue (Civitanova which the sculptor concentrated in that period in room where quick, pale nudes are apparitions, Marche Alta, church of Sant’Agostino, 5 July order to capture his fleeting impressions of the flashes of light in the enveloping shadow. The − 27 September 1998), Milan: Skira, 1998, p. 32. numerous visual stimuli of the capital, from the intimate tone is, however, always turned into the 5 Ibidem. 6 L. Cavallo, “Luigi Broggini, itinerario critico”, squares and alleyways to the classical works sharpness and almost pitilessness of an incisive, in Luigi Broggini opere 1929-1945, Milan: and the Baroque legacy. “I drew everything that piercing line that appears to caress the forms Edizioni Galleria Il Mappamondo, 1990, p. 17. 7 Bollettino dell’Annunciata, cit., 1957. filtered through my imagination, seeking the while it imposes an impetus on the features of 8 “It must have been the efforts of Grossetti that most natural of transpositions for that wonder- a face and the folds of a body that brings them brought the fifty drawings exhibited at the Galleria dell’Annunciata to light from Broggini’s well-hidden ful scene. Monuments, churches and buildings to the most immediate actuality of lived experi- portfolios. They are divided into two sets: one were the subjects of these illustrations, but ence”.6 Highly esteemed by Bruno Grossetti, comprising 23 drawings from a Roman sketchbook above all it was the sky of Rome that aroused Broggini’s Roman drawings were presented for (1932−33) and the other a series of nudes drawn and coloured with a wash (1942−44). I do not recall in me the heady desire for fabulous drawings, the first time in a show at the Galleria Annunciata seeing a single sheet from the Rome sketchbook in a sky that always seemed red to me”.2 While in 1957 featuring twenty-three sheets from his the various shows of Broggini’s work.” R. Carrieri, 7 “Broggini ha aperto il ‘taccuino di Roma’”, in Epoca, the quick, terse lines, amplified by the use of Taccuino di Roma. Raffaele Carrieri displayed y. VIII, no. 352, Milan, 30 June 1957, [p. 91]. ink, mostly red and black, recall Scipione,3 the great enthusiasm in his review for Epoca:8 “The 9 Ibidem.

1. Luigi Broggini, Donna che allaccia la calza, 1937–38. 26 2. Antonio Canova, Paolina Bonaparte, 1805–08. Milan, private collection Rome, Galleria Borghese

198 199 Bruno Cassinari Ritratto di Ernesto Treccani

27 Title Ritratto di Ernesto Treccani [Portrait of Ernesto Treccani] Date 1941 Technique oil on panel Dimensions 60 × 45 cm bottom right: cassinari 41

Portraiture was one of the genres most explored by Bruno Cassinari, from his youthful years at the Accademia di Brera to the early forties, when the difficulties of the war reduced his iconography to a state of “extreme simplicity”.1 Rather than “sociological representation”, he was interested in capturing the “singularity of the impact with the individuality of the subject”.2 It is no coincidence that he always painted people close to him, as in the case of this portrait of Ernesto Treccani,3 where the artist intimately examines the expressive face and gaze of his young friend through a deft construction of space and volume obtained by “underscoring the horizontal and vertical axes”.4 His solid and unadorned vocabulary took on a personal note in this period, especially through the choice of colours that are never glaring. The colour becomes livid here in places, attenuating the ashen hue of the face and bringing out the subject’s melancholy frame of mind. Cassinari had finished the portrait by February 1941, when a solo show was held at the Bottega di Corrente with a presentation by Elio Vittorini.5 R . P.

1 C. Pirovano, Cassinari, Milan: Electa, 1969, pp. 6−8. 2 E. Crispolti, “Caratteristiche e componenti di un immaginario pittorico”, in Cassinari, Milan: Mondadori, 1986, pp. 15−38. 3 See also the coeval portraits Ritratto di Rosetta and Ritratto di Morlotti. 4 C. Pirovano, Cassinari, cit., 1969. 5 E. Vittorini, in Bruno Cassinari, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Bottega di Corrente, 8−20 February 1941), Milan: Edizioni di Corrente, 1941. The work recently appeared in the exhibition Gallerie milanesi tra le due guerre, held in Milan; see L. Sansone (edited by), Gallerie milanesi tra le due guerre, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Fondazione Stelline, 24 February − 22 May 2016), Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2016.

200 201 Gigi Chessa Nudo

28 Title Nudo [Nude] not in the model’s pose or faraway expression Date 1934 but in the human warmth that emanates from Technique oil on canvas her pink flesh and is taken up and enhanced Dimensions 65.7 × 50.5 cm by the shimmering orange of the background. bottom left: “Chessa 1934. Agli amici The atmosphere communicates a deep affective Aloisio con migliori auguri Gigi Chessa” contact despite the psychological remoteness of the woman, engrossed in her own thoughts. Together with Jessie Boswell, Nicola Galante, The work is executed with formal and pictorial Carlo Levi, Francesco Menzio and Enrico delicacy within the artistic world of post-Im- Paulucci, Gigi Chessa formed part of an extraor- pressionist inspiration that characterizes all of dinary group of artists that revitalized the Turin his painting. In this case, the work is a human art scene during the interwar years, a pictorial flux born out of Chessa’s reflection on himself constellation that developed influences from and his human and existential sensibility, which northern Europe and post-Impressionist paint- cannot be detached from deep empathy with the ing to produce works that were wholly origi- subject, especially when this is a female figure nal and unique in Italian art. Chessa fell into a of such sweetness and rich human qualities. state of deep artistic crisis in the thirties, when The power of Chessa’s work lies precisely here it was “the thickness, the objective density of in his dual use of pure pictorial quality as a tool painting, that he felt escaping him”.1 His anxiety both to construct the image and to reveal the led him to study the academic precepts in or- innermost psyche. “Whoever sees a painting der to find freedom and open up new horizons by Chessa sees what he loves most in life, for in a new vision that resulted in powerful works which he has made considerable sacrifices that with no departure from the painted surface. In demand respect and is ready to make still more. the construction of figures, he relied solely on In any case, he cannot but paint. An uninhibit- colour that was harmonious and often redun- ed and very modern young man, he is always dant in its tactile density to convey the percep- moved to emotion when he talks about paint- tion of a non-abstract solidity sometimes even ing”.2 The dedication written directly on the can- overflowing with pictorial substance. Colour is vas in the bottom left corner attests to Chessa’s thus a poetic filter through which the work takes close friendship with the family of the rational- shape and becomes a living, throbbing entity. ist architect Ottorino Aloisio from Udine, who The works of this period remain within a sphere arrived in Turin in 1929 and did his most suc- of pictorial lightness but with a power of initia- cessful work there, including the Casa Verona tive that regards not only ideas and taste but on Corso Moncalieri in 1930. also chromatic choice. This approach marked D.M. the very last period of Chessa’s life and the Iannaccone collection nude of 1934 is one of the most successful examples produced before his 1 P. Fossati, “Il ruolo di Gigi Chessa pittore”, premature death in 1935. His brushwork gives in P. Fossati, V. Sanfo (edited by), Gigi Chessa, exhibition catalogue (Turin, Mole Antonelliana, expression to soft, suffuse, opaque colour that 14 November 1987 − 14 February 1988), Milan: lends the painting warmth and a hazy, indefinite Fabbri Editore, 1987. 2 L. Venturi, “Gigi Chessa”, in A. Bovero (edited by), quality at the same time. Nudo is not a sugges- Archivio dei sei pittori di Torino, Rome: De Luca tive or sensual work and its erotic quality lies Editore, 1965, p. 54.

202 203 Filippo de Pisis Il suonatore di flauto

29 Title Il suonatore di flauto of people all the same”.4 This difference, both [The Flute Player] artistic and existential, had distinguished him Date 1940 since his youth. Technique oil on canvas The work was shown in an exhibition on Dimensions 65 × 60 cm Raffaele Carrieri held at the Museo Nazionale bottom right: Pisis 40 Archeologico in Taranto in 20065 and then in the exhibition De Pisis en voyage. Roma, Parigi, On the outbreak of World War II, Filippo de Londra, Milano, Venezia held in 2013 at the Pisis returned to Italy from Paris, where he had Fondazione Magnani Rocca.6 acquired greater understanding of his art and R . P. his profession. The period in Milan was one of the busiest and most intense of his career, as he painted and sold numerous paintings: 1 S. Zanotto, Filippo De Pisis ogni giorno, Vicenza: “I smell the scent of celebrity. A happy period Neri Pozza, 1996. 2 Filippo De Pisis. La collezione Malabotta, exhibition in my life. I am in magnificent form for paint- catalogue (Treviso, Museo Civico “Luigi Bailo”, 1 ing and other things”.1 His hotel room on Via October − 10 December 1995, Milan: Electa, 1995. 3 C. Gian Ferrari (a cura di), Filippo de Pisis. Durini and then his beloved apartment on Via La poesia nei fiori e nelle cose, exhibition catalogue Rugabella became a meeting place for artists, (Acqui Terme, Palazzo Liceo Saracco, 16 July writers and cultural figures as well as the “wild – 10 September), Milan: Mazzotta, 2000. 4 Ibidem. and sensual adolescents” that he loved and 5 E. Pontiggia, A. Perrone (edited by), Il mondo portrayed frequently in the paintings of the pe- di Raffaele Carrieri. Pittura, carte, documenti, exhibition catalogue (Taranto, Museo Nazionale 2 riod. It is precisely one of these young men Archeologico, 22 April − 22 May 2006), Cinisello that we see here playing the flute in an intimate, Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2006. 6 See P. Campiglio Parma (edited by), De Pisis en familiar setting. With this delicate, poetic male voyage. Roma, Parigi, Londra, Milano, Venezia, nude, according to Raffaele Carrieri, De Pisis exhibition catalogue (Mamiano di Traversetolo, revealed himself as “the last painter to express Fondazione Magnani Rocca, 13 September − 8 December 2013), Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana himself in lyrical terms when describing anato- Editoriale, 2013. The work was shown in the my”.3 The artist’s deep culture, refined aesthet- exhibition Carla Maria Maggi e il ritratto a Milano negli anni trenta (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 15 June ic sense and elegance of touch and chromatic − 5 September 2010), catalogue edited by combinations made him “different in a world E. Pontiggia, Milan: Skira, 2010.

1. De Pisis photographed by Luigi Comencini in his combined home and studio on Via Rugabella, Milan, 1941

204 205 Filippo de Pisis Pesce e coltello

30 Title Pesce e coltello [Fish and Knife] in their still lifes, placing the objects in a mo- Date 1940 tionless position as though under glass, De Technique oil on cardboard Pisis threw them together haphazardly with no Dimensions 30 × 50.5 cm thought of perfection, painting what he thought bottom left: de Pisis and inverting the relationship between man and bottom right: XVIII object or animal. “It is the dramatic poetry that on the knife handle: […] Elba 1940 comes from the dialectic between the infinitely small — the shell, the fish, the bush or the “A flat, October day, grey and magnetic […] a stone — and the infinitely large: the sea, the monster sole awaits me with white, curly let- sky, the faint line of the horizon. The defamiliar- tuce (like the salad we had in Chioggia).” These ization generated by these paintings has strong words written by De Pisis from a seaside town metaphysical overtones”.3 As Carrieri wrote, in October 1940 seem to conjure up this still life, “De Pisis is a perfect illusionist. His life is an painted on a piece of brown cardboard found uninterrupted improvisation of artfulness and somewhere near the restaurant. The snarl- uninhibited combinations. Botany, antiques, ing fish, built up in compact brushstrokes, is gastronomy and manias and follies of all kinds brought to life by touches of colour that start are the material of his paintings. Invisible birds from shades of blue, green, red, purple and peck and break flowers that change in tone, the yellow on the head and fade into a white that cricket uses a drill and the butterfly makes its also invades the oval platter on which it rests. umpteenth attempt to escape”.4 A precariously balanced knife points threaten- What the artist said about his Pesci nel paes- ingly towards the belly of the fish, from which aggio di Pomposa [Fish in the Countryside at a small rivulet of blood emerges. The oil paint Pomposa, 1928] appears to apply to this work. slides over the fibres of the cardboard so that The poor fish “is nothing but a means I used to the hazy scales of the skin stand out. The twin accentuate the desperation (unreal colours, rub- circles of a silver cruet bear witness to the im- bing and shivers) of the other fish […] and then minent murder in the upper right corner. Filippo − why not? − a bit of our anxiety and torment to de Pisis must have produced this arrangement, these poor fish […]”.5 as on many other occasions, on his return from As Giorgio Vigni wrote in Emporium, “De Pisis is a restaurant. An anecdote told by Giovanni hardly ever serene and indeed never if serenity Comisso1 of walking with De Pisis down a street is understood as a state of calm. Even when he of fishmongers’ shops in Paris casts light on the most appears to abandon himself to the pure joy conception and birth of such works: “The shops of painting — flowers, fruit, objects, landscape were closed but the briny odour of the merchan- — the basic elements of his creation, light and dise inside lay heavy on the air. Between the colour, vibrate in such a way that anxiety hov- smells of putrefaction and the sinister gleams ers over everything, even where the relaxation of the odd gaslight, the alley fired De Pisis with is fullest […]”.6 a crazed desire for strange apparitions. He R . P. looked everywhere, like a hunter in a wood, and then suddenly shouted out in wonder ‘Oh, amazing! Amazing!’. I saw him bend over a 1 Giovanni Comisso (Treviso, 3 October 1895 heap of rubbish and pick up three rotten cod- − 21 January 1969), Italian writer and journalist. 2 C. Gian Ferrari (edited by), De Pisis a Milano, fish dumped there by the fishmongers. He laid exhibition catalogue (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 13 June them carefully on a copy of Paris-Soir spread – 13 October 1991), Milan: Mazzotta, 1991, p. 30. out on the ground and went on staring at them 3 Ibidem, p. 17. 4 Ibidem, p. 30. even though they stank abominably. In that in- 5 F. de Pisis, article in “Pagina dell’artista”, in Arte, stant, he had already composed the painting Roma, May 1931, now in G. Briganti (edited by), De Pisis, catalogue raisonné, part I, Opere 2 [FIG. 1]. in his mind” While contemporaries like 1908-1938, Milan: Electa, 1991, p. 185. Morandi were concerned with creating order 6 Emporium, January–March, Bergamo, 1944.

1. Filippo de Pisis, Pesci marci, 1928. Trieste, private collection

206 207 Filippo de Pisis Il Foro Bonaparte a Milano

31 Title Il Foro Bonaparte a Milano present a trademark De Pisis hue described by [The Foro Bonaparte in Milan] Raimondi as “unnameable, like mud mixed with Date 1941 a bit of milk, green and bile, rivulets of abattoir Technique oil on canvas blood. All this curdles, coagulates and melds, Dimensions 70 × 50 cm and a screen of Chinese silk takes shape in the bottom right: [De] Pisis blue background”.3 The sky seems to be reflected in the street and partly in the buildings Having finally arrived in Milan when Italy was that hem the composition in, making it almost already at war, De Pisis appears to have want- claustrophobic. The monochrome is only bro- ed to ignore the horrors through painting and ken in the background by the red of the Sforza dreams. “He painted the intact forms of the Castle and the dazed green of a few trees that world with his happiness. An incurable rift make the composition less symmetrical. Two opened up between his dreamy wanderings different visions flow in this work: on the one and the social ordeal that led him to madness. hand, the quick, jagged brushstroke that joy- Where was the sweet melody he sought? [...] fully delineates the colour of an urban land- Everything seemed grim and full of rancour in scape; on the other, the human perception of an Italy stricken and stunned by occupation. hurried, black figures almost lost in colour that It was no longer the same world as before. influence the atmosphere, now as ambiguous Everything was as though withered and fad- and insecure as the historical period mankind ed. Reality had a feeble, shaking rhythm. His was going through. His principal characteristic search sometimes seemed vain and bewildered emerges of attaining beauty from the starting [...] but in the nooks and crannies [...] of mem- point of humble material and drawing with the ory, for as long as its support lasted, he always tip of the brush. One of his finest results ap- found the glowing, serene images of lost child- pears to be achieved in this landscape, where hood [...] He did not hesitate to revel in the a view of Milan reveals ideas and emotions, sad air of autumn, the autumn of his life, and prompting memories and attaching value also the earth had the distant enchantment of ech- to the most mundane and negligible things of oes of powerful, melancholy voices”.1 The city life. As De Pisis wrote: “Throw yourself bravely landscape had “the characteristic of a depiction into colourlessness. The arches, the planes and from life captured in the instant of the wind waft- the cylinders of columns enchant me with their ing around monuments, the light shifting be- pure primordial spectacle. The fellow-feeling of tween clouds, the coming and going of people, bodies in the tangle of little mysteries, the acute often marked only by shadows on the canvas squares with their irresistible eye, the smooth like memories trapped in the brush of a figure, a ovolos with their precise shadows. The pathet- story entangled for a moment with other stories. ic memory of serene classical ages never finds De Pisis was curious, curious about life and the an outlet in the embarrassment of the present. profile of a city, curious about feelings, about Every recollection is extinguished. Bodies re- people and their emotions. For him, going out peat the spectral nature of the all-enveloping into the streets, in contact with people, was like mystery with their simplest essence”.4 a magnetic charge that prompted him to por- R . P. tray only the outward appearance of a corner of a neighbourhood, but his mood and char- 2 acter were those someone living there”. Foro 1 L. Cavallo, “La contaminazione vitale nell’opera Bonaparte thus presents one of the Milanese di Filippo de Pisis”, in L. Cavallo (edited by), views produced in accordance with his typi- Filippo de Pisis, exhibition catalogue, Florence: Galleria Il Castello, 1968. cal canons: subtraction rather than addition, 2 C. Gian Ferrari (edited by), De Pisis a Milano, forms never chosen at random and a lambent exhibition catalogue (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 13 June – 13 October), Milan: Mazzotta Editore, 1991, p. 18. atmosphere tempered by the grey shade of the 3 L. Cavallo, in Filippo de Pisis, cit., 1968. sky, which combines with the raw canvas to 4 Ibidem.

208 209 Francesco De Rocchi Popolana

32 Title Popolana [Young Peasant Woman] the wavy, glowing brushwork also reveals the Date 1933 influence of the painter’s Lombard roots and Technique oil on panel 19th-century naturalism in particular. Dimensions 93 × 65 cm The painting was chosen for an exhibition of bottom right: F. De Rocchi – 12.33 XII Italian art (Italienische Kunstausstellung) at the verso: Künstlerhaus in Vienna in the year of its com- 32v Title Nudo di donna (incompiuto) pletion. It was also shown in a show of Italian art [Female Nude (unachieved)] of the period 1915−35 organized in Florence by Date 1932 Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti in 1967.5 Technique oil on panel The unfinished female nude on the back [W. NO. 32V] Dimensions 93 × 65 cm was certainly painted before the Popolana and bears witness to the financial hardships of De Francesco De Rocchi moved in 1928 to Cislago, a Rocchi, like many of his contemporaries at the quiet but certainly not idyllic village in Lombardy, time, when the need to paint and the scarcity of where he completed the change in artistic ap- materials led to the reuse of supports already proach that he had had in mind for some time. bearing sketches or even completed works. The same year saw the start of portraits of R . P. simple people intent on performing their modest, everyday tasks (sowing seed, agricultural work, ironing and fishing) that Elena Pontiggia 1 E. Pontiggia, “Francesco De Rocchi. Il percorso della pittura”, in E. Pontiggia (edited by), Francesco 1 has called “the series of humble folk”. Remote De Rocchi 1902-1978, exhibition catalogue descendants of Impressionism, these works (Saronno, Casa Morandi, 12 October − 16 November 2002), Saronno: Città di Saronno, 2002, avoid dramatic accents and do not conceal el- pp. 15−25. ements of social concern or indeed protest. In 2 Ibidem. this painting of a young peasant, identified as 3 R. Giolli, “Cronache milanesi”, in Emporium, vol. LXIX, no. 411, Istituto Italiano di Arti Grafiche, the artist’s maid Cesarina, the apron, the hand Bergamo, March 1929, pp. 172−78. The note refers in the pocket and the unassuming pose are pri- to the 1929 Mostra del Sindacato [Exhibition of the Fascist Union], where De Rocchi presented marily symbols of “everyday toil, simplicity with Fantesca. Renzo Margonari regards this description no glory, innocence with no aims, cheered only as also applicable to other works such as this by the warmth of affection”.2 In painting these Popolana. See R. Margonari, R. Modesti (edited by), Il Chiarismo lombardo, exhibition catalogue figures, De Rocchi definitively broke away from (Milan, Palazzo Bagatti-Valsecchi, 6 October the Novecento group, as noted as early as 1929 − 16 November 1986), Milan, Vangelista: 1986, pp. 80−81. by Raffaello Giolli, who described his work as 4 G. Anzani, in G. Anzani, L. Caramel (edited by), “the most anti-classical, the most anti-Novecen- Pittura moderna in Lombardia 1990-1950, Milan: to […] the most anti-Latin”.3 De Rocchi appears Cariplo, 1983, p. 248. 5 See C. L. Ragghianti (edited by), Arte moderna indeed to draw on medieval and Byzantine in Italia 1915-1935, exhibition catalogue (Florence, sources rather than Roman, adopting a fres- Palazzo Strozzi, 26 February − 28 May 1967), Florence: Marchi e Bertolli, 1967. For a recent co-like style and an “archaism of figures” in appearance of the painting, see E. Pontiggia which Giovanni Anzani perceived “a romantic (edited by), Il Chiarismo. Omaggio a De Rocchi. Luce e colore a Milano negli anni trenta, exhibition and sentimental reading of Carrà’s most recent catalogue (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 16 June painting”.4 While eschewing bright colours, − 5 September 2010), Milan: Skira, 2010.

210 211 Angelo Del Bon Rocca delle Caminate n. 2

33 Title Rocca delle Caminate n. 2 edition of the Bergamo Prize, devoted that year Date 1935 to the Italian landscape. It was then repainted Technique oil on canvas so as to eliminate the scene of ploughing in the Dimensions 127 × 148 cm foreground [FIG. 1] (as emerges from comparison bottom left: A. Del Bon with the photograph in the Bergamo Prize catalogue) and renamed Rocca delle Caminate n. A pupil of Ambrogio Alciati, teacher of painting 2.4 It entered the collection of Bruno Grossetti, at the Accademia di Brera, Angelo Del Bon soon owner of the Galleria Annunciata and the first displayed a preference for nineteenth-century to represent the artist, who showed it in a ret- painting as produced by the masters, not the rospective in 1959. It was also shown recently “officially recognized landscapes large and in an exhibition on Milanese galleries during the small with stereotyped sunsets and goats foisted interwar period.5 off on the public”.1 His points of reference were R . P. Daniele Ranzoni, Piccio and Emilio Gola, whom he admired for his undisciplined brushwork and the clear light of his landscapes, capable of filling 1 A. Del Bon, “Risposta al referendum de the gap between “reality and its translation into ‘L’Ambrosiano’”, in L’Ambrosiano, Milan, 21 the artist’s individual dream”.2 Del Bon’s “liquid September 1938; now in E. Pontiggia (edited by), 3 Il chiarismo, Milan: Abscondita, 2006, p. 29. landscapes” include this Rocca delle Caminate, 2 G. Giani, Angelo Del Bon, Milan: Edizioni della a broad view of hills where the elements appear Conchiglia, 1961. to dissolve into some light, impalpable mate- 3 Ibidem. 4 See Primo Premio Bergamo. Mostra Nazionale rial so that even the few buildings immersed in del Paesaggio, exhibition catalogue (Bergamo, the vegetation become insubstantial. While the Palazzo della Ragione, September−October 1939), introduction by O. Sellani, Bergamo: Istituto Italiano brushstrokes can be elongated or quick and d’Arti Grafiche, 1939. short, it is in their timidity that the peculiarity of 5 See L. Sansone (edited by), Gallerie milanesi tra le one of the artist’s most interesting paintings lies. due guerre, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Fondazione Stelline, 24 February − 22 May 2016), Cinisello Del Bon presented the work in 1939 at the first Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2016.

1. Angelo Del Bon, Rocca della Caminate, 1935, first version

212 213 Nicola Galante Paese per la Casetta (Vasto)

34 Title Paese per la Casetta (Vasto) painting, developed above all through study of [Little House in the Country (Vasto)] the Impressionists and Cézanne, is encapsu- Date 1929 lated in the delicacy of this olive grove, where Technique oil on canvas the foliage of the trees seems to dissolve in the Dimensions 50 × 60 cm wind. bottom left: N. GALANTE 1929 R . P.

Nicola Galante’s Paese per la Casetta (Vasto) was shown in an exhibition held in Milan from 1 P. M. Bardi, 6 Pittori di Torino, VIII, Milan: Edizioni “Belvedere”, 1929. The exhibition catalogue, 16 to 26 November 1929 by Pier Maria Bardi in edited by Bardi himself, presents twenty-five agreement with Edoardo Persico to present the reproductions in black and white including the Iannaccone collection painting under the title Six Painters of Turin, a “group young in terms Paese per la Casetta (Vasto). Further confirmation is of age and of spirit”1 to the Milanese public. provided by the label of the Galleria Bardi (Galante and Jessie Boswell were slightly older on the back of the work. 2 For an exhaustive overview, see A. Bovero than the other members.) This event followed (edited by), Archivi dei sei pittori di Torino, Rome: the group’s debut at the Galleria Guglielmi in De Luca, 1965. 3 For the show at the Galleria Bardi, readers are again Turin and their show at the Circolo della Stampa referred to A. Bovero, Archivi..., cit., 1965, in Genoa2 but gave rise to greater outcry includ- pp. 126−61. ing physical protest on the part of some youths 4 “He began with woodcuts and graphic art is still perhaps the medium for which he is best suited. and considerable coverage in the press.3 This can be seen at the exhibition, where the group Carrà drew the correct distinctions between of drawings stands out.” C. Carrà, “Mostre milanesi. Sei pittori di Torino”, in L’Ambrosiano, y. VIII, no. the different personalities, drawing attention to 279, Milan, 22 November 1929, p. 3. Sironi also Galante’s graphic quality4 and the “sound re- noted the quality of the drawings, “some of which are very rich and dense”; M. [M. Sironi], “La mostra alism” of his landscapes and still lifes, whose dei ‘6’”, in Il Popolo d’Italia, y. XVI, no. 287, Milan, most precious gift was identified as “emotional 1 December 1929, p. 5. delicacy”.5 Viviani echoed these sentiments: 5 C. Carrà, Mostre..., cit., 1929. 6 R. Viviani, “Sei pittori di Torino”, in Il Mezzogiorno, “Lovingly capturing the serene effects of an ol- y. XII, no. 281, Naples, 24 November 1929, p. 3. ive grove and depicting trees and landscapes 7 Elena Pontiggia, in E. Pontiggia (edited by), Persico e gli artisti 1929-1936, exhibition catalogue with passion, Galante strikes no jarring or bom- (Milan, PAC, 11 June − 13 September 1998), bastic notes”.6 The “subdued lyricism”7 of his Milan: Electa, 1998, p. 99.

214 215 Tullio Garbari La famiglia

35 Title La famiglia [The Family] grapes, a symbol of natural fertility but also Date 1931 of the eucharistic sacrifice; the father’s stick Technique oil on canvas adorned with foliage, recalling the staff that Dimensions 65 × 80 cm blossomed to designate Joseph as the chosen husband of Mary; the dish, similar to a liturgical Painted by the artist a few months before his bowl, on which the sapiential words Nosce te death, this canvas is one of his absolute master- ipsum [Know thyself] are written in deliberately pieces as well as the loftiest peak of his reflec- clumsy script. tion on the family. The late twenties had already The mountains in the background allude to a seen a depiction of a farmer with spade and timeless Rhaetia or Trentino. The pose of the horse beside his wife, with a basket of fruit, and man, who seems to have one arm shorter or child (Allegoria della famiglia retica [Allegory of not very well connected to the hand, may be the Rhaetian Family]). While he had portrayed symbolic rather than dictated by spatial require- parents and children realistically in the setting ments. For Garbari, the guiding spirit and head of everyday life during the previous decade of the family was the woman, not the man. (Interno familiare [Family Interior] and Il desco The intense luminosity of the work comes from [The Dinner Table], 1916), the Allegoria present- the predominant use of white, verging in places ed the archetypal man and wife with child — he on ice blue, contrasting only with the black hair regarded the Rhaetians rather than the Celts as of the man and woman and the child’s angelic the earliest inhabitants of Trentino — in a time- blond hair. The influence of the thirteenth and less dimension. fourteenth-century masters visible in the faces The same holds for this Famiglia, where the with low foreheads (together with echoes of the monumentality and statuesque nobility of the Douanier’s Poet and His Muse) is combined figures portrayed half-length in the foreground with that of Italiens de Paris like De Chirico and emphasizes a sacrality suggested also by the Campigli, who also took an interest in dominant twofold significance of numerous elements: the whites at the beginning of the decade. fig, a secular and religious symbol of fecundity; E.P.

216 217 Renato Guttuso Natura morta con garofani e frutta Studio per “Ritratto di Mimise” Ritratto di Mimise

36 Title Natura morta con garofani e frutta writer Nino Savarese speaks of Guttuso’s the face. Now in the Guttuso Archives in Rome, [Still Life with Carnations and Fruit] “acute and open sense of colour”, as shown the work was shown in an exhibition of the art- Date 1938 in this painting, where the “white […] is a voice ist’s portraits and self-portraits in 2015 Museo Technique oil on pasteboard mounted that awakens something drowsing in the other Guttuso in Bagheria5 and has appeared recently on canvas things”.2 The presentation was also published in various other shows.6 Dimensions 47 × 54 cm in the Milanese journal Vita Giovanile. The art- R . P. bottom right: Guttuso 38 ist was already known in Milan, where he had verso: lived during his military service and then after 36v Title Studio per “Ritratto di Mimise” his discharge over the period 1935–36, when his 1 The catalogue lists the works on show as Natura morta di garofani e frutta, Paesaggi, Uomo che (incompiuto) [Study for “Portrait of contacts began with Renato Birolli, Aligi Sassu, dorme and Ritratto di signora. See N. Savarese Mimise” (unfinished]) Giacomo Manzù, Raffaele De Grada, Beniamino (edited by), Renato Guttuso, exhibition catalogue Date 1938 Joppolo and Duilio Morosini. He showed work in (Rome, Galleria della Cometa, 28 March – 8 April 1938), Rome: Edizioni della Cometa, 1938. See also Technique oil on pasteboard mounted the second Corrente exhibition in 1939. He had Galleria della Cometa. I cataloghi dal 1935 al 1938, on canvas already shown work in Milan at Ghiringhelli’s Rome: Edizioni della Cometa, 1989. 2 Renato Guttuso, cit., 1938. N. Savarese, “Pittura Dimensions 54 × 47 cm Galleria del Milione, first in the spring of 1932 di Renato Guttuso”, in Vita Giovanile, y. I, no. 7, 37 Title Ritratto di Mimise [Portrait of Mimise] with five other young Sicilian artists (Bevilacqua, Milan, 30 April 1938, [p. 4]. See the review by Date 1938 Castro, Corona, Giarrizzo and Lazzaro) and then Leonardo Sinisgalli, who described them as artists “full of the devil”; L. Sinisgalli, “Quattro siciliani al Technique oil on cardboard mounted on in 1934 with Franchina, Barbera and Pasqualino ‘Milione’”, in L’Italia Letteraria, y. V, Rome, 9 June canvas Noto. This period saw a personal exploration of 1934. 3 E. Crispolti, “Introduzione a Guttuso”, in Catalogo Dimensions 70.6 × 50 cm colour described by Enrico Crispolti as charac- ragionato generale dei dipinti di Renato Guttuso, terized by “an expressionistic acceleration of vol. I, Milan: Giorgio Mondadori & Associati, 1983, pp. XXIII–CCXXIII. A roughly sketched and partially obliterated ignition” developed through “contrasts of bold 4 R. Guttuso, “Necessità della naturalezza”, in portrait of Mimise, the woman Guttuso met in reciprocal impact” between the fiery reds and L’Appello, Palermo, 14 March 1937; R. Guttuso, 1937 and was later to marry, was found on the browns and the blues, whites and yellows.3 This “Arte dei giovani”, in L’Appello, 26 June 1937. See E. Crispolti, “Introduzione a Guttuso”, back of his Natura morta con garofani e frutta. contrast creates in the work a particular emotive cit., 1983, pp. CXV–CXL. Examination of the marking of the pasteboard and psychological dimension in which colour 5 See F. Carapezza Guttuso, D. Favatella Lo Cascio (edited by), Guttuso: Ritratti e Autoritratti, exhibition has indeed revealed that he began to paint on still has the primary task, however, of shaping catalogue (Bagheria, Palermo, Museo Guttuso, the basis of what is today no more than an out- the figures and endowing them with volume. 18 April – 21 June 2015), Cava de’ Tirreni: Ediguida, line. This suggests that the artist, dissatisfied This period saw an interest in the portrait and 2015. 6 Guttuso, 1912-2012, (Rome, Complesso del with the work, left it unfinished and reused the the psychological dimension of the subject as Vittoriano, 12 October 2012 – 10 February 2013), support for a still life of the flowers and fruit well as his or her physical presence. Ritratto catalogue edited by F. Carapezza Guttuso, E. Crispolti, Milan: Skira, 2012; Sassu e Corrente that Mimise was shown holding and that were di Mimise marked in fact the start of Guttuso’s 1930-1943. La rivoluzione del colore (Chieti, then to appear in the definitive version of the fully realistic period, what he called a “poetics Palazzo de’ Mayo, 25 July – 7 October 2012), portrait. Natura morta di garofani e frutta was of naturalness”.4 Holding the fruit in an almost catalogue edited by E. Pontiggia, A. Paglione, Turin: Allemandi, 2012; Renato Guttuso - Immaginazione among the works selected by Guttuso for his maternal embrace, Mimise appears like a mod- realistica. Opere dagli anni ’30 agli anni ’70 first solo show, inaugurated in April 1938 at the ern divinity, a new Juno, goddess of the family (Castelbasso, Fondazione Malvina Menegaz, 2 July – 31 August 2011), catalogue edited by F. Poli, Galleria della Cometa, owned by the Contessa and abundance. Once again, Guttuso displays Castelbasso: Fondazione Malvina Menegaz per Pecci Blunt.1 The presentation by the Sicilian his flair for colour, especially in the scarf framing le arti e le culture, 2011.

218 219 36v

220 221 Renato Guttuso Ritratto di Mario Alicata

38 Title Ritratto di Mario Alicata Guttuso produced between 1940 and ’43”.1 the exhibitions of 2012 (Sassu e Corrente 1930- [Portrait of Mario Alicata] Guttuso painted the portrait of Mario Alicata in 1943. La rivoluzione del colore, curated by Date 1940 1940 in his new studio on Via Pompeo Magno, Elena Pontiggia and Alfredo Paglione),8 and Technique oil on canvas “always crowded with friends […] standing, sit- 2015 (Guttuso: Ritratti e Autoritratti, curated by Dimensions 55 × 45 cm ting wherever possible, lying on the floor, and Fabio Carapezza Guttuso, Dora Favatella Lo bottom right: a Mario / Guttuso all talking while Renato painted and took part Cascio) at the Museo Guttuso in Bagheria.9 in the conversation”.2 The work demonstrates R . P. Renato Guttuso began to take an interest in his ability to capture the subject realistically portraiture in the early thirties, when he pro- while maintaining a veil of privacy, as is evident 1 G. Testori, “Guttuso dalla ‘Fuga dall’Etna’ al duced numerous paintings of friends and com- here in Alicata’s tense, elusive expression. The ‘Gott mit Uns’“, in R. Longhi (edited by), Renato panions. His attention focused not only on the painting also shows a further development in Guttuso. Mostra antologica dal 1931 ad oggi, exhibition catalogue (Parma, Galleria Nazionale, physiognomic and psychological aspects of his exploration of colour, restricted to a few pre- 15 December 1963 – 31 January 1964), Milan: the faces but also on the realistic element, the dominant hues violently combined and applied Amilcare Pizzi, 1963, pp. 21–33. “thing”, as an expression of intellectual hones- in broad, clearly-defined expanses reminiscent 2 M. Valsecchi, “Sono curioso e se potessi andrei volentieri sulla luna”, interview with Renato Guttuso, 3 ty and truth. As Giovanni Testori pointed out, of “plating”. Mino Rosi draws attention to the in Tempo, y. XXVI, no. 5, Milan, 1 February 1964, “The portrait too, or indeed the portrait more use of chromatic contrasts for expressive pur- [p. 24]. 3 E. Crispolti, Catalogo Ragionato Generale dei than any other work, bears witness to Guttuso’s poses, justifying the violent, discordant combi- Dipinti di Renato Guttuso, vol. I, Milan: Giorgio utter concentration on the object, the thing, nation of two opposing colours as an “essential Mondadori, 1983, p. LXVIII. in that objects and things, be they pieces of need to escape from all kinds of new academic 4 M. Rosi, “Prefazione a Renato Guttuso”, in Il Campano, no. 1-2, Pisa, January– February 1942, flesh, cheeks or chins captured in an impetus conformism and discover new allusions of vo- pp. 14–17. of superb modern anatomy, are truths that he cabulary allowed to pure colour”.4 It may ap- 5 Brera mai vista. Renato Guttuso 1940. Il Ritratto di Alberto Moravia, Milan: Skira editore, 2011, p. 42. regards as impossible to alienate, burn and pear odd that Guttuso, who had no interest in 6 See Mostra antologica dell’opera di Renato destroy, the ultimate, extreme truth. It would be reflection on the human identity, should have Guttuso, exhibition catalogue (Palermo, Palazzo easy at this point to establish a link between devoted such constant attention to portraiture. dei Normanni, 13 February – 14 March 1971), texts by L. Sciascia, F. Russoli, F. Grasso, Palermo: the terrible anxiety to preserve this entity and This is to be seen as connected with the anal- Banco di Sicilia, 1971, p. 35. sacrality of the object and the dreadful events ysis of friends with a particular story to tell or 7 Renato Guttuso, exhibition catalogue (Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris et Section A.R.C., of that time, so easy (and logical) indeed that an important experience of life bearing witness 30 September – 1 November 1971), texts by A. all attentive readers will have already done so to friendship. “Many years later, Moravia put Del Guercio, J. Lassaigne, Paris: Musée d’Art without any prompting from me. For my part, I forward a psychological interpretation of the Moderne, 1971, p. 86. 8 See E. Pontiggia, A. Paglione (edited by), Sassu can say that I know few portraits in the entire painter and wrote that Guttuso identified sub- e Corrente 1930-1943. La rivoluzione del colore, history of art in which somatic resemblance and stantially with what he painted.”5 Guttuso ded- exhibition catalogue (Chieti, Palazzo de’ Mayo, 25 July – 7 October 2012), Turin: Allemandi, 2012. the absence of psychological anxiety are so icated the work as a gift to his friend Alicata. 9 See F. Carapezza Guttuso, D. Favatella Lo Cascio combined and interwoven to create an emblem- It was shown twice in 1971, first in Palermo6 (edited by), Guttuso: Ritratti e Autoritratti, exhibition atic physicality, a desperately linked accumula- and then in Paris,7 on the occasion of two ret- catalogue (Bagheria, Palermo, Museo Guttuso, 18 April – 21 June 2015), Cava de’ Tirreni: Ediguida, tion of object details in a new object, as those rospectives. More recent appearances include 2015.

1. Renato Guttuso, Tre amici nello studio, circa 1940. Rome, private collection

222 223 Renato Guttuso La finestra blu Gabbia bianca e foglie

39 Title La finestra blu [The Blue Window] focused and the settings barely sketched so as reality of a struggle, hope, victory and compas- Date 1940−41 to concentrate attention on the objects, piled up sion.” The work was owned by the collector and Technique oil on canvas on the table in apparently haphazard composi- patron of the arts Alberto Della Ragione, who Dimensions 45 × 50 cm tions that Guttuso actually assembled carefully supported Guttuso in his work in the late thirties bottom right: Guttuso in his studio and then painted in constantly var- and paid him a fixed sum in return for exclusive 40 Title Gabbia bianca e foglie ying combinations. This interest in the concrete, rights to his paintings. It was shown in Parma in [White Cage and Leaves] physical appearance of things is indicative of the 1963 in an exhibition curated by Roberto Longhi9 Date 1940−41 ever-greater need felt by the artist for realism and more recently in the Eataly pavilion of the Technique oil on canvas during the war, albeit without abandoning meta- 2015 Milan Expo on the occasion of the exhibi- Dimensions 45 × 55 cm phor. The “things” appear to be real and symbol- tion “Il tesoro d’Italia”. Storia, geografia e biodi- bottom right: Guttuso ic at the same time: “The object, forged in fiery versità dell’arte italiana.10 heat, no longer counts in terms of weight and R . P. The early forties were “an odd period. What was volume but takes on the value of a symbol and happening was happening but people wanted is at the same time a real thing, the story of con- 6 the same old paintings produced for the dining tent developing in Italian life”. In Finestra blu the 1 E. Vittorini, Storia di Renato Guttuso e nota room or sitting room or faux sacristy now ac- red flag, which appears in numerous works and congiunta sulla pittura contemporanea, Milan: 1 Edizioni Del Milione, 1960. cepted as such”. For Renato Guttuso, on the is featured here in the foreground, takes on the 2 Ibidem. contrary, a painting had to “reflect what was symbolic role of hope rather than violence.7 The 3 A. Del Guercio, La spiaggia di Renato Guttuso, happening”.2 This led to the start of “long and spiral-shaped, opaline bottle is instead drawn Rome: Editalia, 1956. 4 E. Crispolti, “Introduzione a Guttuso. Per una sua acute observation of real things, interrupted only from the compositions of Giorgio Morandi [FIG. ‘poetica’”, in E. Crispolti (edited by), Catalogo by the urgent need to reconstruct them as living 1] and Filippo de Pisis [FIG. 2], with whom Guttuso Ragionato Generale dei dipinti di Renato Guttuso, 3 Milan: Mondadori & Associati, 1983, pp. XXXV presences on the canvas”. The rich series of still has “a dialectical relationship”, like the rest of his –LXXXVII. lifes born out of this became “the basic guiding generation: “although he [Morandi] was seen for 5 F. Grasso, “La vita e l’opera di Guttuso”, in thread of Guttuso’s mature realism”4. The artist what he was, a great, solitary artist detached A. Moravia, Renato Guttuso, Palermo: Edizioni Il Punto, 1962. drew on the volumetric distortion of Cubism — from and hostile to the Novecento school, we 6 E. Crispolti, “Introduzione a Guttuso. Dal realismo being clearly influenced by Picasso’s Guernica also saw him as the symbol of a general situa- del sentimento al realismo sociale 1924–1953,”, in Catalogo..., cit., 1983, pp. LXXXIX–CCXXXII. [FIG. 8, P. 133] 8 , a photograph of which he kept in tion of reductionism”. The citation of Morandi is 7 E. Crispolti, Leggere Guttuso, Milan: Arnoldo his wallet — but without going to extremes of in fact accompanied by two far more “plebeian” Mondadori, 1987, p. 72. accentuation. The forms produced were closed flasks that evoke an everyday dimension and 8 R. Guttuso, “Omaggio a Morandi”, now in G. Cortenova, E. Mascelloni (edited by), Guttuso, and compact despite their slight distortion. His Guttuso’s need to recount life. In addition to the 50 anni di pittura, exhibition catalogue (Verona, intimate, everyday interiors are inhabited by motif of the cage, always empty and here sym- Palazzo Forti, 29 July – 15 October 1987), Milan: Mazzotta, 1987. objects whose physical substance is almost bolically open, a metaphor of escape and lib- 9 See R. Longhi (edited by), Renato Guttuso. Mostra tangible, not least as a result of his robust, res- eration, Gabbia bianca e foglie includes further antologica dal 1931 ad oggi, exhibition catalogue olute brushstrokes “laden with explosive ma- elements of his iconography like a misshapen (Parma, Palazzo della Pilotta, 15 December 1963 – 31 January 1964), Milan: Amilcare Pizzi, 1963. terial”.5 The physicality of the objects is also jug, autumn leaves, a white tablecloth and, as 10 See V. Sgarbi (edited by), “Il tesoro d’Italia”. Storia, underscored by sharply defined expanses of always, in the background the red of which Pier geografia e biodiversità dell’arte italiana, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Padiglione Eataly-Expo Milano bold, glowing colour manifesting its expressive Paolo Pasolini wrote: “Your red, Guttuso, will go 2015, 1 May – 21 October 2015), Cinisello Balsamo: potential in the strident contrast of pure tonali- down in history like a river that disappeared in Silvana Editoriale, 2015. In the last few years the oil painting has been also shown in see Guttuso, ties, full-bodied, vigorous yellows, bright reds the desert. Your red will be the red of the worker, 1912-2012, 2013; Renato Guttuso - Immaginazione and deep blues. The views are often narrowly the red of the poet, the only red signifying the realistica. Opere dagli anni ’30 agli anni ’70, 2011.

1. Giorgio Morandi, Bottiglie e fruttiera 2. Filippo de Pisis, Il ventaglio, 1941. Varese, (Natura morta), 1916. Venice, Gianni Mattioli collection, private collection on temporary loan to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

224 225 Renato Guttuso Ritratto di Antonino Santangelo

41 Title Ritratto di Antonino Santangelo the years, was loaned in 1981 for the exhibition [Portrait of Antonino Santangelo] Guttuso. Opere dal 1931 al 1981 at Palazzo 1 E. Crispolti, Catalogo ragionato generale dei Dipinti Date 1942 Grassi in Venice by the writer Fausta Mancini di Renato Guttuso, vol. I, Milan: Giorgio Mondadori, Milan, 1983, p. 121. Technique oil on canvas Lapenna, widow of the collector Mancini, who 2 R. Longhi, “In memoriam: Antonino Santangelo”, Technique 100 × 70 cm addressed it in a moving letter of accompani- in Paragone, y. XVI, Florence, May 1965. upper left: Guttuso 43 [dated ment: “I said goodbye to you yesterday morn- 3 The painting appeared over ten years later in a solo show at the Galleria Bergamini in Milan during the 1 subsequently by the artist] ing as though I would never see you again. summer of 1981, when Giovanni Testori wrote an The soft, shiny shroud of white plastic in which article on the portrait describing it as “one of the masterpieces of modern Italian painting and indeed This half-length portrait shows Antonino they wrapped you protected you from possible of all the painting of these tragic years”. See G. Santangelo seated and leaning forward with bumps during the journey. Men far too strong Testori, “Arte: un ritratto di Guttuso. Capolavoro his arms resting on his legs. The almost dispro- for your light fragility loaded you into the van nella calura”, in Corriere della Sera, y. 106, no. 161, Milan, 12 July 1981, p. 3. portionately large hands hold a half-open book but their smile was kind and their soft Venetian 4 As attested by Guttuso in an autograph note on the whose pages may hold the reason for his grim accent was reassuring, as were their gestures, back (“Guttuso. Proprietà Galleria Spiga; via Spiga 9, Milano”). The inscription also indicates the price and concerned but almost resigned expres- well trained to handle masterpieces. Though of 16,000 lire, which is, however, completely out of sion. The likeness is extraordinary. As Roberto the journey you had to make was neither long line with the prices of between 1,000 and 2,000 lire Longhi wrote in the his obituary: “Anyone wish- nor perilous, I was soothed by requesting to be paid by the Galleria della Spiga at the time. See M. Valsecchi, “La collezione Alberto Della Ragione”, ing to see him entire in all his aspects need only informed of your safe arrival at Palazzo Grassi in La raccolta Alberto Della Ragione, texts by look at the portrait painted by Guttuso in 1942. […] I contemplated you for a long time that last C. L. Ragghianti, M. Valsecchi, Florence: Stiav, 1970. The reference is more probably to the Not least by virtue of its exceptional likeness, evening before we parted […] For many (but purchase of the work by the collector Alberto this will always help us to remember Antonino not for us), you are a beautiful but sad paint- Mancini. Santangelo and hand on his memory to those ing; for others (but not for us), a good piece of 5 For Alberto Mancini and his collection, see La collezione Mancini, exhibition catalogue to come”.2 Shown sitting in a room with a door business; for the dealers and fashionable critics (June–July), Trieste: Galleria Torbandena, 1965. recalling the bars of a prison cell, Santangelo (but not for us), an unexplored financial dimen- 6 See M. Vescovo, N. Vespignani (edited by), Le Capitali d’Italia. Torino-Roma 1911-1946, reminded Giovanni Testori of a St Jerome by sion; for many friends (but not for us), a real exhibition catalogue (Turin, Palazzo Bricherasio; Caravaggio, “to the point where we can almost stroke of luck. For us, you have meant suffering. Stupinigi, Palazzina di Caccia, 4 December 1997 – 22 March 1998), Milan: Electa, 1997. make out the memento mori of a skull at his You have been the testimony of our conscience. 7 V. Guzzi, “Pittori alla IV Quadriennale”, in Primato, feet”.3 Alberto Della Ragione ensured that the You have been the always unsuccessful and al- y. IV, no. 11, Rome, 1 June 1943, pp. 205–08. portrait was bought by the Galleria della Spiga ways repeated investigation of the mystery of 8 G. Castelfranco, “Sguardo alla giovane scuola romana dal 1930 al 1945”, in G. Castelfranco, 4 e Corrente. It then entered the collection of art, in which you play a leading role. And you D. Durbé (edited by), VIII Quadriennale Nazionale Alberto Mancini5 in 1943 on the occasion of the represent our inner struggle, torn between the d’Arte di Roma, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, 28 dicembre 1959 Rome Quadrennial. Private collectors played a responsibility we feel to protect you from the - 30 aprile 1960), Rome: De Luca, 1960, p. 19. crucial part in this edition of the Quadrennial curse of money and the duty imposed upon 9 F. Mancini Lapenna, “Lettera a Nino Santangelo”, because the possible public purchasers had al- us not to deprive others of an example of the in Guttuso. Opere 1982, pp. 136-137, no. 29. 10 E. Pontiggia, A. Paglione (edited by), Sassu ready invested most of their funds in the war ef- greatness that art can attain. You know that I e Corrente 1930-1943. La rivoluzione del colore, fort. Oppo therefore placed Stefano Cairola, the said goodbye to you the other morning as you exhibition catalogue (Chieti, Palazzo de’ Mayo, 25 July – 7 October 2012), Turin: Allemandi, 2012. most active and up-to-date dealer of the peri- do to a friend you may not see again, because I 11 F. Carapezza Guttuso, E. Crispolti (edited by), od, in charge of sales.6 Guttuso showed twelve am old. My days are numbered and the light of Guttuso, 1912-2012, exhibition catalogue works on the wall assigned to him. According to my eyes is going out. And you know that before (Rome, Complesso del Vittoriano, 12 October 2012 – 10 February 2013), Milan: Skira, 2012. one review, “Despite the stridency of his chro- deciding to expose you to the often (all too of- matic combinations, Picasso-like stylization ten) avid, calculating gaze of the crowd that will and mechanical composition, what sustains throng the rooms of Palazzo Grassi, totting up Guttuso and makes him new is the need for the millions and billions, I talked once more to pathos, the pursuit of character and objectivity. the memory of Alberto. And that he was the one The portrait of Santangelo is a far more persua- who convinced me that the twofold message sive document than the large Donna alla fine- of you and of Guttuso — who spoke some of stra [Woman at the Window] or the ornamental the noblest words of his art in you and reached and somewhat improvised sketches with hors- the dizzying heights — had to be present in es”.7 In 1960 Giorgio Castelfranco voiced his re- Venice. I hope I have not made a mistake”.9 gret at not being able to include the work in his In 2012 the work appeared in the exhibitions exhibition of the Roman School: “I have been Sassu e Corrente 1930–1943. La rivoluzione del unable to track down some of what I consider colore, curated by Elena Pontiggia and Alfredo the most extraordinary works of this period, Paglione,10 and Guttuso, 1912–2012, curated by like the portrait of Antonino Santangelo”.8 The Fabio Carapezza Guttuso and Enrico Crispolti.11 work, which has appeared in major shows over R . P.

1. Photograph of Renato Guttuso with the Portrait of Antonino Santangelo behind him

226 227 Renato Guttuso Autoritratto

42 Title Autoritratto [Self-Portrait] work.8 Guttuso was very attached to this draw- Date 1936 ing and wrote a signed note on the back to the Technique India ink on paper effect that it was not for sale (“Non in vendita – Dimensions 450 × 320 mm Guttuso”). He only parted with it in fact as a gift bottom right: Guttuso 36 to Enrico Brambilla Pisoni, his physician and a great collector. The drawing was shown in vari- While the jagged, broken lines of Renato ous Italian cities during the eighties in Guttuso Guttuso’s self-portrait recall the painting of El nel disegno. Anni Venti/Ottanta, a touring exhi- Greco,1 this formal agitation is at variance with bition of the painter’s graphic art from the twen- the frame of mind reflected in the artist’s reso- ties to the eighties.9 lute, aware expression. Attention is focused on R . P. the face and hand — the right, with which he works — caught in mid-air as though awaiting inspiration. “Guttuso’s hands never rest emp- 1 E. Pontiggia, in E. Pontiggia, N. Colombo (edited by), Milano anni Trenta. L’arte e la città, exhibition ty in the air. They are the hands of a dogged, catalogue (Milan, Spazio Oberdan, 2 December disturbed draughtsman” for whom drawing “is 2004 − 27 February 2005), Milan: Mazzotta, 2004, p. 202. a habit, a need, a tic. He feels the urgency of 2 O. Patani, in Seconda biennale internazionale the moment of truth in drawing itself”.2 The au- della grafica / Firenze – la grafica tra le due guerre tograph inscription and signature on the back 1918/1939, exhibition catalogue (Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, 30 April − 29 June 1970, Florence: 3 of the label leave no doubt as to its given date Edizioni Unione Fiorentina, 1970, pp. 157−58. of 1936, even though Mario De Micheli4 and 3 The following inscription appears on the back 5 in the upper right corner: “Studio per autoritratto Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti have suggested fatto nella mia casa di Bagheria nell’estate del ’36” that it was produced two years earlier, imme- [Study for a self-portrait executed at my home in diately after his Roman period. De Micheli Bagheria in teh summer of ’36]. 4 See M. De Micheli, Guttuso, Milan: Edizioni Seda, bases his argument in particular on the type of 1963, [p. 47]; now in M. De Micheli, Guttuso, paper used by Guttuso, which probably bears Milan: E.I.T., 1966, p. 39. 5 Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti does not discuss the 6 the name of his surveyor father on the back, work but the date of 1934 is given in the caption and on the “style and taste of the drawing”,7 of a photograph appearing in C. L. Ragghianti, supposedly influenced by his stay in Rome, “Guttuso”, in Sele Arte, y. XI, no. 64, Florence, July−August 1963, p. 16. when he met Corrado Cagli, Mirko Basaldella 6 The inscription is no longer visible due to cutting and Pericle Fazzini. It is, however, improbable of the left part. 7 M. De Micheli, Guttuso, cit., 1963. that the artist would have dated a drawing, a 8 The similarity “in the pose of the right arm and the work rarely taken up again afterwards due to leanness of the figure” prompted Elena Pontiggia to suggest that it was a study for a self portrait the immediate character of the technique, two with mask (Autoritratto con maschera, location years later. Moreover, the position of the body, unknown), a work painted in Milan and not in seated in three-quarter view with respect to the Bagheria, as indicated by the artist in the inscription (see note 3 above). See E. Pontiggia, N. Colombo viewer, suggests the possibility of a study for (edited by), Milano..., cit., 2004. the Autoritratto con sciarpa e ombrello [Self- 9 E. Crispolti (edited by), Guttuso nel disegno. Anni Venti/Ottanta, exhibition catalogue [FIG. 1] Portrait with Scarf and Umbrella] of 1936, (Reggio Emilia, Festa dell’“Unità”, 1–18 September thus again supporting the given date of the 1983), Rome: Edizioni Oberon, 1983, pp. 26−27.

1. Renato Guttuso, Autoritratto con sciarpa e ombrello, 1936. Private collection

228 229 Carlo Levi Ritratto di donna

43 Title Ritratto di donna [Female Portrait] of colour, as attested here by the red hands.3 Date 1932−33 This detail is also to be found in paintings of the Technique oil on canvas same period like Uomo col guanto nero (Eroe Dimensions 60 × 50 cm cinese) [Man in a Black Glove (Chinese Hero)] [FIG. 1, P. 252] and the portrait of Leone Ginzburg The period 1932−33 was a highly productive (one of the founders of Giustizia e Libertà, ar- one for Carlo Levi, as attested by the cata- rested in 1934 for antifascist activities together logue of works published in Carlo Ludovico with Levi). Ragghianti’s monograph, which includes a The work remained in the artist’s possession long series of portraits.1 It also saw numerous until his death and was shown for the first time trips to Paris, the first having been made in in Carlo Levi. La realtà e lo specchio, the ex- 1928, for reasons connected not only with his hibition organized by the Fondazione Carlo profession as an artist but also and above all Levi at the Galleria Russo di Roma, which has with his activity as an intermediary between the historical links with the painter.4 It entered the antifascists in exile there and those in Italy. In Iannaccone collection the same year. France, while continuing to work for the journal A.A. of the Giustizia e Libertà movement, Levi held his first solo show in Paris at the Galerie Jeune Europe featuring thirty-five works.2 1 C. L. Ragghianti, Carlo Levi, with a previously unpublished text by Carlo Levi, Ed. U, 1948. For Levi’s This Ritratto di donna is evidently influenced by portraits, see Carlo Levi. Galleria di ritratti, exhibition expressionist painting and especially the works catalogue (Rome, Fondazione Carlo Levi, 8 March − 26 November 2000), Pomezia: Meridiana Libri, 2000. of Soutine and Kokoschka, as seen in the use 2 Accompanied by an invitation with a list of the of quick, fluid, wavy brushstrokes. The face and works and a presentation by Antonio Aniante, body appear to float against a background whol- the show took place in June 1932. The same month saw the publication of two articles by Levi in ly devoid of spatial characteristics and meld Quaderni di Giustizia e Libertà: “In morte di Claudio with it in broad, thickly laden strokes. In this as Treves e Piero Gobetti” and “Rivoluzione liberale”. 3 A. Lavorgna, “Catalogo”, in Fondazione Carlo Levi in other works of the early thirties, having now (edited by), Carlo Levi. La realtà e lo specchio, abandoned the lyrical, intimist tone of his work exhibition catalogue (Rome, Galleria Russo, 20 November − 12 December 2014), Rome: as one of the Six Painters of Turin (1929−31), Palombi, 2014, p. 84. the artist relies wholly on the expressive power 4 Ibidem.

230 231 Carlo Levi Nudo sdraiato

44 Title Nudo sdraiato [Reclining Nude] the composition diagonally. This accentuated Date 1934 expressionism is further justified by repeated Technique oil on canvas contact between the artist and his Roman col- Dimensions 92 × 73.5 cm leagues, which began in 1931 with the exhibition of works by Levi, Francesco Menzio and Enrico Painted three years after the Six Painters of Turin Paulucci at the first Rome Quadrennial and disbanded — the end of this experience was found crucial support in Pier Maria Bardi and his marked by an exhibition organized by Lionello Galleria di Roma. Venturi in Paris at the Galerie Libraire Jeune The Nudo sdraiato that appeared in Levi’s solo Europe in 1931 — Nudo sdraiato is indicative show at the Galleria Genova in December 1936 of wholly personal developments in the painting can probably be identified as this work.5 of Carlo Levi. The period 1930–31 had already R . P. seen “the first and clear maturity of his artistic means”, as stated by Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti in the first catalogue-monograph on the artist1: 1 C. L. Ragghianti, Carlo Levi, with an unpublished “The value conquered is the brushstroke, a ve- essay by Carlo Levi, Florence: Edizioni U, 1948. The work can probably be identified on the basis hicle that conveys the motions of expression in of its measurements as the Nudo dormiente listed the most mature phase with exceptionally vital in the catalogue as work number 7, p. 48. 2 Ibidem. and now truly authentic capacity and power of 3 See the catalogue of the recent exhibition of Italian synthesis”.2 In the series of nudes produced pri- artists active in Paris in the closing decades of the or to his internment in Lucania, and especially nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, in which the painting was included: A. Piazzoli, the work considered here, Levi’s brushstroke P. S. Ubiali (edited by), Italiani a Parigi. Da Severini comes to life, becoming wavy and substantial. a Savinio, da De Chirico a Campigli. Precursori ed eredi, exhibition catalogue (Bergamo, Palazzo Colour predominates over composition and Storico Credito Bergamasco, 10–30 May 2014), constructs the figures in the non-plastic way Bergamo: Litostampa Istituto Grafico, 2014. 4 E. Pontiggia, “La spiritualità e la vita. Edoardo already developed by painters discovered by persico critico d’arte”, in E. Pontiggia (edited Levi in France, like Soutine and Pascin.3 The by), Persico e gli Artisti 1929-1936. Il percorso examples of Manet, the great master of the Six, di un critico dall’Impressionismo al Primitivismo, exhibition catalogue (Milan, PAC, 11 June – 13 and Modigliani (first admired in Italy, albeit with September 1998), Milan: Electa, 1998, pp. 13–39. some initial reservations, by Riccardo Gualino) 5 Mostra del pittore Carlo Levi, exhibition catalogue (Genoa, Galleria Genova, 1–16 December 1936), also appear to have influenced this nude “de- presentation by G. Ferrata, Genoa: Galleria Genova, void of anatomy”4 and arranged so as to cross 1936 (work no. 14).

232 233 Umberto Lilloni Uliveto ad Arenzano

45 Title Uliveto ad Arenzano of colour characteristic of the irregularity of na- [Olive Grove at Arenzano] ture, the végétal irrégulier so fiercely criticized Date 1931 by Margherita Sarfatti.6 Technique oil on canvas The work remained in the possession of the Dimensions 65 × 80 cm Lilloni family and was never shown until it en- bottom right: 193 lilloni 1931 tered the Iannaccone collection in 19957 and was included the following year in a retrospec- By 1931, when he painted Uliveto ad Arenzano, tive on Chiarismo curated by Elena Pontiggia.8 Umberto Lilloni was already recognized by R . P. some critics and had established the basic principles of his art.1 His first solo show took place 1 Lilloni was the joint winner with Virginio Ghiringhelli in 1929 at the Galleria Bardi in Milan, which also of the Principe Umberto Prize at the Brera Biennial published the first monograph on his work.2 in 1927, commended also by Margherita Sarfatti, and took part in the Venice Biennial for the first time Two years after the show, Pier Maria Bardi iden- the following year. tified the new elements in Lilloni’s painting: 2 P. M. Bardi, Umberto Lilloni, Milan: Edizioni “The painter has since become gentler through “Belvedere”, 1929. The show took place at the Galleria Bardi in Milan in the period November− pauses with an aura of enchantment. His col- December 1929. See L. Sansone (edited by), our is cleaner and as though dematerialized. Le gallerie milanesi tra le due guerre, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Fondazione Stelline, 24 February Lilloni thus enters into a contest with nature in − 22 May 2016), Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana an attempt to surpass it, demanding textures so Editoriale, 2016 (the painting by Lilloni being among light as to be dreamlike. On obtaining what was the works exhibited). 3 P. M. Bardi, “Bogliardi, Ghiringhelli, Lilloni”, requested, he sets about making it still more in L’Ambrosiano, y. X, no. 304, Milan, 24 December lightweight, flimsy and tentative with airy brush- 1931, p. 3. 4 M. Lepore, in M. Lepore, M. Monteverdi (edited strokes filled with the ardour and anguish of the by), Lilloni. La vita e le opere, Milan: Editrice Ponte heart”.3 Rosso, 1963. This gradual dematerialization, which character- 5 R. Modesti, in Pittura italiana contemporanea, Milan: Antonio Vallardi, 1958, pp. 122−23. izes in particular the coastal views of Liguria and 6 E. Pontiggia, in Sognare la natura. Il paesaggio the familiar town of Medole, always painted en nell’arte a Milano dal novecento all’informale (1919-1959), exhibition catalogue (Mantua, Casa plein air, create a magical, fairytale atmosphere del Mantegna; Medole, Torre Civica, 4 September indicative of his modest, discreet approach to − 31 October 1999), Mantua: Edizioni Casa del Mantegna, 1999, p. 17. nature. Even the square, linear buildings lose 7 Giuseppe Iannaccone bought the work from their hardness in “timid, bashful intimacy”4 sof- the Galleria Schubert in Milan, whose owner was tened by light and airy colours. With his “min- Adele Lilloni, the artist’s daughter. 8 See E. Pontiggia (edited by), I chiaristi. Milano 5 ute brushwork”, Lilloni broke away definitively e l’Alto Mantovano negli anni Trenta, exhibition from the Novecento approach to landscape, catalogue (Medole, Torre Civica; Volta Mantovana, Scuderie di Palazzo Cavriani - Castiglione delle above all in terms of “philosophical attitude”, Stiviere, Galleria del Santuario, 14 April returning in Uliveto ad Arenzano to the patches − 2 June 1996), Milan: Mazzotta, 1996.

234 235 Mario Mafai Strada con casa rossa

46 Title Strada con casa rossa Europe”.3 The sky illuminates the entire compo- as close and slender as a bunch of ferns, trees [Street with Red House] sition with its glowing colours. The visual ful- that anyone ignorant of Mafai’s work could al- Date 1928 crum is the red building glimpsed at the end of most suspect of primitivism”.6 It also appeared Technique oil on canvas a curving lane, among trees only just held back in 1984 in a show at the Studio Sotis in Rome.7 Dimensions 38 × 38.5 cm by a low wall, which looks almost unreachable. The back presents a face in profile against a bottom left: Mafai 28 The same view appears in Antonietta Raphaël’s background [W. NO. 46V] painted by Mafai in the verso: Passeggiata archeologica [Archaeological same year as Strada con casa rossa. 46v Title Ritratto [Portrait] Promenade] [FIG. 2],4 where the expressionism R . P. Date circa 1928 is still more accentuated and the perspective Technique oil on canvas flattened and distorted. While Mafai eliminated Dimensions 38.5 × 38 cm the detail of the domes in the distance, Raphaël 1 M. Mafai, Diario 1926-1965, edited by G. Appella, Rome: Edizioni della Cometa, 1984, p. 30. included them with slightly Russian overtones. 2 Ibidem, p. 37. “I like to highlight the landscape in a slightly fan- Strada con casa rossa entered the collection 3 R. De Grada, “Gli anni della formazione”, in La pittura tastic way, to give everything, the trees, hills and of the musician Alfredo Casella, who noted “in di Mafai, Rome: Editrice Tevere, 1969, pp. 10−32. 4 The canvas by Antonietta Raphaël, formerly part valleys, their own dreamy, almost incorporeal the limpid sky of the young Mafai the crystal- of the Jesi collection, is now in the Pinacoteca di life”.1 Mafai’s romantic visions were born out of line, fifteentth-century atmosphere of Mercurio Brera in Milan. See F. Fergonzi, “Collezione Jesi”, in Pinacoteca di Brera. Dipinti dell’Ottocento e walks through the Forum with his wife Antonietta e i metafisici [Mercury and the Metaphysicians] del Novecento. Collezioni dell’Accademia e della Raphaël and friend Scipione. Like a “hunter with [FIG. 1]”, a painting by Giorgio de Chirico already Pinacoteca, vol. II, Milan: Electa, 1994, p. 785. pencil in hand”,2 he captured what he saw in in his possession.5 5 V. Rivosecchi, in M. Fagiolo dell’Arco (edited by), Scuola Romana. Artisti tra le due guerre, exhibition lightning sketches that he then reworked in his The painting can be identified as the landscape catalogue (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 13 April studio on Via Cavour. The early views of Rome, shown in 1939 at the Rome Quadrennial on the − 19 June 1988), Milan: Mazzotta, 1988, p. 59. 6 C. Brandi, “Mafai all’Arcobaleno”, in Le Arti, y. II, including Strada con casa rossa (1928) display basis of the description given by Cesare Brandi: vol. XVIII, fasc. I, Florence: Le Monnier, the artist’s attempt to take refuge in an intimate, “[...] a landscape chosen almost as though to October−November 1939, p. 44. romantic dimension and create an alternative elude the terms in which his painting now de- 7 See D. Trombadori (edited by), Per Mario Mafai, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Studio Sotis), Rome: to the “angular landscape of twentieth-century velops, a little pink building hemmed in by trees De Luca, 1984.

1. Giorgio de Chirico, Mercurio e i metafisici, 1920. Private collection

2. Antonietta Raphaël, Passeggiata archeologica, 1928. 46v Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera, Jesi collection

236 237 Mario Mafai Tramonto sul Lungotevere Tramonto su Roma

47 Title Tramonto sul Lungotevere [Lazio branch of the Fascist Union of Fine Arts] [Sunset on the Lungotevere] in 1929. Roberto Longhi wrote as follows in Date 1929 his review: “The border of that dark, disrupt- Technique oil on plywood ed zone where decrepit impressionism turns Dimensions 41.3 × 50.8 cm into expressionistic hallucination, cabala and bottom right: Mafai Mario 1929 magic is in fact the precise location of Mafai’s 48 Title Tramonto su Roma turbulent villages of bacterial virulence, whose [Sunset over Rome] overheated temperature could suggest the work Date 1941 of a home-grown Raoul Dufy”.3 Scipione was Technique oil on panel very enthusiastic about the exhibition and told Dimensions 24 × 34 cm his friend Marino Mazzacurati about the “great bottom right: mafai 41 uproar” caused by Mafai’s work.4 Purchased by Principessa Marguerite Caetani di Bassiano, the Tramonto sul Lungotevere (1929) definitively painting was then shown in the retrospective or- marks the transition in Mario Mafai’s painting ganized by the Ente Premi di Roma at Palazzo from the “view” to the “vision”1 and the rework- Barberini in 1969.5 ing of Roman landscapes in a consciously The collection offers an interesting compar- dreamlike mental dimension: “Mafai loved sun- ison with Mafai’s Tramonto su Roma [W. NO. 48], set, the last gleams on the buildings, the long which presents the same view of the Tiber em- transition from light to darkness […] Night is a bankment more than ten years later. Closer to conquest of silence and solitude, and Mafai felt the Demolitions series, the work reflects the it as his true state of peace in that period”.2 An changed historical and political situation. arbitrarily chosen, downward perspective en- R . P. compasses the panorama over Ponte Garibaldi with the thick vegetation of the Aventine and precarious edifices in the distance. The disintegra- 1 V. Rivosecchi, in M. Fagiolo dell’Arco (edited by), tion of space, which maintains its own balance Scuola Romana. Artisti tra le due guerre, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 13 April nevertheless thanks to the carefully calibrated − 19 June 1988), Milan: Mazzotta, 1988, p. 28. alternation of dark and light areas, draws on the 2 R. De Grada, “Gli anni della formazione”, in La pittura di Mafai, Rome: Editrice Tevere, 1969, painting of Chagall as filtered through the sto- pp. 10-32. ries of Antonietta Raphaël. The sudden bursts of 3 R. Longhi, “La mostra romana degli artisti sindacati. colour and the deftly balanced silhouetting used Clima e opere degli irrealisti-espressionisti”, in L’Italia Letteraria, y. I, no. 2, Rome, 14 April 1929, by the artist in his transfiguration of the sunsets p. 4. of a “burning Rome” can be traced back to the 4 Letter from Scipione to Marino Mazzacurati, February 1929; now in M. Fagiolo dell’Arco, tireless study of the Venetian painters and El V. Rivosecchi (edited by), Scipione. Vita e opere, Greco undertaken in his youth together with Turin: Umberto Allemandi & C., 1988, pp. 79−81. 5 See Mafai, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Palazzo Scipione. The artist chose this work for show in Barberini, January−March 1969, Rome: Edizioni the first exhibition of the Prima Sindacale Laziale dell’Ente Premi Roma - De Luca, 1969 (work no. 10).

238 239 Mario Mafai Autoritratto

49 Title Autoritratto [Self-Portrait] and dull, his expression vacant. The face be- and euphoric, I decided to shape not particular Date circa 1933 hind him is unfinished. His gaze seems intent, but general men and women, anonymous imag- Technique oil on unprimed canvas in an evident ambiguous game with his friend es of a naked humankind captured in its earth- Dimensions 56.5 × 44 cm Scipione, on halting a sorrowful moment in his ly condition of existence”.4 His friend Renato bottom left: mafai life, in cui anche la sua compagna Antonietta Guttuso certainly had this work in mind in 1937, sembra averlo abbandonato decidendodi rima- when he painted himself together with his belov- “All is mystery on the stage / the mirror on the nere a Parigi, clearly mirrored in these verses ed Mimise [FIG. 8, P. 45],5 “[...] shown here as a sort easel / the painting is not yet finished”.1 Poets of Libero de Libero: “He is my hand / and my of vital, emblematic apparition, in a nexus that and painters love to use one another as mirrors. cheek. / His arm is mine, / which imitates his. / In is more psychological than visual [...] Taking “As soon as artists decide to entrust their im- my eye is his, / which looks and all / the shadow cognizance of a condition through the psycho- age to the surface of the canvas, that surface is born from us, / like our shoulders, / friends to logical analysis of an absorbing, impassioned is transformed into a reflecting mirror […] the us when / our heads hide our faces, / one held relationship, the condition in reality of neces- space of the painting is a wholly particular mir- close to the other”.3 sary individual solitude in search of one’s own ror that deforms and distorts, permits narcissis- He sent it as it was to the 1934 Venice Biennial, existential truth”.6 tic transformations and imposes harsh trials, where the critics proved merciless or uncer- R . P. helps to know but also to lose certainties. Its tain, like Virgilio Guizzi: “Mafai […] is somehow magic requires courage and circumspection”.2 mushy. He lacks boldness of definition, vigor- Mario Mafai summoned up all his courage to ous and conclusive draughtsmanship. […]” His 1 From a poem written by Giorgio de Chirico in 1917. 2 V. Rivosecchi, “L’artista allo specchio”, in M. Fagiolo paint this canvas after the death of his close withdrawn and slightly anarchical character, dell’Arco (edited by), Scuola romana. Artisti tra le friend Scipione, his mind racked by unimag- traits increasingly accentuated after the death of due guerre, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Palazzo inable grief. His best friend, his brother, was his friend Scipione, led him at the end of 1934 to Reale, 13 April − 19 June 1988), Milan: Mazzotta, 1988 , p. 161. gone, never to return, on 9 September 1933. As rework the canvas so that coded messages and 3 The poem appears as Pagine Chiuse in the he wrote in his diary, “Scipione was destroyed, signs of affinity pass between the faces, trans- catalogue Libero de Libero. Febbre di colori, p. 22; in De Libero, E, p. 27; and now as XVIII in G. Lupo, becoming one body with the bed, his flesh no forming it from an exchange of glances with the Poesia come pittura, De Libero e la cultura romana longer vibrating, abandoned to his weight.” He departed into a double portrait with his wife, en- (1930-1940), Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2000, p. 19. tried to get back to work so as to immortalize deavouring to do what he found most difficult: 4 V. Martinelli, Mario Mafai, Rome: Editalia, 1967, p. 28. that state of mind, the strange sensation of emp- “to free himself from himself”. The artist’s eyes 5 Renato Guttuso, Autoritratto con Mimise tiness that surrounded him and left him sunk in are now calm and composed, and the chubby (Doppio ritratto), datable to 1937, oil on panel, 53 × 40 cm, signed “Guttuso” at bottom right, Bari, apathy. He set to work and produced an initial face of a young woman behind him is completed R.V.G. collection. version of the double portrait that was to be so that the viewer is left in doubt as to who she 6 F. Carapezza Guttuso, E. Crispolti (edited by), signed unmistakeably Mafai 33 in the bottom is: “[…] as a reaction against the widespread Guttuso 1912–2012, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Complesso del Vittoriano, 12 October 2012 left corner [FIG. 1]. The painter’s eyes are sad individualism of that period [1933], all too facile – 10 February 2013), Milan: Skira, 2012, p. 49.

1. Mario Mafai, Self-Portrait, circa 1933, first version

240 241 Mario Mafai Garofani bianchi con mammole

50 Title Garofani bianchi con mammole my mother, bowing slightly in the Spanish style. [White Carnations and Sweet Violets] I recall the gift of four white gardenias, perfect Date 1936 and intensely fragrant, for each of us, the wom- Technique oil on canvas en of the Mafai household, as he liked to call Dimensions 51 × 39 cm us”.3 This was noted by Renato Guttuso a few bottom right: mafai years after the completion of the painting (then in the Natale collection), which he described Painting flowers that gradually wither, losing as “Mafai’s most acute and extreme pictorial their petals and chromatic vivacity, was a way experience, where the tonal vibration flickers for Mario Mafai to reflect on the relentless pass- from white to white in thousandths of a second ing of time and hence his destiny. “I have seen and the substance, though thick, is reduced to the colour of the skin on my face yellowing in the breath”.4 Cesare Brandi saw the paper wrapping mirror and the pink of my cheekbones fade as I of the bouquet as a citation of Giorgio Morandi’s once saw flowers lose their colour and become still lifes [FIG. 7, P. 45], to which Mafai unquestion- dull, frail and fragile […] I could count on flow- ably looked despite opting for “an almost liquid ers in my passion for certitude but had never and transparent colour, like mist floating in the thought that people too become wrinkled and air, where the white of the carnations is softened lose colour with dark veins appearing on their and almost deadened”.5 bodies. I was very upset and tried to remedy it. I The work was exhibited in the artist’s first solo could not accept the possibility of changing col- shows in Rome after the war at the Galleria our and smell. It is impossible to reconstruct the del Secolo and the Galleria Athena.6 It also ap- past without finding shadowy phases, breaks in peared about twenty years later in the posthu- the course of events. The memory remains of mous exhibition organized by Dario Micacchi at just a few moments that are not among the most La Nuova Pesa.7 important. If you try to retrace a given period, R . P. you see it fall apart”.1 As Roberto Melli noted at the time, “Mafai’s flowers […] have nothing at all to do with the gossipy, ‘sophisticated’ flowers of 1 M. Mafai, Diario 1926–1965, Rome: Edizioni della Cometa, 1984, p. 72. De Pisis [FIG. 1] […] Nothing so much as these 2 R. Melli, “Visite ad artisti. Mario Mafai”, in Quadrivio, flowers provides the key to his poetic pictorial y. III, no. 22, Rome, 31 March 1935, pp. 9−10. 3 G. Mafai, La ragazza con il violino, Milan: Skira, p. 106. 2 spirit, the secret of his inner life and mystery”. 4 R. Guttuso, “Nota a Mafai”, in Primato, y. I, no. 13, In Garofani bianchi con mammole (1936) the Rome, 1 September 1940, p. 18. stems and petals are rendered exclusively in 5 C. Brandi; now in M. Fagiolo dell’Arco (edited by), I fiori di Mafai, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Galleria thick brushstrokes that quiver in search of the Netta Vespignani, October−November 1989), desired nuance. Broad sunlight bathes the Rome: Edizioni Netta Vespignani, 1989, [p. 44]. 6 The shows were held respectively from December background, which almost looks like plaster 1945 to January 1946 and in April 1947. and makes it possible to appreciate the slight- 7 See D. Micacchi (edited by), Omaggio a Mafai, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Galleria La Nuova est tonal vibrations. Guttuso never forgot to Pesa, 24 November − 13 December 1967), Rome: bring beautiful flowers, which he “presented to La Nuova Pesa, 1967.

1. Filippo de Pisis, Fiori, 1936. Milan, Archivio 2. Mario Mafai in his studio in Rome, 1933 Associazione per il patrocinio dell’opera di Filippo de Pisis

242 243 Roberto Melli La lettura

51 Title La lettura [The Reading] wife and a young friend are shown in a domes- Date 1942 tic scene whose intimacy is expressed above all Technique oil on canvas through the pose of the girl and the cosiness Dimensions 80 × 90 cm of the room, full of simple everyday objects like top right: Melli 42 books, a ball of wool and some clothes. Part of the Natale collection in Rome, it was first Having started out in the applied arts, Roberto shown in March 1950 in an exhibition curated Melli could look back in the early forties on a by Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti at the Strozzina in long career as a painter and as a critic. His pri- Florence and then repeated with some changes mary interest as from his experience with the the following month in Milan.3 Valori Plastici group was in using the construc- R . P. tive potential of colour to create volumes after the manner of Cézanne: “His choice, precise and instinctive, focuses from the outset on col- 1 M. Calvesi, Roberto Melli, introduction by our”, the basis of his “artistic sense”, to bring G. C. Argan, Rome: De Luca, 1954. out the “possibilities of pictorial form in terms of 2 Ibidem. volume and mass”.1 His work on the relationship 3 See C. L. Ragghianti (edited by), L’opera di Roberto Melli (dal 1908 al 1948), exhibition catalogue between light and colour gave birth to surfaces (Milan, Galleria Gian Ferrari, 1−10 April 1950) whose thickness “can be probed, where even Milan: Galleria Gian Ferrari, 1950. It was also shown more recently in Pordenone; see Ado Furlan 2 the voids play a volumetric role”. The contrast 1905-1971. Artisti e amici romani. Opere 1930- between the blue and yellow of the hanging 1945, exhibition catalogue (Pordenone, Galleria Sagittaria-Centro Iniziative Culturali, 10 December clothes is much bolder than the delicate tonal 2005 − 26 February 2006), Cinisello Balsamo: combinations typical of his work. The artist’s Silvana Editoriale, 2005.

244 245 Francesco Menzio Ritratto di giovane

52 Title Ritratto di giovane spatial situation through constant modulation of [Portrait of a Young Man] a homogeneous pictorial fabric wholly explored Date 1929 as the path of colour”.2 Technique oil on canvas This can be seen here in the portrait, where Dimensions 72 × 59 cm the male figure appears in a domestic interior bottom right: Menzio built up of rich, dense colour moulded and at- tenuated by still, natural light, “a warm taste of Francesco Menzio had already attained full ma- engrossed masses in light”.3 The pictures on turity at the time of Ritratto di giovane (1929) and the wall in the background avoid any figurative was indeed regarded by Edoardo Persico and characterization whatsoever and appear as pure Giacomo Debenedetti as “an example also of patches of colour, almost as though the painter moral life, a leader”.1 He did indeed play a cen- wished to communicate through these details tral part in the brief but intense artistic adventure the need he felt for a free and creative use of of the Six Painters of Turin, who first caught the colour outside of any rigid formal framework.4 public eye precisely in 1929 with a show at the A.A. Casa d’Arte Guglielmi. The previous year had seen Menzio’s first trip to Paris, which marked a crucial turning point both for his own work and 1 A. G. [Albino Galvano], “Note biografiche”, for the work of those where were soon to be in A. Galvano, Francesco Menzio, Turin: Edizioni his companions. After his first-hand acquaint- “La Bussola”, 1971, p. XXII. 2 Ibidem, p. X. ance with Impressionist and post-Impressionist 3 S. Solmi, in Bollettino della Galleria del Milione, painting in Paris, Menzio moved away from the no. 57, 23 November − 15 December 1937, n. p. 4 Ritratto di giovane has appeared recently in two approach to volume based on the teaching and exhibitions held in Turin on the Six: I Sei di Torino. example of Felice Casorati and Felice Carena in Per i quindici anni della Galleria del Ponte (Turin, Turin. As pointed out by Albino Galvano, how- Galleria Il Ponte, 7 May – 26 June 2004), catalogue edited by S. Testa, Turin: Galleria Il Ponte, 2004; ever, the “rejection of volume as determined by Il gruppo dei Sei e la pittura a Torino1920/1940 chiaroscuro, as projection of forms, does not (Settimo Torinese, Casa per l’Arte Giardinera, 16 December 2005 – 26 March 2006), catalogue mean the absence of the space in which that edited by B. Bellini, I. Mulatero, Turin: Fondazione volume is located but only the rendering of that Torino Musei, 2005.

246 247 Francesco Menzio Lo scialle verde

53 Title Lo scialle verde [The Green Shawl] 1930 in the fourth exhibition of the Six Painters Date 1929 of Turin, just a year after they caught the atten- Technique oil on canvas tion of critics with their first “disconcerting and Dimensions 53 × 45 cm very interesting” show at the Galleria Guglielmi bottom left: Menzio in Turin.5 After a year of intense work, Menzio took part on this occasion with “six items only “This melancholy Orpheus, with the pale face but worthy of close examination”,6 in which and slumped shoulders of emigrants, obeyed the Marziano Bernardi saw “a rigour and love that dictates of his conscience and went in search of we had believed denied to him in recent times”.7 his own inner harmony in the universe of colour”.1 Lo scialle verde appeared in a solo show at the Edoardo Persico thus tells us what prompted Galleria Narciso in Turin in 1966.8 Francesco Menzio in 1928 to set off for Paris, to R . P. see the latest developments in European painting for himself and meet the figures involved in their studios.2 This “faith in European painting”3 1 E. Persico, Mostra del pittore Francesco Menzio, resulted in some important paintings in the late exhibition catalogue (Turin, Sala d’arte Guglielmi, twenties, including Lo scialle verde. 16−24 March 1929); now in A. Bovero (edited by), Archivi dei sei pittori di Torino, Rome: De Luca, The work displays the artist’s concentration on 1965, pp. 95−96. delicate combinations of colour, for which he 2 The painting recently appeared in an exhibition was described as a “symphonic composer who of Italian artists who worked in Paris in the closing decades of the nineteenth century and the first half 4 has understood Matisse and Modigliani”, and of the twentieth: see Italiani a Parigi. Da Severini abandonment of outline to build up the figure a Savinio, da De Chirico a Campigli. Precursori ed eredi (Bergamo, Palazzo Storico Credito in quick, light brushstrokes. The woman’s face Bergamasco, 10−30 May 2014), catalogue edited is constructed with a few concise lines and her by A. Piazzoli, P. S. Ubiali, Bergamo: Litostampa almost disoriented expression, with the mouth Istituto Grafico, 2014. 3 F. Menzio, Sei Pittori, exhibition catalogue half-open, robs her of the characteristic solem- (Turin, Galleria Guglielmi, 4−12 January 1930), nity of Novecento portraits while also undermin- Turin: Galleria Guglielmi, 1930. 4 E. Zanzi, “La tristezza di cinque Artisti e di una ing any plasticity of volume. Menzio takes the pittrice”, in Gazzetta del Popolo, 8 January 1930. woman portrayed out of the traditional, timeless 5 I. M. Angeloni, “Una mostra all’insegna di Manet. metaphysical dimension and places her in the Sei pittori in Piazza Castello”, in Il Momento, Turin, 13 January 1929. context of the time by dressing her in a fash- 6 E. Zanzi, “La tristezza”..., cit., 1930. ionable hat, thus displaying an attention to the 7 mar. ber. [M. Bernardi], “Cronache delle esposizioni”, in La Stampa, y. 64, no. 4, Turin, 4 details of female fashion that recalls Raoul Dufy January 1930, p. 3. among others. 8 See Francesco Menzio, exhibition catalogue (Turin, Galleria Narciso, 16 January − 2 February The painting was originally entitled La sciarpa 1966), text by P. Fossati, Turin: Edizioni Galleria verde [The Green Scarf] and shown as such in Narciso, 1966.

248 249 Giuseppe Migneco Amanti al parco

54 Title Amanti al parco [Lovers in the Park] other words, the artist starts from reality and re- Date 1940 turns there only after a painful reworking born Technique oil on canvas out of a “need to free himself”.5 Dimensions 50 × 40 cm Amanti al parco was shown as Panchine bottom right: Migneco 40 [Benches] at the Bottega di Corrente in 19416 and then at the Galleria Santa Radegonda four Giuseppe Migneco’s everyday subjects conceal years later.7 The recent exhibitions in which the more dramatic themes that satisfy his need to work has appeared include I luoghi di Corrente8 respond with his art “to something that is moral and Le gallerie milanesi tra le due guerre9. as well as artistic, as in a diary of confessions”.1 R . P. A subject of passion can thus become tragically grotesque, as in Amanti al parco (1940), where there are few elements actually suggesting an 1 G. B. [Guido Ballo], “Successo di Migneco alla amorous relationship. The man almost appears galleria ‘La Colonna’”, in Avanti!, y. LVII, no. 28, Milan, 1 February 1953, p. 4. to be in his death throes. His posture is decid- 2 See Giuseppe Migneco, exhibition catalogue edly unnatural and the flowers he must have (Genoa, Galleria Genova, from 10 April 1940), presentation by B. Joppolo, Genoa: Galleria brought as a gift for his sweetheart are withered Genova, 1940; now in “Antologia critica”, in Galleria, and dead. Though featured in the original title monographic issue, y. XII, no. 1-2, Caltanissetta- under which the work was shown at the Galleria Rome: Salvatore Sciascia Editore, January −April 1972, pp. 11−13. Genova in 1940 (Sedile al parco [Seat in the 3 E. Pontiggia, in E. Pontiggia, N. Colombo (edited Park]),2 the park plays a wholly secondary part by), Milano anni Trenta. L’Arte e la città, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Spazio Oberdan, 2 December 2004 in the composition and is indeed almost contra- − 27 February 2005), Milan: Mazzotta, 2004, p. 240. dicted by the railings, which grimly suggest the 4 B. Joppolo, in Giuseppe Migneco, cit., 1940. 5 [G.B.], in “Successo...”, cit., 1953. bars of a prison rather than a place for a pleas- 6 See Giuseppe Migneco, exhibition catalogue ant afternoon stroll.3 The sense of anxiety and (Milan, Bottega di Corrente, 6−18 January 1941), oppression is heightened by the artist’s original presentation by U. Silva, Milan: Edizioni di Corrente, 1941, work no. 3. compositional approach, a sort of horror vacui 7 See Migneco, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Galleria that results in every square centimetre of the Santa Radegonda, opened 22 November 1945), presentation by L. Anceschi, Milan: Galleria Santa canvas being occupied by twisting tongues Radegonda, 1945 (pl. IV). of colour that envelop the image in their coils. 8 I luoghi di Corrente (Milan, Fondazione di Corrente, As Beniamino Joppolo perceptively observed, 14 May − 9 June 2015), catalogue edited by N. Colombo, A. Negri, P. Rusconi, G. Seveso, “Migneco is led by instinct to reduce the world Milan: Scalpendi, 2015. in form and colour to chaos and then rebuild it in 9 Le gallerie milanesi tra le due guerre (Milan, Fondazione Stelline, 24 February − 22 May 2016), his own new vision of form and colour (the three catalogue edited by L. Sansone, Cinisello Balsamo: phases are always present and operative)”.4 In Silvana Editoriale, 2016.

250 251 Giuseppe Migneco L’uomo dal dito fasciato

55 Title L’uomo dal dito fasciato been signed with Germany on 22 May 1939 and such as Amanti al parco [Lovers in the Park] [The Man with a Bandaged Finger] war was now imminent. The middle finger of the [W. NO. 54], Carciofi [Artichokes], Massaie ubri- Date 1940 right hand on the breast, the key tool of the art- ache [Drunk Housewives] [FIG. 2] and La fossa Technique oil on canvas ist’s craft, is distinguished by an unusual black dei lebbrosi [The Valley of the Lepers] [FIG. 3], Dimensions 60 × 46 cm bandage, which is repeated around his wrist. tragic baroque brushwork and pictorial style are bottom left: Migneco 40 While Migneco was evidently inspired by Van used to depict scenes of anguish and despair Gogh in his poetic freedom of colour, we can- that are almost forcibly bound. “Behind the plot Giuseppe Migneco uses quivering yellows and not fail to discern in this venomous painting the of an indefinite world (the liquid of sharp or acid greens and the application of thick, dense paint intellectual influence of the Turinese artist Carlo greens mixed up with the soil, with eyes, hair in large brushstrokes of a free and violent nature Levi and his painting of a Uomo col guanto nero and hands) was the romantic myth glorifying to create a work in which even the slightest de- (Eroe cinese) [Man in a Black Glove (Chinese subjective expression, the mental state; for an tail plays an allusive and metaphorical role. The Hero)] [FIG. 1]. The existential problem is ad- inner necessity almost to be torn from the se- man is as though immersed in a dream, halfway dressed here at the root and that black glove, crecy of the unconscious: as in a diary of se- between hope and anguish. He holds four red like the black bandage, can be seen as a sign of cret confessions where analogy and sometimes carnations with long stems along which the opposition to the official culture, which prevent- smugly literary motifs took shape in colour with paint runs like a turbulent stream to delineate ed artists from expressing themselves freely in an expressive function”.3 the windswept background. Beneath the volu- that period and forced them to convey ideas R . P. minous robe covering his body, another, more and opinions through symbols and allegories. compact garment appears almost solemnly at Elena Pontiggia sees the juxtaposition of red the neck and breast in the same shade of red and black as an allegory of the eternal strug- 1 E. Pontiggia, in E. Pontiggia, N. Colombo (edited as the flowers, with which there appears to be gle between eros and thanatos, and the black by), in Milano anni Trenta. L’arte e la città, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Spazio Oberdan, 2 December some symbolic relationship. bandaged finger as an unconscious phallic 2004 - 27 February 2005 ), Milan: Mazzotta, 2004, If the flowers allow the artist to dream for an symbol.1 Fagone instead sees the flowers held p. 240 instant of beauty and the joys of life, the rail- in the injured hand as “perhaps a mirror image 2 V. Fagone, “Cinquant’anni di pittura di Giuseppe Migneco”, in L. Barbera (edited by), Migneco, 2 ings behind the bench, which suggest the bars of the painter bringing bitter sweetness”, a met- exhibition catalogue (Messina, Palazzo Zanca, of a prison, plunge him back immediately into aphor of the role of painters but also of poets, December 1983 – February 1984), Milan: Vangelista, 1983, pp. 22–28. the harsh reality of anxiety and uncertainty. Italy who must not be asked for words (Montale). In 3 G. Ballo, Pittura italiana dal futurismo a oggi, was fraught with tension. The Pact of Steel had this painting as in others of the same period, Rome: Edizioni Mediterranee, 1956, p. 167.

1. Carlo Levi, Uomo col guanto nero (Eroe cinese), 1931. 2. Giuseppe Migneco, Massaie ubriache, 1939. Milan, 3. Giuseppe Migneco, La fossa dei lebbrosi, 1939. Rome, Fondazione Levi G. Migneco collection Milan, private collection

252 253 Giuseppe Migneco Natura morta con maschere

56 Title Natura morta con maschere mask, drawn from expressionism and the paint- [Still Life with Masks] ing of Ensor, thus appears in the coeval works Date 1941 of various painters close to Migneco, the best Technique oil on canvas known of which are Renato Birolli and Fiorenzo Dimensions 49 × 39 cm Tomea. bottom left: migneco A misunderstanding, due in all probability to misinterpretation of the inscription written on the This still life of 1941 shows two slightly fore- back of the work by the artist to authenticate it, shortened Venetian masks, one resting partially has led to some confusion about its title, which on the other. Between them is a table lamp that is given by many sources, including the general organizes the space by constructing an intricate catalogue,2 as Natura morta con tre maschere web of lines. The unplugged cable could sug- [Still Life with Three Masks] even though there gest a sudden interruption and hence the cut- are unquestionably two masks in the painting ting off of vital energy by the oppressive social and not three.3 In some cases, the work is also and political conditions of the time. erroneously dated 1939 instead of 1941.4 The forms are built up entirely in tongues of col- R . P. our clearly distinguished by thickly laden brushstrokes. The composition appears in any case far more calm and concise than other works 1 E.g. Amanti sulla panchina and L’uomo dal dito of the same period, where the long, contorted fasciato, both in the Iannaccone collection. 2 N. C. Luciani (edited by), Migneco. Catalogo streaks made by the brush create asphyxiating generale, vol. II, Milan: Bonaparte Editrice, 1990, atmospheres verging on delirium.1 p. 426. The peculiar aspect of Natura morta con 3 In the inscription Migneco/“Natura morta con le maschere”/1941, the word le (the) may have been maschere lies above all in its symbolic dimen- misread as tre (three). sion, which reflects the Hermetic poetry that in- 4 E.g. Giuseppe Migneco, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Galleria Bonaparte, 15 November fluenced many painters of the Corrente group in – 12 December 1995), text by E. Krumm, Milan: that period. The allegorical iconography of the Galleria Bonaparte, 1995.

254 255 Ennio Morlotti Natura morta con bucranio

57 Title Natura morta con bucranio to the jug, a classic element of twentieth-century Milan: Edizioni della Spiga e Corrente, 1943. 4 G. Testori, “Appunti su Ennio Morlotti”, in Paragone, [Still Life with Bull Skull] still life, the shape of which is, however, distort- y. III, no. 33, Sansoni, Florence, September 1952, Date 1942 ed to the point of becoming almost unrecogniz- pp. 21−30. Technique oil on canvas able. Alongside this household object is a bu- 5 A. C. Quintavalle, “La crisi del racconto europeo. Morlotti e Guttuso”, in A. C. Quintavalle (edited by), Dimensions 46 × 60 cm cranium, recalling his encounter with the “great Morlotti. Struttura e storia, Milan: Fabbri, 1982, top left: Morlotti and grotesque mythology of Picasso”7 in Paris pp. 41−52. in 1937.8 The bull skull had already been used 6 A. C. Quintavalle, “Colore e segno, la memoria del gesto”, in A. C. Quintavalle (edited by), “I must say that I was surprised to hear talk of Van by Guttuso, whose approach in that period was, Morlotti..., cit., 1982, pp. 60−71. Morandi and Gogh and German expressionists. I was instead however, diametrically opposed to Morlotti’s Morlotti were also juxtaposed in a joint show, including Natura morta con bucranio, organized more drawn towards Cézanne and the Cubists in substantial physicality, his renowned still lifes by the Galleria del Milione; see Morandi-Morlotti. an effort to cleanse myself of the grime of paint- being completely flooded with light to enhance Per i quarant’anni del Milione due antologiche, erliness […] What I displayed was not so much broad expanses of bright colours, the reds, yel- exhibition catalogue (Milan, Galleria del Milione, 12 December 1970 − 12 January 1971), presentation 1 9 an aversion to Corrente as internal dissent”. lows and blues reinvented by Van Gogh. by R. Tassi, Milan: Edizioni del Milione, 1970. This is how Ennio Morlotti later described his re- Making the objects unrecognizable and denying 7 F. Arcangeli, Ennio Morlotti, Milan: Edizioni del Milione, 1962, pp. XVI−XVIII. lations with the Corrente movement, in which his the composition any perspective, Morlotti opted 8 “I did no work at all also in Paris, where I arrived involvement had been no more than marginal, for “a wholly mental relationship between the in 1937. The library and paintings of others […] taking no part in the two exhibitions organized forms” and hence their “symbolic value”.10 The The Expo with the great Cézannes from Philadelphia and Picasso’s Guernica, where I fell in 2 by the group in 1939 and not showing work at bucranium thus constitutes the linchpin of the love, so to speak, with those great painters […] With the Bottega di Corrente until 1943, when many painting as a grim metaphor of the day-to-day its surrealism and its symbols, Guernica completely of the initial points of stylistic reference had violence of those years, pervaded by a sense disrupted the idea of reality I had constructed for myself […] Cézanne, not for his cubes or his changed.3 As Giovanni Testori noted in an article of death in ironic contrast to the deep hollow of cylinders but for the overwhelming power of his in Paragone, Morlotti kept his distance from the the eye and gaping jaws, which make the skull colour, I remember those Bathers […] and it was precisely a flash of blue and orange, but a flash that 11 romanticism of Corrente, focusing more on “sub- “horribly alive”. penetrated you […] I came back disheartened, filled stance” than colour “understood as feeling”.4 His Never shown in the forties and fifties, the work with emotions but also confused and distraught.” palette was indeed confined to a narrow range in was included in an exhibition of 1963 in Lecco,12 G. Bruno, P. G. Castagnoli, D. Biasin (edited by), Ennio Morlotti. Catalogo ragionato dei dipinti, vol. 2, what was described as a “Cézannian reduction the painter’s hometown, when it was already part Milan: Skira, 2000, p. 735. of colours” by Arturo Carlo Quintavalle,5 who of the collection of Enrico Brambilla Pisoni.13 9 For a comparison of the still lifes of Guttuso and Morlotti, see A. C. Quintavalle, La crisi..., cit., 1982. also noted a certain degree of Morandian severi- R . P. 10 A. C. Quintavalle, in Morlotti. Struttura..., cit., 1982, ty, especially in his “thickness of paint”, reminis- p. 284. cent in turn of Sironi.6 11 G. Anzani, C. Pirovano, “La pittura del primo Novecento in Lombardia (1900-1945)”, in C. These principles led Morlotti to produce a se- 1 M. Valsecchi, “Vorrei dipingere un nudo come Pirovano (edited by), La pittura in Italia. Il ries of still lifes in which the objects, two or three Giorgione”, interview with Ennio Morlotti, in Tempo, Novecento 1900-1945, vol. 1, 2nd edition, Milan: per canvas, undergo a process of corrosion in y. XXVI, no. 8, Milan, 22 February 1964, p. 73. Electa, 1992, pp. 85−241. 2 It was not until 1940, through his friendship with 12 The show took place at the Centro Cultura in Lecco volume and form beneath the weight of brush- Bruno Cassinari, that Morlotti came into contact in 1963 and was accompanied by the publication strokes so thickly laden as to look forward to with Corrente. of the monograph Ennio Morlotti, edited by 3 See Cassinari-Morlotti-Treccani, exhibition C. Volpe, Rome: Edizioni Galleria Odyssia, 1963. certain works of his later gestural Art Informel catalogue (Milan, Galleria della Spiga 13 As attested by the exhibition label signed by the period. This is what happens in this work of 1942 e Corrente, from 6 February 1943), collector and still attached to the back of the work.

256 257 Fausto Pirandello Composizione (Siesta rustica)

58 Title Composizione (Siesta rustica) outset. His alone is the raw power of reality in- month, a whole year, and all that for a few salm- [Composition (Rustic Siesta)] stilled into bodies and nature in compositions on pink pieces of paper […].” Date 1924−26 that address subjects very different from those Never shown during the artist’s lifetime, it was Technique oil on canvas of other artists of the time. “From the first paint- presented to the public for the first time in the Dimensions 100 × 126 cm ings known to us, dated 1923, […] Pirandello major retrospective of 1976 at the Galleria bottom right: 24 F. Pirandello displays an anti-classical reading of reality in Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome and then in his truest and most dramatic expressions, one all the most important exhibitions of the master’s Born in Rome on 17 June 1899, the third child of that therefore has more of truth than realism, work, including those of 1982 in Palermo, curat- Luigi Pirandello and Maria Antonietta Portulano, that uses paradox and the absurd as constants ed by Giorgio Mascherpa and Fabrizio D’Amico, Fausto Pirandello had a difficult childhood due of its vocabulary. And this is the path that the and 1999 at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in to his mother’s precarious mental state. Called artist pursued obsessively all through his life Rome, curated by Claudia Gian Ferrari and up for military service in 1916, he abandoned his […] Carnality understood as slightly animal-like Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco. studies and forgot the delight of the exhibitions physicality, carnality serving to manifest the R . P. that had brought him into direct contact since sense of guilt and sin, the negative that there 1913 with the work of the German expression- is inside us, with no atonement, no redemption. ists, immediately after the initial stage of Die It is the disintegration of flesh, the odour of pu- 1 G. Mascherpa, “Pirandello e lo specchio”, Brücke, the late paintings of Renoir and the sav- trefaction, and hence the negation of beauty, of in Pirandello, exhibition catalogue (Palermo, Civica Galleria d’Arte moderna Empedocle Restivo, age drawings of Egon Schiele. On returning to perfection, which is not of this world but an im- 22 December 1982 − 22 January 1983), Palermo: Rome after the war, he was encouraged by his practicable, unattainable ideal that there is no Edizioni Fondazione Whitaker, 1982. father to take up sculpture (“they erect monu- point in representing, an illusion to be rejected 2 F. Pirandello, “Scritti inediti”, in G. Giuffrè, Fausto Pirandello, with an appendix of previous ments after every war, so there will be no lack […]”.3 unpublished writings, Rome: Edizioni della Cometa, of commissions”) and studied for a while with Built up in reds, whites and golden greens, 1984, p. 223. 3 C. Gian Ferrari, “Fausto Pirandello: la realtà the sculptor Sigismondo Lipinsky. Unhappy with Composizione (also known as Siesta rusti- indagata”, in C. Gian Ferrari (edited by), Fausto the system, he soon decided to attend the paint- ca) reveals the unmistakeable “neurosis” that Pirandello, exhibition catalogue (Sorrento, Museo Correale di Terranova, 23 March − 29 May 2005), ing course at the Accademia del Nudo, where drives the art of this deep explorer of the psy- Milan: Edizioni Charta, 2005. he met the artists Felice Carena and Armando che. It is indeed as from these early works, if 4 Fausto Pirandello in C. Gian Ferrari, F. Matitti Spadini. Like them, he chose Anticoli Corrado we exclude the few produced before leaving (edited by), Riflessioni sull’arte, Miniature 66, Milan: Abscondita, 2008, p. 26. as a place to paint and think: “the village of art- for the war, that Pirandello decided to focus on 5 U. Nebbia, La XV Esposizione Internazionale ist’s models where Arturo Martini enjoyed his the expressive power of colours, rich in lime, d’arte della Città di Venezia, Bergamo, [1926], p. 85. The volume includes a reproduction only peaceful years, a secluded but also fertile thick and chalky in texture, but glowing at the of the Composizione shown by Pirandello and sensual corner of pure, millennial pastoral same time. “The ‘memory’ gradually regresses, (G. Giuffrè, Fausto..., cit., 1984, pl. 1, p. 10). life. The best possible place not only to meet breaking down into the colours of light. From the love of his life — the most faithful and prov- red, which is the most vehement inflection but idential companion he could ever have wished also the most briefly reflected, to the yellow in for — but also to reflect face to face with reality which it is then clad, to green, turquoise, indi- on the turbulent emotions and ideas of his early go and violet, the last exception of the memo- youth, when he used to hide beneath the table ry. It then turns grey as though withering and and listen to great thinkers discuss matters of finally dwindles, shrinks and peters out. The European culture in different languages”.1 image has its own entire story of colours to tell He was fascinated by Arturo Martini and his and it is the tale of the seeing eye, which tells incredible vitality: “I confess that he draws me it by itself, outside, because it is a dual organ: like a magnet. Brought up in a strange and, so presenting things to us and arranging them in to speak, procedural kind of conformism, I see the order of the world”.4 Thus it is that the red human relations beneath a mechanism with enveloping the body in the foreground fills the no practical confirmation. I believe in the ad- composition with life and the white sheet in the equacy of a sort of etiquette but realize that it background takes on a leading role, convey- means nothing to anyone around me. Everyone ing a sense of purity we can almost smell. The behaves as they see fit and as is most advan- sleeping figures, both dressed and naked, are tageous for them. I am as though stuck with a almost forced into the space of the canvas, vi- mannerist fetishism, outworn and laughable but olent even in their immobility. The flesh is warm so deeply ingrained by now as to be beyond my and in disarray, revealing the path taken in all own judgement”.2 the artist’s later works. For Pirandello, painting 1. Felice Casorati, Meriggio, 1923. Trieste, Museo Revoltella This description of Martini sounds rather like a was like being in labour. He never worked by self-portrait of the young painter himself, who instinct but by developing forms and content. produced a number of compositions in this He was deeply critical of everything he did and period, including the recent addition to the always pursued intellectual rigour, which is in- Iannaccone collection dated 1924. These works deed precisely why this work was piled up with are certainly influenced by Carena, especially five others and never shown, not even placed the painting Quiete [Calm] [FIG. 2], which he saw on stretchers in the large studio where he loved at the 1922 Venice Biennial, by the volumes of to work, after the first composition presented at Cézanne, now recognized as a master, by the the Venice Biennial was described as somewhat pinks and violets of Spadini, present in the clumsy in tone and execution in a review.5 One Biennial of 1924 with no fewer than forty-nine thing is certain, however, namely that he would works, and by Casorati’s masterpiece Meriggio absolutely never have destroyed these works. [Midday] [FIG. 1], also shown on the same occa- As he remarked to the critic Giorgio Mascherpa sion. in 1981 while they were looking at one of his Having established Pirandello’s sources of in- paintings in a gallery: “It’s as though they were spiration, we must, however, point out that this just goods […] you put your heart and soul into 2. Felice Carena, Quiete, 1921. Piacenza, Galleria d’Arte important artist went his own way from the very it, you make a painting into which you cram a Moderna Ricci Oddi

258 259 Fausto Pirandello La lettera

59 Title La Lettera [The Letter] out of the tube. They are shown from above, an Date 1929 apparently illogical viewpoint that is in fact the Technique oil on cardboard one from which the artist saw them, almost as Dimensions 70 × 53 cm though to let us share his feelings with respect bottom centre: PIRANDELLO 29 to a letter sent by Luigi Pirandello on hearing of his son’s flight to Paris: “Now you speak of Despite being invited to take part in the third exile, like someone defeated, of the wickedness Rome Biennial with no help from his influential of your fellow artists, and lament your fate. You, father Luigi, Fausto Pirandello was unhappy Fausto! Your fate! Just think: you are free […] with Italy and wholly dissatisfied with the art Work, work, that’s all […] You will have to over- world surrounding him. He therefore to leave come this discontent of yours and the only way with his friend Capogrossi and future wife to do it is to get all these sterile attempts out of Pompilia in search of fresh air and the freedom your system.” It appears possible in this work to he felt he was denied in Italy. Their destination glimpse the richness of a kind of painting that was Paris, then the world capital of art. As the Europe was not to know until Art Informel but critic Lionello Venturi wrote, “In Paris he fell in that for Fausto Pirandello marked the begin- love with Cézanne, his volumes, his still lifes. ning of a modern art that could not in any case Like nearly everyone else at the time, however, depart from reality. The artist chose La lettera he did not see the chromatic basis of Cézanne’s as one of the works with which he presented volumes, and his Cézannism was therefore limit- himself for the first time to the Parisian public ed, prudent, objective and devoid of poetic veils. at the Galerie Vildrac in March 1929. The writer He did in any case free himself in Paris from the and illustrator André Warnod reviewed the show prejudice of the subject and painted in accor- in a long article for the newspaper Comoedia, dance with inner dictates of mass and tone, con- noting the presence in “clearly realist paintings fining the finish of the object represented to the [of] a certain dryness and a lack of atmosphere requirements of the composition”.1 Exposure to that jar in many of his canvases. He could also the Cubist works of Braque and Picasso and in be criticized for layers of a thickness that have particular to the still lifes of Cézanne led him to more to do with bas-reliefs that paintings.” Nor produce some of his own, as in this case, where could a more enlightened judgement have form is born out of a need of mass and tone to been expected from one who expected the such an extent that the accumulation of paint on young Italian to be a diligent pupil of Braque the cardboard almost looks like a bas-relief. His (or Picasso; Fausto had indeed stated in an palette serves to tell a tale of everyday life in his interview published the previous year in Paris- lodgings off Boulevard Saint-Germain: “In the Midi, this time with the aid of Luigi, that, “Among sort of aviary that is my studio in Rue Bardinet, contemporary painters, my masters are Picasso kept black by the smoke constantly bellowing and Derain. I also greatly admire Braque and my from the chimney of the Dunlop factory, I pick up compatriot De Chirico”3). my few brushes, wearing gloves, and look with a R . P. shudder from beneath the brim of my hat at the benumbed objects in their heroic endurance as 1 L. Venturi, “Fausto Pirandello”, in Commentari, in my intellect, which is not theirs, their refus- y. V, no. 1, Rome, January–March 1954. al to be reduced to my feelings. The overcoat Republished in N. Vespignani (edited by), Nove makes it awkward for me to move my hands”.2 maestri della Scuola romana, text by M. Quesada, Turin: Seat, 1992, pp. 234 ff. The objects in question are a parcel, scattered 2 C. Gian Ferrari (edited by), Fausto Pirandello. newspapers and a letter lying in a corner of Catalogo generale, Milan: Electa, 2009; essay by F. Matitti, “Tra poetica e iconologia. Donne con the heavy table, keeping close to one another salamandra e e altre storie”, pp. 21–22. as though for protection, made up of ochres, 3 F. D’Amico, M. Goldin (edited by), Pirandello. Le nature morte, exhibition catalogue (Brescia, brownish reds, bold browns and dirty whites Museo di Santa Giulia, 20 January – 25 March that seem that have been squeezed straight 2007), Conegliano: Linea d’ombra libri, 2007, p. 28.

260 261 Fausto Pirandello Spiaggia

60 Title Spiaggia [Beach] in Rome, the work was first shown in Verona in Date circa 1940 1988 at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Palazzo Technique oil on panel Forti,5 after which it appeared ten years later in Dimensions 74 × 106 cm Marsala on the occasion of the exhibition Fausto bottom left: PIRANDELLO Pirandello. Bagnanti 1928–1972, curated by Sergio Troisi,6 the following year in Rome, on the The Beach series painted by Fausto Pirandello occasion of a retrospective curated by Maurizio at the end of the thirties marked a change in his Fagiolo dell’Arco and Claudia Gian Ferrari, at the work. The artist reinvented the subject in order Palazzo delle Esposizioni7 and then in London in to present his vision of the human being. Renato 2015, on the occasion of the exhibition Pirandello Guttuso observed his shift at the time “from the 1899–1975, curated by Fabio Benzi and held at order of Braque [...] towards the baroque […] the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art.8 but a baroque as though mummified […] as R . P. though a skilled surgeon had drained the last drop of blood from its veins”.1 He also noted 1 R. Guttuso, “Una mostra di Pirandello”, in Primato, the physicality of the “tortured characters [that] y. II, no. 6, Milan, 15 March 1941, pp. 18−19. go around in their non-human form. They are The event reviewed in the article was a solo show presented by Virgilio Guzzi at the Terme in Rome neither men nor women, despite the cruellest in February 1941. accentuation, but figures from other planets on 2 Ibidem. bare, barren clay beneath cloudless grey skies 3 C. Gian Ferrari, “Fausto Pirandello: l’inquietudine della forma”, in C. Gian Ferrari (edited by), Fausto where even the storms are unlike those of this Pirandello, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Palazzo world”.2 In the grotesque shapes of their bodies Reale, 23 June − 1 October 1995), Milan: Charta, 1995, pp. 11−19. we can discern an “absolute carnality that con- 4 Ibidem. templates the sense of guilt and therefore sin 5 See F. Benzi (edited by), Le Scuole Romane. to be expiated even in the acceptance of their Sviluppi e continuità 1927-1988, exhibition catalogue (Verona, Galleria d’Arte Moderna e reality as primal eros. For Pirandello, beauty is Contemporanea di Palazzo Forti, 9 April − 15 June a category that belongs neither to the world nor 1988), Milan-Rome: Mondadori-De Luca, 1988. 3 6 See S. Troisi, C. Gian Ferrari (edited by), Fausto to humankind. It is a formal illusion”. Heaped Pirandello. Bagnanti 1928-1972, exhibition together almost as though suffering from cramp, catalogue (Marsala, ex Convento del Carmine, their flesh a weight and an obstacle to move- 4 April − 7 June 1998), Milan: Charta, 1998. 7 See M. Fagiolo dell’Arco, C. Gian Ferrari (edited ment, the bodies recall the horrors of the war by), Fausto Pirandello. La vita attuale e la favola then raging in Europe. The Beach series is “the eterna, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, 20 October 1999 − 10 January 2000), crucial guiding thread of his work after the war, Milan: Charta, 1999. almost the decisive intuition of an obsession 8 See F. Benzi (edited by), Pirandello 1899-1975, that was henceforth to know no respite or inter- exhibition catalogue (London, Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, 8 July − 6 September 2015), ruption”.4 Held for years in a private collection London: Estorick Collection, 2015.

262 263 Fausto Pirandello La famiglia dell’artista

61 Title La famiglia dell’artista collection. It was first shown at the posthumous [The Artist’s Family] retrospective of 1976 at the Galleria Nazionale Date circa 1942 d’Arte Moderna di Roma 5 and then at the retro- Technique oil on panel spective held in Milan, Palazzo Reale, in 1995,6 Dimensions 100 × 67.5 cm in Rome at Palazzo delle Esposizioni in 1999,7 bottom left: PIRANDELLO and in London at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, in 2015.8 During World War II, when it was necessary to R . P. close and cover “the windows with shutters, blinds and curtains (the bombing, as we know, broke the panes)”,1 Pirandello looked for his 1 F. Pirandello, “Appunti”, in Fausto Pirandello, subjects at home, imbuing them with “his own presentation by V. Guzzi, De Luca, Rome, 1950, p. 25. 2 C. Gian Ferrari, in C. Gian Ferrari (edited by), anxieties, existential angst, alienation and trans- Fausto Pirandello. Opere dal 1935 agli anni estremi, figurations adopted as new myths and new rites exhibition catalogue (Milan, Galleria Gian Ferrari, 2 1 June − 21 July 2006), Milan: Claudia Gian Ferrari of everyday life”. The figures in this painting Studio di consulenza Gian Ferrari ’900 Italiano Arte are his wife Pompilia and their two children Contemporanea, 2006. Pierluigi and Antonio. Portrayed in everyday life 3 C. Gian Ferrari, “Fausto Pirandello: l’inquietudine della forma”, in C. Gian Ferrari (edited by), Fausto and clothing far from the conventional poses Pirandello, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Palazzo of Roman drawing rooms, they are shown in a Reale, 23 June − 1 October 1995), Milan: Charta, 1995, pp. 11−19. cramped space almost devoid of perspective. 4 G. Giuffé, “Cambiare per ritrovarsi”, in G. Appella, The artist concentrates on their faces, investigat- G. Giuffrè (edited by), Pirandello, exhibition ing their feelings and thoughts in an attempt “to catalogue (Macerata, Palazzo Ricci, 2−16 June 1990), Rome: De Luca, 1990, pp. 17−26. reconstruct human relations that were difficult 5 See B. Mantura (edited by), Fausto Pirandello and complicated through painting”.3 It is possi- 1899-1975, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, 21 December 1976 ble to discern an absence of communication, a − 27 February 1977, Rome: De Luca, 1976. terrible need for words and gestures. The moth- 6 See C. Gian Ferrari (edited by), Fausto Pirandello, er stretches her hand out towards the younger cit., 1995. 7 See M. Fagiolo dell’Arco, C. Gian Ferrari (edited son with a tenderness that belies the apparent by), Fausto Pirandello. La vita attuale e la favola sternness of her expression. The “frantic, blaz- eterna, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, 20 October 1999 − 10 January 2000), ing” style of some coeval works give way here to Milan: Charta, 1999. “a moment of peace”.4 The work was left to the 8 See F. Benzi (edited by), Pirandello 1899-1975, exhibition catalogue (London, Estorick Collection artist’s son Pierluigi and was bought by Claudia of Modern Italian Art, 8 July − 6 September 2015), Gian Ferrari before entering the Iannaccone London: Estorick Collection, 2015.

264 265 Fausto Pirandello Natura morta con strumenti musicali

62 Title Natura morta con strumenti musicali play. The world around the artist is bleak and [Still Life with Musical Instruments] barren. The spectre of war looms outside the Date circa 1942 windows and the musical instruments, univer- Technique oil on panel sally associated with serenity, are left here in Dimensions 50.5 × 60 cm an abandoned state, forced to remain silent top left: PIRANDELLO and hidden for fear of being captured and destroyed. In an interplay of representations, While Fausto Pirandello developed his interest the violin — a characteristic instrument of the in still life during his stay in Paris in the late Jewish tradition, as seen in Chagall’s series of twenties under the influence of Braque, Picasso Jewish violinists — becomes a shapely female and Cézanne, he always preserved a unique figure, perhaps his wife Pompilia, forced to hide and unmistakeable style of his own connected with the family in Anticoli Corrado because of with the reality of life that enabled him to evolve her Jewish origins. The nerve-racking silence of over the years while remaining true to his con- war reigns supreme in this ochre-coloured mu- victions. As in the play Six Characters in Search sic room. “I look with a shudder from beneath of an Author by his father Luigi Pirandello, this the brim of my hat at the benumbed objects in still life with musical instruments can be seen their heroic endurance as in my intellect, which as an attempt to present the drama of real life. is not theirs, their refusal to be reduced to my The rural landscape is that of Anticoli Corrado, feelings”.2 The image Pirandello uses here where he moved with his family and remained appears to refer to lamp hanging in the mid- until January 1944. “The melancholy things dle of the room and beholding, as it were, the crowded into his paintings are placed at ran- bruised reality from beneath the floppy brim of dom like fragile remnants that have survived its black shade. “The painter has concealed the the storm of life. It is even hard to identify them horror of war in those instruments, left there sometimes because they appear somehow in a non-place with no natural light where the blurred, sinking into the background and al- background is made up of shades of grey and most fighting so as not to be sucked under”.1 A blue, applied in brushstrokes and (possibly) chair stands at an angle in the foreground with scored at random, which are clearly tormented, a battered trumpet in gold and copper hues imbuing the composition with melancholy and resting on its rush seat. The bell of a trombone representing the darkness that had fallen upon can be seen on the floor behind and the brass the nation”.3 trio is completed by a horn to the left. A large R . P. violin stands in its open case in the centre, its graceful curves standing out against velvet lin- ing of a bright blue that recalls Giotto. It is tilted 1 F. Matitti, “Tra poetica e iconologia. Donne as though in an attempt to read the score be- con salamandra e altre storie”, in C. Gian Ferrari (edited by), Fausto Pirandello, Catalogo generale, low it and rehearse the notes to be played but Milan: Electa, 2009, pp. 21−22. held tight in its case and unable to escape from 2 Ibidem. 3 C. Gian Ferrari (edited by), Fausto Pirandello, it gleaming prison of blue fabric. The wearily exhibition catalogue (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 23 June slumped brass instruments are also unable to − 1 October 1995), Milan: Charta, 1995.

266 267 Antonietta Raphaël Natura morta con chitarra

63 Title Natura morta con chitarra and then like a turtle to see if the moon was still [Still Life with Guitar] there. Yes, it was still there, looking at me, smil- Date 1928 ing and seeming to talk to me in a gentle voice”.2 Technique oil on panel Hung haphazardly on the wall is a smiling portrait Dimensions 39 × 45 cm of her by her husband, the painter Mario Mafai. top right: Raffaël 28 “Every painting by Raphaël is actually a mirror reflecting her own image. Her characteristic fea- “When faced in Rome with still lifes of the sort tures, the slightly slanted eyes, curly hair and that found favour in bourgeois households, round face, inform every portrait”.3 The guitar in [Antonietta Raphaël] would describe them col- the middle of the table in an almost surreal space ourfully as stinking of vegetable soup or, still with no perspective represents her first great worse, of sweat, thus asserting her creative love for music, which she studied at the Royal freedom with respect to the reality of things. Still Academy in London. In the painting as in her life, more extraordinary was her ability to alter real- there is no lack of objects related to Russian folk ity in the very moment of seeing it. I remember culture, like the king of hearts on the left just be- almost with irritation how she once exclaimed low her portrait. Entranced by her culture and in- ‘What a wonderful purple’ in delight on behold- telligence, her pupil Scipione was to draw on this ing a beautiful yellow and green tree”.1 This a couple of years later in his Natura morta con original expressive vision can be seen in all her piuma [Still Life with Feather] [W. NO. 79], where works, including Natura morta con chitarra, an the playing card is, however, an unlucky three extraordinarily lyrical and timeless depiction of of spades. Another reference to the new artistic familiar, everyday objects that had followed her developments seen in Paris during her first stay everywhere in a trunk since her time in London can be detected in the primitive signs made in and reminded her of her childhood: the large the lower section of the composition against the cloak of soft wool embroidered by her mother red ground, indicative of her particular respon- Khaja, an old Bedouin rug and numerous mu- siveness to primitive African art and an interest in sical scores. The painting is like something out the artistic vocabulary of exotic, faraway lands. of a Hasidic legend, recalling the art of the past “She travels through sudden gleams of smeared with a tang of modern life, characterized by the light and dark pools of shadow, swollen excess, artist’s almost maniacal attention to detail. The winding lines and vivid, abbreviated script of vi- glimpse of the crescent moon in the window in olent and almost brutal emotive impact, through the upper left corner means hope for a better slow, exuberant, enchanted oriental sumptuous- tomorrow. The sliver of light in the sky is like a ness and marks of burning terseness and daz- fine lady, like the mother that dried her tears and zling modernity […]”.4 sweetly soothed her pain, bringing serenity. As R . P. Antonietta wrote in her diary, “The moon in the window of the tiny room where I lived seemed to look at me and talk to me. That’s how it seemed 1 G. Mafai, in N. Vespignani (edited by), Nove maestri and what I believed as a child. I believed it when della Scuola Romana, Turin: Seat, 1992, p. 218. I was bigger too. My mother told me that there 2 We thank the Centro Studi Raphaël Mafai (www.raphaelmafai.org) for kindly granting was the face of Aaron, brother of Moses, in the permission for the use of this previously moon but I saw no face. To me it was like a huge unpublished page from the artist’s diary. 3 P. Baldacci (edited by), Antonietta Raphaël, forest, a wild wood with gigantic animals flying exhibition catalogue (New York, Paolo Baldacci or crawling. The moon smiled at me and I was Gallery, 9 March − 14 April 1995), New York, 1995 (our translation). not scared, not much anyway. I would burrow 4 F. D’Amico, “Una lingua inattesa”, in Nove maestri..., beneath the blankets and peep out every now cit., 1992, p. 192.

268 269 Antonietta Raphaël Arco di Settimio Severo all’alba

64 Title Arco di Settimio Severo all’alba de Libero, Renato Guttuso, Carlo Lizzani and 3 See Raphaël Mafai, exhibition catalogue [Arch of Septimius Severus at Dawn] Cesare Zavattini.4 By this time, she was defini- (Rome, Galleria Lo Zodiaco, 15–30 March 1952), presentation by V. Guzzi, Rome: Galleria dello Date 1929 tively recognized as having played a key part in Zodiaco, 1952. Technique oil on canvas the birth of the new Roman painting in the late 4 See Prima Mostra di Pittura. Il volto di Roma, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Circolo Artistico di Dimensions 48 × 41 cm twenties: “The small paintings of Raphael De via Margutta, May–June 1952), 1952. The work bottom right: Raffael ’29 Simon [sic] tell us that the Scipione-Mafai part- appeared under the title Foro romano (no. 93). nership will now have to be enlarged to make A partially illegible label still attached to the back provides evidence of the prize won: “Rafa[el]; Arco di Settimio Severo all’alba (1929) is room for the Lithuanian artist too by virtue of […]; [P]rezzo 250.000; lì 6 – 5 – 52; Per il comitato: part of the gallery of Roman views and land- her skill in combining the elements of that expe- [signature illegible]”. 5 A. Mezio, “Raphaël De Simon”, in Il Mondo, y. IV, scapes painted after walks with Mario Mafai by rience and adding overtones of antiquity. In the no. 14 (164), Rome, 5 April 1952, p. 12. See also Antonietta Raphaël, whose highly imaginative landscape with the Arch of Septimius Severus, V. G. [Virgilio Guzzi], “Raphaël Mafai”, in Il Tempo, painting is governed by an innate sense of col- this becomes something quite mysterious, like y. IX, no. 82, Rome, 22 March 1952, p. 3; M. M., “Taccuino delle arti”, in Il Quotidiano, y. IX, no. 82, our that makes every her vision poetic. a copy of a Giorgione made with the means Rome, 4 April 1952, p. 3; M. Venturoli, “Un’artista While the two-dimensional appearance of the and mentality of the Douanier Rousseau”.5 The coraggiosa tra preti e gerarchi”, in Vie Nuove, y. VII, piers supporting the architrave robs the arch work appeared during the fifties and sixties in no. 14, Rome, 6 April 1952, p. 16. 6 See A. Raphaël Mafai, bulletin-exhibition catalogue of its imperial majesty, an intense, all-envelop- numerous solo shows held in major Italian ven- (Rome, Galleria La Tartaruga, from 12 May 1955), ing panorama opens up behind it with a fiery ues like the Tartaruga in Rome,6 the Strozzina presentation by A. Mezio, Rome: Galleria La 7 8 Tartaruga, 1955. See also the following reviews: D. red horizon. This is Rome as Raphaël saw it in Florence, the Unione Culturale in Turin and Micacchi, “Pittura e scultura di Antonietta Raphaël”, through her foreign eyes, unencumbered by the Centro Culturale Olivetti in Ivrea,9 as well as in l’Unità, y. XXXII, no. 137, Rome, 18 May 1955, visual constraints and the weight of tradition numerous exhibitions over the following dec- p. 3; M. Venturoli, “Raphael Mafai alla ‘Tartaruga’”, in Paese Sera, y. VII, no. 121, Rome, 21 May 1955, and academic teaching. As Corrado Pavolini ades, details of some of which can be found p. 3; F. D’Arrigo, “A. Raphael Mafai”, in Vie Nuove, wrote in his review of the group show at the below in the note.10 y. X, no. 22, Rome, 28 May 1955, p. 19; A. Del Guercio, “Mostre d’arte. Antonietta Raphaël Mafai”, Camerata degli Artisti in Piazza di Spagna in R . P. in Rinascita, y. XII, no. 5, Rome, May 1955, p. 377. 1929: “Raphaël bears the terrible weight of 7 See Antonietta Raphaël Mafai. Ritorno dalla Cina, such a glorious reference with the innocent exhibition catalogue (Florence, Galleria La Strozzina, from 1 December 1956), presentation simplicity of a primitive”, painting “the Eternal 1 C. Pav. [Corrado Pavolini], “Mostre romane. Antonietta Raphael”, in Il Tevere, y. VI, no. 142, by C. Brandi, A. Mezio, A. Moravia, Florence: City as she sees it, with her temperament and Rome, 14 June 1929, p. 3. Raphaël showed work La Strozzina, 1956. her training”.1 For Alberto Francini, “there can in the Camerata degli Artisti to mark the end of the 8 See Antonietta Raphaël Mafai. Ritorno dalla Cina, season together with Anna Barbaro, Margherita Turin, Unione Culturale, presentation by C. Brandi, be nothing more deliberate than the painting of de Lotis, Giuseppina Fortini, Amelia Soria, Ina Turin, 1956. the amusing Signorina Raphaël, who holds all Moretti, Elsa Bonavia and Hazel Jackson. She 9 See Raphaël, exhibition catalogue (Ivrea, Centro 2 presented four drawings and eighteen paintings, Culturale Olivetti, July 1940), preface by A. Mezio, the aces in this exhibition”. including a romantic view of another Roman arch, Turin: Editrice Teca, 1960. After disappearing from the exhibition circuit the Arch of Constantine, in the snow. The work was 10 Ebraicità al femminile. Otto artiste del Novecento for years, the work was shown in 1952 at the among those sent to London for an exhibition at (Padua, Centro Culturale Altinate San Gaetano, the Redfern Gallery and lost when the studio of the 31 August − 13 October 2013), catalogue edited 3 Galleria dello Zodiaco and then at the Circolo sculptor Jacob Epstein, where the paintings were by M. Bakos, V. Baradel, Padua: Trart, 2013; Artiste Artistico di via Margutta, where she was award- stored, was destroyed in the bombing. del Novecento tra visione e identità ebraica (Rome, 2 Alfra [A. Francini], “Mostre romane. Sei pittrici Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Roma Capitale, 12 June ed the prize for painting by a jury made up e due scultrici”, in L’Italia Letteraria, y. I, no. 12, −5 October 2014), catalogue edited by M. Bakos, of Giulio Carlo Argan, Nino Bertoletti, Libero Rome, 23 June 1929, p. 4. O. Melasecchi, F. Pirani, Venice: Trart, 2014.

270 271 Antonietta Raphaël Veduta dalla terrazza di via Cavour

65 Title Veduta dalla terrazza di via Cavour these elements but without forgetting the visual [View from the Terrace in Via Cavour] experience acquired during her travels, from 1 See C. Pavolini, “La mostra del Sindacato artistico Date 1929 the East European tradition to the latest devel- laziale. Note al catalogo”, in Il Tevere, y. VI, no. 89, Rome, 13 April 1929, p. 3. The signature with the Technique oil on panel opments in French painting. The buildings are date of 1930 must have been added later by the Dimensions 21 × 27.4 cm crowded onto the panel, distinguished from one artist, as the set deadline for the delivery of works bottom right: Raffaël ’30 another by thick, black outlines. The absence of for display in the exhibition was 15 January 1929; see Prima Mostra del Sindacato Laziale Fascista 65 v verso (attributed to Mario Mafai) perspective reduces the distance between nature degli Artisti, Catalogo generale, Rome, Palazzo Title Paesaggio con figura and architecture so that the dark patch of vegeta- delle Esposizioni, Rome: Squarci, 1929, section VI, p. VIII. [Landscape with Figure] tion overlaps with the reds and reddish browns of 2 R. Longhi, “La mostra romana degli artisti sindacati. Date 1929 the buildings in a vision that combines the pictur- Clima e opere degli irrealisti-espressionisti”, Technique oil on panel esque qualities of landscape with the fascinating in L’Italia Letteraria, y. I, no. 2, Rome, 14 April 1929, p. 4. Dimensions 27.4 × 21 cm history of ruins. This evocative panorama had 3 “Antologia di scritti editi e inediti di Mario Mafai”, unsigned, undated also been addressed by Mafai some months ear- in L. Velani (edited by), Mario Mafai, exhibition catalogue Rome: Ente Premi Roma, 1969, pp. lier two views entitled Paesaggio dalla terrazza 15−50. Antonietta Raphaël painted her Veduta dalla ter- [Landscape from the Terrace] [FIG. 1] and Veduta 4 See L. Vinca Masini (edited by), Scipione, Mafai, razza di via Cavour in 1929 and showed it that dalla terrazza di via Cavour [View from the Terrace Raphaël nella collezione A. Della Ragione del Comune di Firenze e in collezioni private, exhibition year in the first exhibition of the Prima Mostra in Via Cavour] [FIG. 2]. Part of the De Angelis col- catalogue (Todi, Palazzo del Popolo, 29 April del Sindacato Laziale Fascista degli Artisti [First lection, the work was shown in Scipione, Mafai, − 27 May 1979), Rastignano, Bologna: Editografica, 1979. 1 Exhibition of Lazio Fascist Union of Artists]. This Raphaël nella collezione A. Della Ragione del 5 See M. Fagiolo dell’Arco (edited by), Scuola was the first real opportunity to make the instinc- Comune di Firenze e in collezioni private, an Romana. Artisti tra le due guerre, exhibition 4 catalogue (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 13 April tive, primitive work of the painter described by exhibition held in Todi in 1979 and then in an- − 19 June 1988), Milan: Mazzotta, 1988. Roberto Longhi as “suckled by the same wet- other on the Roman School curated by Maurizio 6 F. R. Morelli, in F. D’Amico (edited by), Antonietta nurse as Chagall”2 known to the public. The view Fagiolo dell’Arco in Milan, Palazzo Reale.5 The Raphaël, exhibition catalogue (Modena, Galleria Civica, 7 April − 16 June 1991), Bologna: Nuova is from the splendid vantage point of the top floor back of the panel presents a landscape seen Alfa Editoriale, 1991, p. 116. of an Umbertine-style building on Via Cavour, from below with a barely sketched figure walk- 7 Ebraicità al femminile. Otto artiste del Novecento (Padua, Centro Culturale Altinate San Gaetano, where Raphaël had moved with Mario Mafai and ing up a road towards a small church, which 31 August − 13 October 2013), catalogue edited their little daughter Miriam at the end of 1927. Francesca Morelli attributes to the young Mafai by M. Bakos, V. Baradel, Padua: Trart, 2013; Artiste Subsequently destroyed during Mussolini’s ur- on the grounds of its “somewhat archaic” char- del Novecento tra visione e identità ebraica (Rome, Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Roma Capitale, 12 June 6 ban clearance projects, the large terrace offered acter. Readers are referred to the note below −5 October 2014), catalogue edited by M. Bakos, a view of “the top section of the Colosseum for details of the recent exhibitions in which it O. Melasecchi, F. Pirani, Venice: Trart, 2014. and the background of trees on the Palatine”.3 has appeared.7 Raphaël took an authentic, personal approach to R . P.

1. Mario Mafai, Paesaggio dalla terrazza, 1928. 2. Mario Mafai, Veduta dalla terrazza di via Cavour, Private collection 1928. Private collection

272 273 Antonietta Raphaël Yom Kippur in the Sinagogue

66 Title Yom Kippur in the Sinagogue1 “[...] I don’t know what I expected, but I went a certain sorrow, a desire to pray and be forgiv- Date 1931 out and wandered eastward, soon losing my en. There is a little figure in the distance, very Technique oil on canvas way in the labyrinth of grimy streets and black, mystical, the most beautiful of all, I think. I’ve Dimensions 48 × 64 cm grassless squares [...] If I hadn’t, I should have got 22 heads and figures into the little canvas bottom right: Raffael 1932 missed the greatest romance of my life.” She so far. I know you must think I’m crazy, Mario, datato a posteriori dall’artista2 lived at 129, Alexandra Road, London NW 8, but I can tell you that if it’s a failure, I’ll have where she most probably had her studio too learnt a lot in any case.” There is of course Antonietta Raphaël, the daughter of a rabbi and where the English sculptor Jacob Epstein no failure in this work, which captures a mo- and niece of a great scholar of the Talmud, de- visited her. Having some idea of holding a show ment of lived experience with great humanity scribed herself as follows in the catalogue of a in a gallery, she had her remaining canvases and passion, drawing the viewer’s attention to group exhibition held in Rome in 1929: “Born in sent from Rome with a bit of money to get by. details that would otherwise have remained in- Russia. Moved to London with her mother after Fired with enthusiasm, she set to work at the visible. Unfortunately, her hopes of success in her father’s death. Studied music at the Royal end of August on a painting of countless col- London were dashed when a dealer judged her Academy. Arrived in Rome in 1926. ‘The insu- ours set in the Great Synagogue in the middle works to be uninteresting. Mafai wrote: “Leave perable beauty of this eternal city awakened of Whitechapel Road on Yom Kippur, the day of the paintings in London with your friend and in me a great desire to reproduce it as I see penitence, the most sacred and solemn festivi- come to Rome with some of your new things, it.’ And so she set to work a couple of years ty of the Jewish calendar. She wrote to Mafai on which I’m eager to see and which we can show ago, guided by her instinct alone. ‘Since that 28 August 1931 at 11 in the morning: “I imme- in the Union exhibition”.4 She decided to return day, the art of painting has been my sanctuary.’ diately started a small sketch, an impression of with this work, which remained in her posses- She paints landscapes and people from life but Yom Kippur in the evening in the synagogue. It sion until her death in 1975, one of the few from not without looking to classical art, especially may be a bit rash on my part to try and give the the London period to survive. As she stated in to the Venetians for colour”.3 A restless, wan- impression of a multitude of Jews praying to various interviews, most were destroyed by dering Jewess, she struggled to find her path God. There will certainly be eighty to a hundred bombing during the war. It was shown in 1960 in life. Early in 1931, after an artistically and heads. You get frightened, don’t you? I hope I at the Galleria Narciso in Turin, in 1989 in an personally disappointing period spent in Paris, can succeed, it’s only 48 x 48 cm. Write back exhibition of work by Jewish painters at the she returned to Rome for a short time before straight away and tell me what you think. I may Jewish Museum in New York, and more recent- leaving for the city where she had learned to send you a drawing of it next week.” She wrote ly in the exhibition Artiste del Novecento at the play music and draw in August. She left her again a few days later on 1 September: “Dear Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Rome. three daughters with their father Mario Mafai in Mario […] I’m doing something very interest- R . P. Roma and moved back to the East End, then ing, an impression of the synagogue on the the poorest part of London. Stretching from evening of Yom Kippur, as I wrote before. I think Bishopsgate to Bow, from Bethnal Green to it will be very beautiful but it’s terribly difficult. 1 We have chosen to retain the misspelling “Sinagogue”, as written by the artist on the back the London Dock, is was also home to the larg- I wish you were here to advise me because it’s of the canvas, rather than correct it to “Synagogue”. est population of Jews from central and east- all about the perspective of the interior and 2 Two letters of 1931 to Mario Mafai provide proof that the work was painted 1931 and subsequently dated ern Europe. Yiddish was the language of the heads, heads, heads, heads, small and very on the front and back of the canvas. streets of Whitechapel, St. George’s and Mile small but each must have its own expression. 3 Mostra di otto pittrici e scultrici romane, exhibition End Town, and signs in Hebrew characters The first heads were difficult for me and I near- catalogue (Rome, “Camerata degli Artisti” of Piazza di Spagna, 9−24 June 1929), presentation were everywhere. Despite the poverty and con- ly decided to abandon the idea but it became by R. Strinati. fusion, it was there that avant-garde painters, clearer after a day or two and I’m beginning 4 M. Fagiolo dell’Arco (edited by), I Mafai. Vite parallele, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Galleria sculptors and poets found refuge. As Oscar to see heads from above and below, heads in d’Arte Netta Vespignani, February–March 1994), Wilde wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray, profile and three-quarter view, each expressing Rome: Edizioni Netta Vespignani, 1994.

274 275 Antonietta Raphaël La strada al mare

67 Title La strada al mare with respect to her earlier Roman landscapes, [The Road to the Sea] suggesting that some inner balance had been Date 1939 attained despite the precarious wartime situation. Technique oil on canvas The work was first shown in Ferrara in the exhi- Dimensions 44 × 55.5 cm bition of 1960 Mostra del rinnovamento dell’arte bottom left near the centre: RAphAEL 39 in Italia dal 1930 al 19452 and then the following right edge: Raphaël 39 year in the exhibition Il paesaggio nella pittura italiana contemporanea at the Galleria Narciso in Turin. Raphaël decided to sell it on the lat- The racial persecution of 1938 forced ter occasion so that she could cast in bronze a Antonietta Raphaël, due to her Jewish origins, number of her sculptures whose state of pres- to take refuge with all the family at Quarto ervation gave cause for concern. While the al- dei Mille in the Liguria region in the home of ternation between painting and sculpture was a the collector Alberto Della Ragione. As Mafai constant characteristic of Raphaël’s career, the wrote, “She turned the only large room of the choice in this case was made on financial rather villa where we were living into a studio and it than artistic grounds. was hard to move around between the easels, R . P. the tables, the frameworks of wire and rags, the grand piano, the models wrapped in damp 1 M. Fagiolo dell’Arco (edited by), I Mafai. Vite cloths and tubs full of clay, which always had to parallele, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Galleria be kept moist”.1 d’Arte Netta Vespignani, February–March 1994), La strada al mare (1939) is one of the first paint- Rome: Edizioni Netta Vespignani, 1994, p. 17. 2 See E. Riccomini (edited by), Mostra del ings of the Quarto period. The images are built rinnovamento dell’arte in Italia dal 1930 al 1945, up in long streaks of thick paint that bring the exhibition catalogue (Ferrara, Casa Romei, June−September 1960), Bologna: Edizioni Alfa, foliage of the seaside town to life. The compo- 1960. The work is listed as no. 204 under the title sition appears more measured and symmetrical Via del mare and erroneously dated 1931.

276 277 Ottone Rosai L’attesa

68 Title L’attesa [Waiting] section of the painting”.4 “In the sadness of the Date 1920 post-war period”, the scene of four men sitting Technique oil on canvas at a table is devoid “of fully human attributes”, Dimensions 29 × 32 cm which are almost intentionally avoided, seeking bottom right: O. ROSAI “to blend something drawn from antiquity, from myth”5 into the formal archaism of the figures: A reproduction of the study for L’attesa, painted a mythology of everyday life. The image of this by Ottone Rosai in 1920, appeared in the artist’s timeless, mute, human reality is accentuated book Via Toscanella, published ten years later.1 by the absence of spatial points of reference The comparison with this “note drawn from life” other than the details of the table and chairs re- on paper in pencil [FIG. 1] (Rome, private collec- quired to indicate the genre contest of the work tion) carried out in 2000 for Christie’s Milano re- and hence the starting point (namely reality) of vealed the absence of the two chairs in the fore- Rosai’ reflections. Originally part of the artist’s ground (from the Caffè Paszkowsky in Florence) collection, the work was shown in the exhibition and the presence of a little girl, who does not of 1995 at the Casa d’aste Farsettiarte in Prato appear in the canvas.2 and Palazzo Reale in Milan6 and then in 2008 at The highly accentuated realism of the features Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence.7 of the man seated on the left is also toned down C.T. in the painting. Rosai’s realism starts from life but then proceeds beyond it in a pictorial exploration of inner, spiritual substance: “I can- 1 O. Rosai, Via Toscanella, Florence: Vallecchi, 1930, not draw or outline a figure. After seeing it and p. 71. 2 The drawing is signed and dated in the bottom drawing it with the model in front of me, I can right: “Otto Rosai 1919”; see L. Cavallo (edited by), only capture the spirit, not the forms, in which I Cinquanta dipinti di Ottone Rosai a 50 anni dalla scomparsa, exhibition catalogue (Florence, Palazzo 3 have little interest”. Colour, like graphic line, is Medici Riccardi, 27 January − 25 March 2008), a tool used in this process. As Pier Carlo Santini Florence: Edizioni Pananti, 2008, p. 169. 3 O. Rosai, Ottone Rosai. “Nient’altro che un artista”. noted in connection with the retrospective of Lettere e scritti inediti, edited by Vittoria Corti, 1960 at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, “L’attesa, Piombino: Tracce Edizioni, 1987, pp. 460−61. which can be dated with no uncertainty to 4 P. C. Santini, Rosai, Florence: Vallecchi, 1960, p. 152. 5 See Cinquanta dipinti..., cit., 2008, pp. 169−70. 1920, is distinguished by greater richness of 6 L. Cavallo (edited by), Ottone Rosai, exhibition colour and based not on blues but on shades catalogue (Prato, Farsettiarte, 23 September − 22 October 1995; Milan, Palazzo Reale, 26 October of green, light brown and russet that become 1995 − 6 January 1996), Milan: Mazzotta, 1995. almost imperceptibly lighter towards to upper 7 Cinquanta dipinti..., cit., 2008.

1. Ottone Rosai, Study for “L’attesa”, 1919. Rome, private collection

278 279 Ottone Rosai L’intagliatore

69 Title L’intagliatore [The Wood Carver] wrote to Ardengo Soffici on 27 February 1922: “I Date 1922 am determined at all costs that the art and name 1 P. C. Santini, Rosai, Florence: Vallecchi, 1960, Technique oil on pressed cardboard of my father, for whom I had a sort of adoration, p. 163. 2 See Mostra Rosai, exhibition catalogue (Florence, 5 attached to a wooden panel will not end up in suicide”. The portrait is thus a Galleria di Palazzo Ferroni, 6−21 October 1932), Dimensions 62.3 × 46.5 cm formal rereading of the paternal tragedy by the Florence: Galleria di Palazzo Ferroni, 1932, work no. 78. bottom left: O. ROSAI son. As he stated, “it is my father that exists in 3 P. C. Santini, Rosai, cit., 1960, p. 163. me”.6 This “ideal portrait” presents a “symbol of 4 Ibidem, p. 77. On the occasion of the retrospective of 1960 the anti-heroic humankind that inhabited works 5 Letter from Ottone Rosai to Ardengo Soffici, dated 27 February 1922, in O. Rosai, Rosai e Soffici. 1 7 at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Pier Carlo like Via Toscanella in the same period”. A natu- Carteggio 1914-1951, edited by V. Corti, Florence: Santini presented the work as L’artigiano [The ralistic rendering of the face is avoided in accor- Giorgi & Gambi Editori, 1996, p. 64. 6 “Linee per una biografia”, in Ottone Rosai: nel Artisan] on the basis of the catalogue of the dance with the artist’s typical practice of going centenario della nascita – Opere dal 1919 al 1957, show of 1932 at Palazzo Ferroni.2 While it is also beyond naturalism to penetrate the complexity texts by A. Parronchi, R. Monti, G. dalla Chiesa, known as Scultore in legno [Wood Sculptor] of reality, embracing in his subjects “a populism V. Corti, Florence: Edizioni Galleria Pananti, 1995, p. 34. 8 and Ritratto del padre [Portrait of the Artist’s deeply rooted in Savonarola”. 7 “Ottone Rosai, L’intagliatore, 1922”, critical text Father], the title on the back of the canvas is Drawing on the Tuscan school of the fourteenth accompanying lot no. 576, in Asta di opere d’Arte Moderna provenienti da raccolte private, auction L’intagliatore. The date 1922 is significant not and fifteenth century, the work forms part of a catalogue, Casa d’asta Farsettiarte, Prato, Florence: only because it coincides with the “death of the rereading of the “French art of Cézanne and Grafiche Gelli, 2012, n.p. portrait” in Rosai’s work3 but also because that Derain through the Italian Renaissance, por- 8 Ottone Rosai: nel centenario della nascita-opere dal 1919 al 1957, cit., 1995, p. 50. was the year when his father, seriously ill and traying the few subjects with thick, bold, con- 9 “Ottone Rosai, L’intagliatore, 1922”, in Asta overburdened with debt, drowned himself in the cise strokes”.9 Initially owned by Rosai’s widow di opere..., cit., 2012, n.p. 10 Mostra Rosai, cit., 1932. Arno. The artist thus inherited the carpenter’s Francesca Fei, the work entered the Benesperi 11 C. L. Ragghianti (edited by), Arte moderna in Italia shop in Via Maggio and was obliged by the and Luigi Poggi collections before being 1915-1935, exhibition catalogue (Florence, Palazzo family’s dire financial straits to work there for a bought for the Iannaccone collection in 2012. Strozzi, 26 February − 28 May 1967), Florence: Marchi e Bertolli Editori, 1967. period rather than paint. A solo show was held First shown at the Galleria di Palazzo Ferroni in 12 P. C. Santini (edited by), Ottone Rosai. Opere dal that year at the Saletta Gonnelli in Florence and 1932,10 it has since appeared at Palazzo Strozzi 1911 al 1957, exhibition catalogue (Turin, Circolo degli Artisti-Palazzo Graneri, April−May 1983; the Casa d’Arte Bragaglia in Rome but brought in Florence, presented by Carlo Ludovico Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, him nothing. Rosai thus ended a period, en- Ragghianti on the occasion of the exhibition July−September 1983), Florence: Vallecchi, 1983. 11 13 L. Cavallo (edited by), Cinquanta dipinti di Ottone compassing a genre anchored in realism, with Arte moderna in Italia 1915-1935, the Galleria Rosai a 50 anni dalla scomparsa, exhibition a work born precisely out of the real need to Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome in 198312 catalogue (Florence, Palazzo Medici Riccardi, present the image not of a suicide but of a man, and the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence in 27 January − 25 March 2008), Florence: Edizioni Pananti, 2008. his father, grappling with his inner conflict and the retrospective to mark the fiftieth anniversary captured here with “extraordinary immanence of Rosai’s death.13 of spiritual and ethical” presence.4 As Rosai C.T.

1. The artist’s father, period photograph

280 281 Ottone Rosai Conversazione

70 Title Conversazione [Conversation] one, whose spirit and work still preserve intact Anno 1922 a pure passion for the poetic reality of the wor- Technique oil on canvas ld and respect for the fundamental principles of Dimensions 43 × 33.5 cm genuine art”.1 bottom right: In this work in particular, Rosai appears re- O. ROSAI 1922 luctant to use colours, simply because his art requires few elements to scale the heights of 1922 was a difficult year for Rosai. The two stylistic acuity and expression. Even in this solo shows he held, in the spring at the Saletta wholly natural and human work, we find a sort Gonnelli in Florence and at the end of the year of solitary descent into anguish. These three in Rome at the Casa d’Arte Bragaglia, were both almost lugubrious figures, hidden in thick, authentic fiascos. Soffici also moved to Rome grey clothes, seem to constitute a discourse that year to work as a journalist, and Rosai developed within the artist himself. The men’s found it hard to get over the absence of his clothing is marked by a long passage of time friend and cultural point of reference. Added to that has laid a kind of veil over everything, all this was the suicide of his father, hitherto the capturing echoes and reverberations of the artist’s moral and psychological anchor. The few past and traces of the use that has worn out paintings of this period seem almost untouched and enriched everything. It is colour that takes by his grief. It is as though Rosai managed to on deep notes and transparency, that causes find peace from the trials of everyday hardship the composition to vibrate with moving human and all other anguish by suspending his figures involvement in a midwinter of the feelings. in the atmosphere of emptiness that solitude ne- “Palazzeschi writes that Rosai is blue”.2 The cessarily communicates. He appears to have li- colour does indeed characterize many of the ved a double life in this difficult year. On the one works of this period, when he often returned hand, a clash with everyday reality; on the other, to a form of construction that is “all laid bare, an immersion in painting that Soffici commented where the consequences and agreements of on in words that plumb Rosai’s poetic depths: the planes and axes, the cadences balanced “His virtues and merits of invention have been through echoes and contrasts, create a rhythm singularly strengthened and expanded, leading that is changeable but always taut and sustai- to the creation of works of unquestionable be- ned”.3 The face of the only man seen frontally auty and great interest. More important for me expresses extremely human suffering, almost is the fact that this development of the creative black despair, while the man in profile appears faculties has not been at the expense of some to speak to the figure with his back to us in one of the essential qualities of Rosai’s artistic per- of those commonplace moments of life that sonality, which are still what they were when he Rosai makes eternal and almost sublime. emerged from the tribulations of Futurism and D.M. began to explore the true paths of art with seriousness and love. These qualities are sinceri- 1 A. Soffici, Ottone Rosai, exhibition catalogue ty, innocence, inherent love of truth and sponta- (Florence, Saletta Gonnelli, March 1922), neous elegance and delicacy in rendering it with Florence: Vallecchi, 1922. 2 P. C. Santini, Rosai, 3rd ed., Florence: Vallecchi the simplest means of the painter’s craft. He is 1972, p. 68. one of the very few, perhaps indeed the only 3 Ibidem.

282 283 Ottone Rosai I fidanzati

71 Title I fidanzati [The Betrothed] the most essential”.3 The version of I fidanzati Date 1934 in the Iannaccone collection was first shown in Technique oil on panel 1939 in a solo show at the Galleria Barbaroux Dimensions 70 × 49.7 cm in Milan, which was a great success in terms bottom right: O. ROSAI XII of visitors and sales. An article published in Tempo confirms that it was then the property of The tenderness with which Ottone Rosai suc- Alberto Mondadori in Milan.4 It then appeared ceeds in capturing the poetic and epic quality in the Florentine retrospective of 1960 curat- of everyday life verges on intense emotion in ed by Pier Carlo Santini at Palazzo Strozzi5 this work. With his arm around her shoulders, and again in 2007 in the exhibition Aria e Cieli the lovers walk unperturbed in perfect harmo- nel paesaggio italiano del Novecento held in ny with a landscape that has lost any concrete Fabriano.6 element to become a wholly mental and emo- R.P. tive setting. The balance of the composition, underscored by the lines of the road stretching away gently into the distance, is combined 1 P. C. Santini, Rosai, Florence: Vallecchi Editore, 1960. with a “calm and liquid blending of colour”1 2 See XX Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte 1936-XIV. Catalogo, Venice: Officine Grafiche Carlo Ferrari, applied in delicate, interwoven strokes. A gen- 1936, p. 125. tle light warms the scene and calms the sky. 3 P. C. Santini, Rosai, cit., 1960. 4 O. Rosai, “Le mie esperienze”, in Tempo, Milan, Rosai painted another version [FIG. 1] the fol- 2 November 1939. The work was mentioned under lowing year and showed it at the 1936 Venice the title Gli innamorati and its location was given 2 as the Collezione Alberto Mondadori. Biennial, seeking unsuccessfully, according 5 See P. C. Santini (edited by), Mostra dell’opera to Pier Carlo Santini, to recapture the stylistic di Ottone Rosai, exhibition catalogue (Florence, perfection of the first: “If Vittorini had had this Palazzo Strozzi, May−June 1960), Florence: Vallecchi Editore, 1960. painting rather than the other before his eyes 6 See V. Dehò, E. Pontiggia (edited by), Aria. Premio when writing about the 1936 Biennial, he might Internazionale d’Arte Decima Edizione, exhibition catalogue (Fabriano, Spedale di Santa Maria del not have said that the aspect of Rosai present- Buon Gesù, 7 July − 16 September 2007), Bologna: ed was perhaps the most characteristic but not Grafis, 2007.

1. Ottone Rosai, Fidanzati, 1935. Private collection

284 285 Ottone Rosai All’osteria

72 Title All’osteria [In the Tavern] it to mention L’attesa [Waiting], 1920 [W. NO. 79] Date 1938 — and is characterized by the absence of any Technique oil on canvas details of context. A “good painting” was in Dimensions 75.5 × 65.5 cm fact for Rosai a representation of the intimate bottom right: O. Rosai XVI concreteness of reality, “its philosophical inner world”, so as to “substantiate it with humanity All’osteria (1938) was painted during a very and poetry”.5 As he went on to write, “An object, fruitful decade in the career of Ottone Rosai, an apple, a town, a man, each of these things one of numerous works prompted by the need contains the drama of humankind as a whole, felt as from the end of the twenties to “ascer- and so they must recount this drama to human tain the correspondence of forms to themes of beings, otherwise they will serve no purpose life and emotion”, as Pier Carlo Santini wrote other than that of being recognized in their in connection with the retrospective of 1960 at outer, nominative appearance and not in the Palazzo Strozzi.1 The thick outline of the figures deep, inner sense of their meaning”.6 The artist in these works is designed not so much for showed the work at the 1938 Venice Biennial “structural strength” as “to eliminate and en- (room 32), after which it entered the Rossini col- close the forms” in genre scenes like this one lection in Turin and appeared in the exhibition in a tavern, where the drawing serves to attain Onoranze a Ottone Rosai / Mostra dell’opera di a sort of primitive simplicity.2 As Rosai wrote to Ottone Rosai presso Palazzo Strozzi di Firenze Renato Guttuso on 12 October 1954, and hence of May 1960 at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence.7 It in the context of the post-war dispute between was exhibited five years later by the Galleria abstract artists and realists on the formal qual- d’Arte Farsetti in Prato8 and purchased for the ities of an authentic political vocabulary of art, Iannaccone collection. “What matters to me is truth, which has still, C.T. despite everything, its right to eternity”.3 The urgent need for truth, for pictorial honesty with respect to reality, is the cornerstone of his work 1 P. C. Santini, Rosai, Florence: Vallecchi, 1960, p. 95. and emerges in the tales it tells of moments in 2 Ibidem. 3 G. Raimondi (edited by), Alcuni scritti due lettere everyday life: “What matters is our understand- e due quadri inediti di Ottone Rosai, Florence: ing as honest human beings, our ability to meet Vallecchi, 1960, pp. 10−12. on a basis of comprehension, respect and trust, 4 Ibidem. 5 Ibidem, pp. 12−13. and this matters because there is still in us the 6 Ibidem. precise desire to serve something, the some- 7 See P. C. Santini (edited by), Onoranze a Ottone Rosai / Mostra dell’opera di Ottone Rosai 1911-1957, thing that is art and that, as we know, takes exhibition catalogue (Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, more than a lifetime to master”.4 The theme of May−June 1960), Florence: Vallecchi, 1960. a group of men sitting at a table was recurrent 8 See 100 opere di Ottone Rosai, exhibition catalogue (Prato, Galleria d’Arte Farsetti, 1965), Prato: in Rosai’s work as from the twenties — suffice Edizioni Galleria d’Arte Farsetti, 1965.

286 287 Ottone Rosai Giocatori di toppa

73 Title Giocatori di toppa [“Toppa” Players] show at Palazzo Capponi in Florence and at the Date 1920 Strozzina in 1953 in the exhibition Omaggio a Technique charcoal on cardboard Rosai curated by Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti.5 mounted on canvas The back originally bore another drawing, “as Dimensions 490 × 690 mm fine as one by an old master”, of the same sub- bottom right: ROSAI ject with the figure in the foreground enlarged.6 They have been shown separately since Ottone Ottone Rosai saw drawing as “the first way to Rosai nel Centenario della nascita. Disegni dal get to grips with and penetrate reality. Apparent, 1906 al 1956, the centenary exhibition of draw- everyday reality takes shape only through a ings held in 1995 at the Accademia in Florence.7 graphic structure in the space of the sheet in R . P. obedience to the need to address the world little by little, in successive frames”.1 This conception underlies Giocatori di toppa, where “nothing is 1 L. Cavallo, “Omaggio a Ottone Rosai. Il disegno”, in Il disegno italiano, San Polo D’Enza: La Scaletta, 2 fortuitous or provisional”. The buildings in the 1995. background create an interplay of shadows 2 M. Masciotta, in Seconda biennale internazionale della grafica di Firenze. La grafica tra le due guerre to focus the viewer’s attention on the six men 1918/1939, exhibition catalogue (Florence, Palazzo playing the Florentine game toppa in the fore- Strozzi, 30 April − 29 June 1970), Florence: Unione ground, oblivious to the two grim figures behind Fiorentina, 1970, p. 121. 3 P. Torriano, “Pittura. Gli estremi si toccano”, in Sette them, one grotesque with a nose like Cyrano Giorni, y. IX, no. 25, Milan, 19 June 1943, p. 17. de Bergerac. The drawing is steeped in the 4 From a lecture delivered on 18 December 1933 at the end of the Rosai show curated by Persico at the “compassion and solidity of the old Florentine Galleria Le Tre Arti in Milan; see [E. Persico], “Tre populace”3 with which Rosai loved to tell com- pittori”, in Domus, y. VII, no. 73, Milan: Editoriale mon stories of ordinary individuals without ever Domus, January 1934, p. 47; now in G. Veronesi (edited by), Edoardo Persico. Tutte le opere lapsing into caricature. As his friend Edoardo (1923-1935), Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1964. Persico wrote: “You will see that Rosai has noth- 5 See C. L. Ragghianti (edited by), Omaggio a Rosai, exhibition catalogue (Florence, Galleria ing to do with the vignettes in which the new La Strozzina, April−May 1953), Florence: Vallecchi, Tuscan sketching delights. For us, this proletar- 1953. 6 See P. C. Santini, in Ottone Rosai, exhibition ian is not some wild yob but rather the brother catalogue (Ivrea, Centro Culturale Olivetti, May of all those who have sought the substance of a 1957), Milan: All’Insegna del Pesce d’Oro, 1957, new world in the inferno of war and the purgato- work no. 13, p. 66. 7 See Ottone Rosai nel Centenario della nascita. 4 ry of peace, in misery and guilt”. The drawing is Disegni dal 1906 al 1956, exhibition catalogue a preparatory study for the small canvas [FIG. 1] (Florence, Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, December 1995 − January 1996), texts by owned by Gianni Mattioli, formerly in the Feroldi A. Parronchi, S. Capecchi, Florence: Edizioni collection. It was included in 1920 in a solo Pananti, 1995, pp. [45−46], 91.

1. Ottone Rosai, Giocatori di toppa, 1920. Mattioli collection

288 289 Aligi Sassu Concerto

74 Title Concerto the need to express an existential condition, as Date 1930 can be perceived in the timeless, lyrical atmos- Technique oil on canvas glued onto phere of the settings and the frozen gestures plywood and expressions of the figures. Dimensions 65 × 57 cm The Concerto was listed in the catalogue of the bottom right: SASSU show held at the Bottega di Corrente in March 1941 can be identified as this work.4 It appeared Having definitively abandoned the Futurism of in the solo show of 1945 held at the Galleria his youth, Aligi Sassu embarked in 1929 on the Ciliberti and then repeated the same year at the long and successful series of Uomini rossi [Red Galleria Santa Radegonda,5 a stamped label Men] featuring hundreds of male figures drawn from which is still attached to the back.6 from mythology or scenes of everyday life. This R . P. group of works displays the artist’s predilection for a “harsh, incendiary red that tastes of blood, a red that does not sing, ring out or warm but 1 R.G. [R. Giolli], “Esposizioni milanesi. 6 giovani”, burns and amazes, truly for us something living, in Cronache Latine, y. II, no. 7, Milan, 13 February a note of the soul, a search for depth”.1 Vague 1932, p. 6. Raffaello Giolli made this comment on the paintings presented by Sassu in a group show or summarily outlined settings host mostly nude held at the Galleria del Milione in February 1932 groups of slender, immature, male figures de- together with Renato Birolli, Giovanni Cortese, Luigi Grosso, Giacomo Manzù and Fiorenzo Tomea. scribed by Raffaele De Grada as “adolescents 2 R. De Grada, “I valori tipici di Sassu”, in Aligi Sassu, standing out as in vase painting with the blazing Milan: Sandro Maria Rosso Editore Stampatore, eyes of those listening to the faint voice of an Galleria 32, 1967, pp. 15−18. 3 The work was in the Ballo collection at least as oracle prophesying future truths”. He also not- from 1959, as indicated in the catalogue of the ed some “kinship” between these young bodies show held at the Galleria delle Ore, Milan, in April the same year; see Sassu, catalogue-bulletin no. and the male nudes painted by Scipione in the 9, presentation by R. Guttuso, Milan:Galleria delle same period [FIG. 1, P. 312]. Both artists did in fact Ore, 1959, [p. 10]. 4 See Aligi Sassu, exhibition catalogue (Milan, break the rules of anatomy in their figures to de- Bottega di Corrente, 19−31 March 1941), part from the muscular, monumental model of presentation by L. Anceschi, Milan: Edizioni Novecento physicality.2 Bottega di Corrente, 1941, [p. 8]. 5 See Aligi Sassu, exhibition catalogue (Milan, The sole indication of perspective in Concerto Galleria Santa Radegonda, October 1945, texts by (1930, formerly in the collection of Guido Ballo3) E. Emanuelli, A. Sassu, N. Tullier, Milan: Galleria Santa Radegonda, 1945, [p. 9]. The work is is given by lines of the floor and the skewed erroneously dated 1943 in the catalogue. lines of the table, without which the evanescent For one of the more recent exhibitions in which figures would appear to float in mid-air. It was it has appeared, see Il Chiarismo. Omaggio a De Rocchi. Luce e colore a Milano negli anni trenta not, however, only the formal questions that in- (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 16 June − 5 September terested Sassu, who addressed this theme re- 2010), edited by E. Pontiggia, Milan: Skira, 2010. 6 The label bears the following inscription: “Galleria peatedly. In addition to his deliberated rejection Santa Radegonda – Milano; Aligi Sassu; “Concerto” of Novecento volume and chiaroscuro, he felt 1930; Mostra personale ottobre 1945”.

290 291 Aligi Sassu I Dioscuri

75 Title I Dioscuri [Castor and Pollux] Date 1931 Technique oil on canvas Dimensions 70 × 58 cm bottom right: 31 SASSU

With their timeless, contemplative atmosphere, Aligi Sassu’s works undertake a deeply existential exploration, an investigation of the innermost feelings and mental states of humankind and its archetypes. As noted in an article of the period, “His mythology does not lapse into classical mannerism, literary vacuity or superficiality. Each figure is governed by a humanity present to itself, i.e. resolved within the boundaries of the painting itself”.1 The slender, adolescent Castor and Pollux of 1931 neither fight nor move and have nothing in common with the fearless Greek demigods apart from their youth. Despite the melancholy cast of their expressions and their defenceless nudity, the delicate shades of colour and the balance of the composition offer some grounds for hope. The gentle landscape with its “marks of dawn and spring”2 recalls the purity of our response to life during youth. As Sassu stated in this connection, “I say that the Uomini rossi [Red Men] are youth, the representation of man, who is born naked before the universe and then faces society, into which he is forced, with faith, the generosity of youth and the purity of dawn; man bathed in sunlight, which shines through the body and illuminates the blood, blood that is life and will then be death. This is why there are no shadows in the painting, why everything is colour”.3 The painting was presented in February 1932 at the Galleria del Milione in group show of work by Sassu, Renato Birolli, Corrado Cagli, Giovanni Cortese, Luigi Grosso, Giacomo Manzù and Fiorenzo Tomea. R . P.

1 Unsigned review in L’Italia vivente, Rome, 15 April 1932. 2 E. Pontiggia, in E. Pontiggia, N. Colombo (edited by), Milano anni Trenta. L’arte e la città, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Spazio Oberdan, 2 December 2004 − 27 February 2005), Milan: Mazzotta, 2004, p. 124. 3 A. Sassu, Un grido di colore. Autobiografia, Lugano: Todaro Editore, 1998, p. 27. See E. Pontiggia, A. Paglione (edited by), Sassu e Corrente 1930-1943. La Rivoluzione del colore, exhibition catalogue (Chieti, Palazzo de’ Mayo - S.E.T. Spazio Esposizioni Temporanee, 25 July − 7 October 2012), Allemandi, Turin, 2012 (the painting was among the works exhibited).

292 293 Aligi Sassu Nu au divan vert

76 Title Nu au divan vert painting, dominated by fiery hues and especial- [Nude on a Green Couch] ly the blood red of the body. Attilio Podestà’s Date 1941 enthusiastic review of the show in Genoa notes Technique oil on canvas the young painter’s “precocious intelligence” Dimensions 97 × 65 cm and “almost morbid sensitivity”, praising above bottom right: SASSU all his “use of bright colours in an impetuous profusion of acidic hues and an atmosphere in- Nu au divan vert marked a turning point in the undated with light, devoid of chiaroscuro, with career of Aligi Sassu, who embarked on a se- veiled, blended brushstokes and an interplay ries of painting based on Guy de Maupassant’s of reflections”.4 The work was shown in Genoa short story The Tellier House (1881) between under the Italianized title Nudo su fondo verde 1941 and 1948.1 The work offered the artist an in compliance with the Fascist demand for lin- opportunity to address the subject of the broth- guistic autarky.5 el, interpreted as a place to let off steam for the R . P. bourgeois society previously depicted in his Café series. The presence of nudes in his works has nothing to do with any moralistic intent: “My 1 See Fondazione Aligi Sassu e Helenita Olivares viewpoint is that of acknowledging a degrading (edited by), Sassu. Maison Tellier, exhibition catalogue (Lugano, Villa Ciani, 17 October 2008 human condition from which salvation is pos- − 1 March 2009), Lugano: Fondazione Aligi sible through the humanity of the creatures in- Sassu e Helenita Olivares, 2008. Literature often 2 provided Sassu with inspiration, as in his youthful volved”. illustrations for Marinetti’s Mafarka il futurista and Manet’s Olympia [FIG. 1] constitutes an impor- later work on Manzoni’s Promessi Sposi and Dante. tant source of inspiration for the painting, as 2 A. Sassu, in Aligi Sassu, exhibition catalogue (Cantù, Galleria Pianella, 20 April – 3 May 1968), text by can be deduced from the diagonal slant of the Franco Passoni, Cantù: Galleria Pianella, 1968. composition. In his presentation of the solo 3 L. Anceschi, in Aligi Sassu in una mostra nelle nostre sale, exhibition catalogue (Genoa, Galleria show at the Galleria Genova in 1941, Luciano Genova, 1–15 February 1941), Genoa: Galleria Anceschi spoke also of Sassu’s “idolatry of the Genova, 1941. legendary Delacroix, the wonderful liberator of 4 A. Podestà, “Sassu a Genova”, in Primato, y. II, no. 4, Milan, 15 February 1941, p. 26. colour from the arid formulas of bogus classi- 5 See Aligi Sassu in una mostra..., cit., 1941 (work cism”.3 The painter was indeed certainly influ- no. 22). The other works exhibited include Il grande caffè [The Big café], La morte di Patroclo enced here by the master’s odalisques [FIG. 2]. [Patroclus’ Death], Ballerine [Ballerinas] and Sassu’s flair for colour is freely displayed in this Battaglia di tre cavalieri [Three Horsemen Fighting].

1. Édouard Manet, Olympia, 1863. Paris, 2. Eugène Delacroix, Odalisque Reclining on a Divan, Musée d’Orsay 1827–28. Cambridge, The Fitzwilliam Museum

294 295 Scipione Villa Corsini

77 Title Villa Corsini observing and analyzing their work with great Date 1929 attention. We passed works of painting and Technique oil on panel sculpture back and forth between us. For us Dimensions 36.5 × 29.5 cm it was a practically unknown world. Who knew anything about Goya, Velázquez, Brueghel and “Who will give us back Scipione and the acute- Piero della Francesca apart from the odd repro- ness of his senses, which wrested from baroque duction? And then there was modern painting, Rome the confessions of bishops and statues, a real garden of delights”.2 stormy skies and joyous mysteries, broad si- Swallowed up by a real African jungle in search lences of piazzas in the power of time and tragic of a way into the blanket of greens, we find appearances? Who like him will be master of ourselves before a baroque entrance, but it is this Rome, the city he pursued at breakneck closed, impassable, and prevents complete speed? They were his definitive pilgrimages, immersion. The red of the sunset fades, almost last farewells that gave him a fever for painting as though attacked by the tip of an anthracite so that the colours oozed with blood, all the green fir. A constellation of palms coexist har- shades of blood in the pinks, greens, browns, moniously with the verdant, wedge-shaped violets, purples and greys mixed proud and trees. The brushstrokes are soft and almost munificent by his fingers”.1 This particular view dreamy, free despite all impediments. Just of Rome, unquestionably seen looking up from as the trees extend past the gate, we feel the Villa Corsini towards the botanical gardens and powerful, instinctive yearning of a young man the Janiculum, was first shown in November to live, to go beyond the problems life holds in 1930 in the important joint show with Mafai store for him. Villa Corsini is not merely an ex- at the Galleria Roma, the first and last time in ercise in landscape painting but a mature and Scipione’s life that he was to present a sub- perhaps painful reflection on human existence stantial body of works. As Alberto Neppi wrote and for this reason both personal and universal in Il Lavoro Fascista on 15 November, “[...] Let to an equal degree. As Marchiori wrote in 1939, us take a solid middle-class citizen who looks Scipione “is an introvert. He bends to delight up to Spadini as the last master of the Roman in images formed by the fancy in constant de- tradition, or indeed the last acceptable mod- tachment from reality. Every painting and draw- ern painter, and place him before Scipione’s ing reflects the secret sorrow of that soul, lost Villa Corsini [FIG. 1] [...] The worthy gentleman by chance in a human firmament in which it will hardly deny the limpid range of summery gleamed alone.” greens scaling the slopes of the Janiculum be- R . P. neath a sunset of diaphanous pink or the pleas- ant little sketch of Gallori’s Garibaldi perched on top, a real gem!” A dream painted by a re- 1 L. de Libero, “Stato dell’arte italiana contemporanea fined and romantic eye. “We got into the habit alla Seconda quadriennale”, in Broletto, Como, of going to the library of art history on Piazza March 1935. 2 M. Mafai, Scritti editi e inediti di Mario Mafai, edited Venezia in the evening. It is there that we got by V. Martinelli, Rome: Edizioni dell’Ente premi to know the great artists and the lesser ones, Roma, p. 18.

1. View of the botanical gardens and the Janiculum from Villa Corsini, Rome

296 297 Scipione Angolo di Collepardo

78 Title Angolo di Collepardo interesting works.4 The painting was owned by [A Corner of Collepardo] the Galleria Sandri until 19505 and then sold to Date circa 1929 the Galleria del Cavallino, founded in Venice by Technique oil on panel Carlo Cardazzo in the early forties. It was shown Dimensions 44 × 44 cm in 2008 in Carlo Cardazzo. Una nuova visione dell’arte, the exhibition to mark the centenary In the numerous letters to his friend Marino of Cardazzo’s birth6 and then in the 2010 retro- Mazzacurati, Scipione spoke of the serenity of spective L’artista, il poeta at the Palazzo della the period he spent far from Rome in the prov- Permanente.7 ince of Frosinone (Ciociaria): “I spent nearly two R . P. months in Ciociaria living a wonderful life and returning with great health and vigour. There’s a lot to do in those parts and I often thought of 1 Letter from Scipione to Renato Mazzacurati, dated 22 September 1929; now in M. Fagiolo dell’Arco, you.1 In the “folksy and […] slightly textbook” V. Rivosecchi (edited by), Scipione. Vita e opere, view of Collepardo, the “unquestionably quick Turin: Umberto Allemandi & C., 1988, p. 91. 2 S. B., “Mostra d’Arte. Una collettiva”, in Il Gazzettino execution is slightly sketchy here and there, as Veneziano, Venice, 1 February 1949. though prompted by an urgent need to capture 3 M. Mafai; now in Scipione. Vita..., cit., 1988, pp. 91–92. 2 4 “In this group show at the Galleria Sandri, interest the image in its fundamental elements”. The was aroused above all by a couple of works original compositional angle, slight distortion of attributed to Scipione: Collepardo and Paesaggio space and use of bright, bold colour are charac- con cavaliere S.B., Mostra..., cit., 1949. 5 As confirmed by an unsigned article in Emporium teristics shared with views of the same period on various solo and group shows under way in by Antonietta Raphaël and Mario Mafai. In the Venice, which also mentioned the already finished show of 1949: “Two previously unexhibited tranquillity of a village scene, the atmosphere is works by Scipione, Paesaggio con cavallo and set ablaze with explosive power by the glowing Paesaggio, Collepardo, of great interest for the red of the cart on the left. The body of one of the development of his vision of landscape, appeared in a show of modern Italian painters held previously female figures, typical of the province, recalls at the Galleria Sandri The work appeared with one of the local women frequently mentioned by the following caption: “Scipione: Paesaggio a Collepardo, Galleria Sandri, Venezia”. See Scipione: “[…] every time he spoke of her he “Cronache. Personali e collettive”, in Emporium, would lick his lips as though enjoying a sweet y. LVI, no. 669, Bergamo: Istituto Italiano d’Arti and say, ‘You can’t imagine it, she must have Grafiche, September 1950, pp. 132–35. 6 See L. M. Barbero (edited by), Carlo Cardazzo. 3 such a body under those clothes.’” The work Una nuova visione dell’arte, exhibition catalogue was shown in Venice at the Galleria Sandri early (Venice, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, 1 November 2008 – 9 February 2009), Milan: in 1949 together with Paesaggio con cavaliere Mondadori Electa, 2008. [Landscape with Rider] [FIG. 1], originally part of 7 See F. Gualdoni, A. Pellegatta (edited by), L’artista, the same panel. The reviews in that occasion il poeta, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Palazzo della Permanente, 12 November 2010 – 9 January 2011), spoke of Scipione’s landscapes as his most Milan: Skira, 2010.

1. Scipione, Paesaggio con cavaliere, 1929. Private collection

298 299 Scipione Natura morta con piuma Autoritratto

79 Title Natura morta con piuma like El Greco. “A man who awaits death amid include a huge fig leaf, a sensual feather, a tam- [Still Life with Feather] red will-o’-the-wisps: ‘I hear the cries of angels bourine and a comb as well as a fairly explicit Date 1929 / Who want me to be saved / But saliva is sweet cucumber. “[...] Bare of glazing and still in the Technique oil on panel / And the blood rushes to sin…’ A man burnt phase of gestation, these hectic spectres are Dimensions 45.5 × 50.7 cm out in just a few years. This accumulation of more full of life, aggressive and spontaneous 80 Title Autoritratto [Self-Portrait] sunset reds, reds in a graduated range, reds than finished works. Like Ungaretti, Scipione is Date 1930 derived from the bolus of grounds as in eight- an artist who pours out his expressive potential Technique oil on panel eenth-century canvases, gentle reds and reds all at once. His impulses are full-blooded. His Dimensions 54 × 37 cm of abandonment, reds confused with the blacks style becomes swollen with strength and vigour top right: Scipione of feathers and the dark green of fruit. All red only when all the faculties of heart, mind and and always red”.3 The face occupying most of sex are in a state of erection, so to speak. His Gino Bonichi, better known as Scipione, the surface looks weary and the eyes have a far- driving force is erotic. Those who have seen was born in Rome in 1904 and died at Arco away expression. “The self-portrait is a work of him work remember him as worn out and drip- in November 1933 at the age of just 29, as great emphasis in which the features take pre- ping with perspiration in a post-coital state of prophesied by a Spanish monk a few years cise shape and undergo distortion, the volume exhaustion”.5 It was probably in order to avoid earlier during one of his stays in the province expands in colour and is intensified in a small offending the literate Principessa Marguerite of Frosinone (Ciociaria). Having survived the number of lights. Here we find a breathless, ba- Caetani di Bassiano and making her change initial onslaught of his illness at the age of 15, roque Scipione and a disguise reminiscent of a her mind about buying the Principe cattolico Scipione grew up strong and athletic. He met Goya-like soldier, which was suggested by the [FIG. 2] that he painted over the somewhat ex- Mario Mafai, his closest friend, and forgot about traces of an earlier painting beneath that he kept plicit work on the back with the self-portrait. his illness, which instead did not forget him and exposed to the very end”.4 The signature on the And just as death had the better of Scipione in reappeared ten years later during a night of rev- side prompts us to observe the work in a hori- the end, his desperate face covered his great elry in Rome. A few months later he appeared zontal position, a new angle that reveals further passion for life. His great love of women was to have recovered completely and set to work details: three faces (perhaps those of Raphaël, in any case poured into the Natura morta con with such vigour and voracity as to produce the Mafai and Mazzacurati, his closest friends) faint- piuma we still have today, where realism is finest works of his extraordinary art between the ly sketched beneath the tambourine and a fig transformed with no lapse in technique into autumn of 1929 and the spring of 1931. Looking leaf behind the head. Radiographic examination blunt sensuality, what Corrado Maltese called forward to Francis Bacon with his fiery colours has revealed a preparatory study for the Natura “decadent realism”. The objects are not placed and portraits of unusual figures, he was a fre- morta con piuma (1929). The painter Mario Mimì there only to be observed but to tell a story with quent presence during this period in the salon of Lazzaro, Scipione’s friend, shed some light on the material he called his “drug”. “His hands the Marchese Venosti and Principessa Caetani the origin is this work: “I met him one morning sweat with creative frenzy, his eyes and nos- di Bassiano, for whom he painted Il principe in the market on Via dei Gracchi and he hugged trils are dilated, he gasps for breath”.6 So pas- cattolico [The Catholic Prince] [FIG. 2]. As attest- me. We had not seen each other for a year. he sionate and sensual as to blend the scent of a ed by Virgilio Guzzi in Primato on 15 May 1943, was holding two coconuts and looking for two coy lady with the smell of a whore from across the back of this work originally bore a painting lemons ‘as big as breasts’. I had the pleasure of the Tiber. The two lemons are large and juicy, of the artist’s face.1 This self-portrait, which was being able to offer him one of truly phenomenal separated by a string of red beads that lie sin- detached so as to obtain two works from the size. He rushed off in childlike glee promising uously on cloth the colour of Bordeaux, whose one support during its time in the Ungaretti col- to show me what he did with it. He used it for a sensual folds recall the amorous inebriation of lection between 1941 and 19432, presents not splendid still life The decidedly erotic study for wine. A primordial glove or a fig leaf: the ambi- only his features but also his inner life in all the the still life with feather leaves no room for any guity of the object is the very embodiment of shades of red, mastered with unique and wholly other interpretation. The lemon really are like desire. Alongside this, the small white comb is personal power, under the influence of painters two breasts and the other sibylline elements an almost cloying presence, as though its pure,

1. Natura morta con piuma, X-ray

300 301 innocent colour were unsuitable, inappropriate and disturbing understanding as well as excit- for the woman whose possessions these are. A ing progress in the rediscovery of life, the world, wickerwork basket can be glimpsed on the far and reality”.8 Scipione fell ill for the last time in left with a blue ribbon in a bow, an immaculate the spring of 1931 and was never to paint again. remembrance of childhood. A shift appears to R . P. by lying on the right side of this dressing table, as though thrown there by its owner in her haste to disrobe. A feather of coquettish lightness lies in the middle of the work on a hairy coconut 1 “The self-portrait of Scipione recently presented at the show of some Roman artists at the Zodiaco of orange colour. “The objects swirl around a gallery had previously remained unexhibited, being linchpin that is nearly always in the centre of painted on the back of the celebrated panel (from which it has now been detached) of the Principe the painting to create a sort of spiral over the cattolico.” V. Guzzi, in Primato, 15 May 1923. oval table, a genuine magical table”.7 Magic 2 Examination of the provenances listed in the is present but perhaps the black magic repre- general catalogue of Scipione’s work reveals that the two paintings were still a single work when sented by the playing card, so dear to his friend they entered the Ungaretti collection, after which Antonietta Raphaël and so ill-omened for him. the Principe cattolico entered the Vittorio De Sica collection in Rome while the Autoritratto went to The mannerist jeu d’esprit does not end here, a collection in Milan. Indirect confirmation of this as the back of the work reveals a large naked is provided by L. Sinisgalli in Furor Mathematicus, body the arouses man’s sinful desire. “He was where the study for a self-portrait is mentioned as part of Ungaretti’s collection during the period sensually bewitched by life but saw the human when the poet owned Il principe cattolico, void and the apocalypse of 1930 and could not and by Guzzi’s article (see note 1). 3 R. Carrieri, Pittura e scultura d’avanguardia in Italia and would not deny it. On beholding Scipione’s (1890-1950), Milan: Edizioni della Conchiglia, 1950, masterpieces I am obsessively reminded of p. 223. 4 V. Guzzi, “Corriere delle arti”, in Primato, 15 May [...] another European destiny, the one traced 1943, p. 189. by Thomas Mann in The Magic Mountain, pub- 5 L. Sinisgalli, Furor Mathematicus – Ricordo lished in German in 1924 and translated into di Scipione, Milan: Mondadori, 1950, p. 296. 6 M. Fagiolo dell’Arco, V. Rivosecchi (edited by), Italian in 1932. His hero Hans Castorp discovers Scipione. Vita e opere, Turin: Allemandi & C., life in a sanatorium in Davos, where he embrac- 1988, p. 118. 7 L. Sinisgalli, Furor..., cit., 1950, p. 300. es illness and death because his very first con- 8 D. Micacchi, “La montagna incantata di Scipione”, tact with them already afford him extraordinary in l’Unità, 13 August 1985.

2. Scipione, Il principe cattolico, 1930. Vatican City, Musei Vaticani

302 303 Scipione Profeta in vista di Gerusalemme

81 Title Profeta in vista di Gerusalemme Baptist [FIG. 1]. A painter of great sophistication, pay them no heed, to look and pass by. The two [Prophet in Sight of Jerusalem] he did not resign himself to the grim prophecy of figures that turn to behold the prophet saviour Date 1930 the Spanish monk in Collepardo who predicted and us are a warning of a past, too brief and Technique oil on panel his death before the age of thirty. He went into fleeting, which can have meaning only through Dimensions 42.3 × 46.5 cm and out of the sanatorium. He had a great de- the salvific works of the man on horseback, sire to live, and his works show this. Like a soul only through the future is there any hope in the With his thirst for art and an “illness that could in torment, he used the handle of his brush as possibility of rebirth. A note on the painting of give him nothing other than spiritual agony, an though it were the sword of the second horse- El Greco reveals his way of reading the works apocalypse”,1 Scipione wrote some verses that man, making red incisions in the panel, creat- of the great visionary: “His figures are spectres capture the poetic atmosphere of this extraor- ing furrowed lines to heighten the barrenness that take concrete shape with terrible tactile re- dinary painting: “I hear the cries of angels / of the burning landscape. The hands joined in ality, subtle links that never end. The intangible Who want me to be saved / But saliva is sweet prayer seem to entreat the Lord to save him beauty of the divine figures takes shape and is / And the blood rushes to sin. / The air is still, / from his sins: “Punish me. Let me feel my guilt corrupted [...]”.4 Formerly in the De Luca col- everything as pink as flesh. / If bliss pervades, in life, but I want to be saved. I want to sleep as lection, the work was first shown in the Mafai- / we must break and fall. / The sun enters my pure as bread. I want to throw myself onto the Scipione show of 1930 at Pier Maria Bardi’s breast / like a basket / and I feel empty. / The ground without polluting it. Let me come closer gallery in Rome. It entered the Iannaccone col- hand detaches itself from the earth, / touches to you. Give me the strength to overcome”.2 To lection in 2008 and was exhibited at the Museo air, light, flesh. / The lance plunges into the back defeat sin, represented by a serpent that, like del Novecento in Milan on temporary loan from of the horse, / which runs and screams with its a slithering Eve, slips between the legs of the 2010 to 2013. head in the sky.” Enveloped in the tempest of enraged horse, allowing him to approach the R . P. reds of which the poet Ungaretti also wrote: bucranium placed in the foreground as a sign of “Then Scipione appeared and did whatever he probable eternal punishment. In the left corner, 1 L. Sinisgalli, Furor Mathematicus – Ricordo wanted with red: the almost purple red of split like two withered branches entangled, two small di Scipione, Milan: Mondadori, 1950, p. 288. figs, the reds of shame, the secret reds, the trag- figures, probably lovers, are sketched in quick 2 Scipione, exhibition catalogue (Biella, Centro Internazionale di Arti Figurative, 27 November – 20 ic red of the sky. Whatever he wanted, Scipione brushstrokes like the entwined souls in Dante’s December 1963), introduction by G. Marussi, Biella: did with the red of purple, the reds in shadow, Purgatory: “We all died violent deaths and were Centro Internazionale di Arti Figurative, 1963, p. 8. the red of wounds, of passion and glory, the red sinners till the last hour. Then, warned by light 3 Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, canto V, 52–57: “Noi fummo tutti già per forza morti, / e peccatori that swallowed up the old travertine stone and from Heaven, repenting and forgiving, we de- infino a l’ultima ora; / quivi lume del ciel ne fece the sluggish waters of the Tiber in the summer parted from life reconciled with God, who fills accorti, / sì che, pentendo e perdonando, fora / di 3 vita uscimmo a Dio pacificati, / che del disio di sé sunsets of Rome.” A horse in an inferno, clad us with longing to see Him.” Scipione wishes veder n’accora”. in a lion skin that recalls the prophet John the perhaps to guide us and warns us, like Virgil, to 4 L. Sinisgalli, Furor Mathematicus, cit., 1950, p. 302.

1. Raphael, San Giovanni Battista nel deserto, 1517–18. Florence, Gallerie degli Uffizi

304 305 Scipione Flagellazione di Cristo

82 Title Flagellazione di Cristo which served him as a study for the subject International Biennial of Graphic Art in Florence [The Flagellation of Christ] then addressed pictorially in Profeta in vista di with a presentation by Michelangelo Masciotta.5 Date 1929 Gerusalemme [Prophet in Sight of Jerusalem] It also appeared recently in the retrospective Technique ink wash on paper [W. NO. 81]. The work appeared on 14 July 1929 exhibition L’artista, il poeta at the Palazzo della Dimensions 206 × 261 mm on the cover of L’Italia Letteraria, marking the Permanente in Milan.6 bottom right: Scipione 29 start of Scipione’s work for the periodical.1 It is R.P.. probable that the critic Michelangelo Masciotta, Scipione’s Flagellazione is similar in iconogra- who owned the work from 1944 if not earlier,2 phy and composition to the early Renaissance bought it from Enrico Falqui, who came into depictions of the subject. Christ is portrayed possession of a large number of the artist’s 1 L’Italia Letteraria, y. I, no. 15, Rome, 14 July 1929, p. 1. frontally dressed only in a loincloth (all the other drawings as a member of the editorial board 2 See G. Marchiori, Disegni di Scipione, Bergamo: Istituto Italiano di Arti Grafiche, 1944, p. 13. figures being oddly nude) bound to the column of L’Italia Letteraria. Scipione wrote to ask him 3 M. Fagiolo dell’Arco, V. Rivosecchi (edited by), by his wrists. The attention is focused, howev- in 1932 for a number of drawings published in Scipione. Vita e opere, Turin: Allemandi & C., 1988, pp. 173−74. er, on the desperation of one of the onlookers, the magazine so that he could submit them for 4 See P. Bucarelli (edited by), Mostra di Scipione, the angel submissively leaving the scene on the a competition at the Accademia d’Italia, includ- exhibition catalogue (Rome, Galleria Nazionale left, an evident citation of Masaccio’s Cacciata ing “my first drawing, a Flagellation of Christ, d’Arte Moderna, April), Rome: De Luca, 1954, p. 21. 5 See Seconda Biennale Internazionale della grafica. dei progenitori dal Paradiso terrestre [The published I think in the July or August of 1928 La grafica tra le due guerre 1918/1939, exhibition Expulsion from the Garden of Eden] [FIG. 1]. As or ’29”.3 catalogue (Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, 30 April − 29 June 1970), Florence: Edizioni Unione in many later paintings, animals also partake in The work was shown in the retrospective of Fiorentina, 1970, p. 147. the atmosphere of resigned grief of the scene of 1954 curated by Palma Bucarelli at the Galleria 6 See F. Gualdoni, A. Pellegatta (edited by), L’artista, martyrdom, like the horse in the middle ground Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome4 and in il poeta, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Palazzo della Permanente, 12 November 2010 − 9 January 2011), looking to the heavens for some sign of mercy, 1970 in the interwar section of the second Milan: Skira, 2010.

1. Masaccio, Cacciata dei progenitori dal Paradiso terrestre, 1424–25, detail. Florence, Santa Maria del Carmine, Cappella Brancacci

306 307 Scipione La toeletta

83 Title La toeletta [The Dressing Table] unpublished work in 1948 by Corrado Maltese Date circa 1929 in an article written on the occasion of the ret- Technique India ink on paper rospective at the Venice Biennial,4 the drawing Dimensions 220 × 275 mm had in fact already been published in 1930 in the Almanacco degli Artisti, when Scipione “Scipione drew effortlessly with a happiness was still alive,5 and in 1944 as an illustration to devoid of all doubt. When he did not like a draw- a text by Gianna Manzini entitled Forte come ing, he tore it up and began all over again. He un leone.6 Part of the collection of Riccardo tried out several versions of some drawings but Gualino until his death in 1964,7 it was includ- the final one, the one accepted, fully expressed ed by Palma Bucarelli in the exhibition of 1954 the image suggested by his imagination. Seen at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in together, the sheets of paper still bear witness Rome8 and shown recently at Villa Torlonia in to the artist’s care and determination in explor- the Casino dei Principi9. ing the most immediate signs of a script that R . P. was elegant and persuasive by a natural gift of grace”.1 Giuseppe Marchiori thus described the talent displayed by Scipione for drawing 1 G. Marchiori, Disegni di Scipione, Bergamo: Istituto Italiano di Arti Grafiche, 1944, p. 8. since his time at the Accademia di Belle Arti 2 Scipione worked most of all for L’Italia Letteraria in Rome together with Mario Mafai and Marino and Fronte but some drawings also appeared Mazzacurati. Scipione used drawing as a tool in Tribuna and Il Tevere. As regards illustrations for books, attention should be drawn to his work for to study subjects he would then develop in the Carabba publishing house in Lanciano, where painting. Drawing for him was something nec- his friend Enrico Falqui was a consultant. 3 C. Maltese, “Scipione e il suo tempo”, in A. C. Toni essary, an occupation in no way inferior to (edited by), Atti del Convegno: Scipione e la Scuola painting, and he used it as an illustrator for var- Romana, Rome: Multigrafica Editrice, 1989, p. 10. ious periodicals and publishing houses.2 With 4 C. Maltese, “Presentazione di alcuni inediti di Scipione”, in Emporium, y. LIV, no. 11, Bergamo: the screen, the trunk in the background and Istituto Italiano d’Arti Grafiche, November 1948, the stockings left lying on the floor, La toelet- [p. 231]. 5 Almanacco degli Artisti. Il vero Giotto, Rome- ta suggests the setting of a brothel. The view Foligno: Campitelli Editore, 1930, p. 216. See of the table from above, showing all of its top, G. Appella, Scipione. 306 disegni, Rome: Edizioni is a feature shared with many of the still lifes della Cometa, 1984, p. 314. 6 G. Manzini, Forte come un leone, Rome: Documento painted by Scipione between 1929 and 1930, Editore, 1944. including Piovra [Octopus], Asso di spade [Ace 7 The work is indicated as on loan from the Gualino collection in Mostra di Scipione, exhibition of Swords] [FIG. 1], Natura morta con beccacci- catalogue (Biella, Centro Internazionale di Arti ni [Still Life with Snipes] [FIG. 11, P. 49] and Fichi Figurative, 27 November – 20 December 1963), introduction by G. Marussi, Turin: Editrice T.e.c.a., spaccati [Split Figs]. According to Corrado 1963, p. 18, no. 7. Maltese, this unusual angle serves to endow 8 See Mostra di Scipione alla Galleria Nazionale the dressing table with a simultaneously “de- d’Arte Moderna (Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna), catalogue edited by P. Bucarelli, Rome: 3 monstrative and symbolic” function. The artist De Luca, 1954, p. 21. uses a handful of female articles to tell a sto- 9 See Scipione 1904-1933, (Rome, Musei di Villa Torlonia-Casino dei Principi, 7 September ry, recount a dream, describe a setting or cir- – 6 October 2007), catalogue edited by C. Terenzi, cumstance. Though presented as a previously N. Vespignani, Rome: Palombi Editori, 2007.

1. Scipione, Asso di spade, 1929. Private collection

308 309 Scipione Il cardinale Vannutelli sul letto di morte

84 Title Il cardinale Vannutelli painter, who was physically robust, as indicated

sul letto di morte by his nickname Scipione, but beset by illness. 1 L. Sinisgalli, Aretusa, 1945; now in M. Fagiolo [Cardinal Vannutelli on His Deathbed] The drawing was shown in the major events dell’Arco, V. Rivosecchi (edited by), Scipione. Date 1930 commemorating the artist after his death, in- Vita e opere, Turin: Umberto Allemandi & C., 1988, pp. 306−07. Technique ink wash on paper cluding the personal room at the second Rome 2 Ibidem. Dimensions 210 × 320 mm Quadrennial in 1935. By statute, this exhibition 3 C. E. Oppo, in Seconda Quadriennale d’Arte Nazionale, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Palazzo bottom left: Scipione was exclusive for living artists but an excep- delle Esposizioni, February−July 1935), Rome: tion was made for Gino Bonichi (Scipione)5 by Tumminelli & C., 1935. “Scipione was fascinated by the 90-year-old Cipriano Efisio Oppo, an admirer of his art from 4 V. Rivosecchi, “L’idolo e il corpo”, in L. Gavioli (edited by), Visionari, primitivi, eccentrici da Cardinal Vannutelli and never lost sight of him. the very outset: “Scipione […] was an artist. I Alberto Martini a Licini, Ligabue, Ontani, exhibition He watched him, described him and smelled realized this the first time I ever saw one of his catalogue (Potenza, Galleria Civica di Palazzo Loffredo, 14 October 2005 − 29 January 2006), 6 with avid nostrils his odour, the odour of sanc- paintings”. Venice: Marsilio, 2005, pp. 73−79. tity beneath the purple and the ermine. In the Oppo also wrote the introductory text on 5 Two retrospectives had actually been held in the end, he even observed him decompose on his Scipione published in the catalogue: “Scipione’s previous edition, one for Armando Spadini and the other for Medardo Rosso. For the 1935 Quadrennial, deathbed in the funeral chamber on Via della painting was an apparition amongst us, a fan- see E. Pontiggia, C. F. Carli (edited by), La grande Dataria”.1 Scipione appears to have regarded tastic and tragic apparition with new and discon- Quadriennale 1935. La nuova arte italiana, Milan: Electa, 2006. the great prelates as “worn-out, flaccid thor- certing overtones, something terribly hurried 6 C. E. Oppo, Forme e colori nel mondo, Rome: oughbreds, fed with Latin and choice foods, and dense, like an attempt to halt the ending of Carabba Editore, 1938, pp. 317−23. 7 C. E. Oppo, in Seconda Quadriennale d’Arte old men with dried out cartilages, something a day for an instant in the glow of sunset. His Nazionale, cit., 1935. chicken-like in their skin, pride in the garments friends had long realized the reason for the 8 See A. Santangelo (edited by), Scipione, exhibition and the ferocity of turkeys in their blood”.2 The feverish, breathless, painful, ironic intonation catalogue (Milan, Regia Pinacoteca di Brera, 8−23 March 1941), Milan: La Tipocromo, 1941, immobility of the Cardinal’s now lifeless body of his art, his blood-like colour, his trembling, work no. 36. contrasts with the “trembling, jerky, acute and jerky, acute and extraordinarily fine drawing; in 9 See XXIV Biennale Internazionale d’Arte di Venezia, 3 exhibition catalogue, Venice: Edizioni Serenissima, extremely fine line of the profile” accentuated short, for all his form of expression, which still 1948, p. 141. Corrado Maltese was responsible for by the use of wash. The artist’s edgy, agitated appeared undefined but which those who knew organizing the room. strokes seem designed to recall that this body nothing of his illness took to be merely dark 10 See P. Bucarelli edited by), Mostra di Scipione, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Galleria Nazionale 7 will soon disintegrate and decompose. Even the and tangled”. The subsequent retrospectives d’Arte Moderna, April), Rome: De Luca, 1954, p. 23. powerful are doomed to leave the earthly world. were held in 1941 at the Regia Pinacoteca di The sacredness of the figure collapses before Brera, curator Antonino Santangelo8, in 1948 at the inevitability of human fate, which forces the Venice Biennial,9 and in 1954 at the Galleria even “holy symbols to come to terms with far Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome, curated by more terrestrial matters”.4 The theme of death Palma Bucarelli.10 and bodily corruption was deeply felt by the R . P.

310 311 Scipione Studio per “Gli uomini che si voltano”

85 Title Studio per “Gli uomini che the apostles in the Byzantine mosaic of the si voltano” [Study for “Men Who Ascension in the Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki”.2 Turn Around”] In the canvas [FIG. 1] (Rome, Galleria Nazionale Date 1930 d’Arte Moderna), for which the drawing is a Technique ink wash on paper preparatory study, both men wear an irrever- Dimensions 230 × 187 mm ent, devilish mask symbolizing the impenetra- bottom right: Scipione 3 bility of the secret in their keeping. Formerly bottom centre: Gli uomini che si voltano owned by Michelangelo Masciotta together with the Flagellazione di Cristo [The Flagellation of One of the series of “apocalyptic works” pro- Christ] [W. NO. 82], the drawing was shown for duced by Scipione in 1930, the drawing was the first time in the retrospective of 1948 at the probably inspired by these verses of Eugenio Venice Biennial3 and then more recently in the Montale: “Perhaps one morning, walking in exhibition L’artista, il poeta at the Palazzo della barren, glassy air, / I’ll turn and see the miracle Permanente in Milan.4 take place, / nothing at my back, the void / be- R . P. hind me, with a drunkard’s terror. Then, as on a screen, trees, houses and hills / will quickly gather for the usual illusion. / But it will be too 1 P. Baldacci, “Scipione spartiacque tra due mondi”, late and I’ll walk on in silence, / among men who in N. Vespignani, C. Terenzi (edited by), Scipione 1904-1933, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Villa do not turn around, with my secret”.1 Torlonia, 7 September 2007 – 6 January 2008), Like the poet, Scipione hoped to turn around Rome: Palombi Editori, 2007, pp. 13–22. The poem by Montale is part of the collection Ossi di seppia, one day and end the deception of his life, sens- first published in 1925. The Carabba edition of 1931 ing death looming over him while others con- has illustrations by Scipione. tinued on their way unaware. Some have seen 2 A. Santangelo, in Scipione, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Regia Pinacoteca di Brera, 8–23 March a self-portrait in the man unnaturally raising a 1941), Milan: La Tipocromo, 1941, p. 4. flat, shapeless arm and looking to the viewer 3 See XXIV Biennale Internazionale d’Arte di Venezia, exhibition catalogue, Venice: Edizioni Serenissima, for pity, while the figure on the right observes 1948, p. 141. him instead with a warning expression. The 4 See F. Gualdoni, A. Pellegatta (edited by), L’ar tista, il poeta, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Palazzo della bodies are distorted in the act of turning round, Permanente, 12 November 2010 – 9 January 2011), recalling the “painful, terrified contortions of Milan: Skira, 2011.

1. Scipione, Uomini che si voltano, 1930. Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna

312 313 Ernesto Treccani Autoritratto

86 Title Autoritratto [Self-Portrait] Guttuso were described in the catalogue pres- Date 1940–41 entation, to that of the “young artists [who] de- Technique oil on canvas velop a direct discourse and endeavour not to Dimensions 40 × 35 cm lose the immediacy of dialogue with painting at bottom left: Ernesto the cost of dangerous formulation after the manner of great masters, starting with Picasso”.4 Ernesto Treccani was just 20 when he painted The numerous post-war exhibitions on Corrente what he later described in a letter of April 1991 in which it appeared included two shows in 1960 as his “yellow self-portrait”.1 This was probably and 1975 at the Galleria Gian Ferrari in Milan5 his first canvas, produced in 1940, when he and the exhibition Gli artisti di “Corrente” curat- began painting after Corrente, the periodical ed by Marco Valsecchi in 1963.6 It has also been he had founded two years earlier with financial shown more recently in Carla Maria Maggi e il support from his father, was closed down by ritratto a Milano negli anni Trenta, at the Palazzo the Fascist regime. The artist’s youth is evident Reale Milan7, and in Gallerie milanesi tra le due not only in his still adolescent features but also guerre at the Fondazione Stelline.8 and above all in the intensity and shyness of R . P. his expression. There are few details: a ruffled and barely sketched shirt, the mouth slightly open, an unruly curl on the forehead and eyes 1 Letter from Ernesto Treccani to Antonio Stellatelli, former owner of the work, dated 15 April 1991; that are pensive but not anxious about the se- now in E. Pontiggia (edited by), Artisti di Corrente riousness of the historical moment. The back- 1930/1990, exhibition catalogue (Busto Arsizio, Palazzo Bandera, 16 November 1991 – 12 January ground too is devoid of any indications or hints 1992), Milan: Vangelista, 1991, pp. 42–43. of context. This concentration, which gives the 2 Ibidem. work its distinctive communicative immediacy, 3 V. Costantini, “Corrente”, in Emporium, y. XLVIII, no. 1, Bergamo: Istituto Italiano d’Arti Grafiche, January is due to the influence of Bruno Cassinari, who 1942, p. 41. The reconstruction was developed by introduced Treccani to Cézanne and Cubism. Elena Pontiggia in E. Pontiggia, N. Colombo (edited by), Milano anni Trenta. L’Arte e la città, exhibition There are, however, still some overtones of Van catalogue (Milan, Spazio Oberdan, 2 December 2004 Gogh drawn from the example of Renato Birolli, – 27 February 2005), Milan: Mazzotta, 2004, p. 246. especially the wavy line of the brushstrokes 4 Treccani presented four drawings and four other paintings together with the self-portrait: and the bold black outline. The use of his first L’Arlecchino [Harlequin], Paesaggio [Landscape], name alone as a signature, “a childish man- La caffettiera [Coffee Pot] and Omaggio a Cézanne [Homage to Cézanne]. See Cassinari-Morlotti- nerism born out of live for Vincent”, was also Treccani, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Galleria della a sort of tribute to the Dutch master.2. A review Spiga e Corrente, from 6 February 1943), Milan: by Vincenzo Costantini in Emporium appears to Edizioni della Spiga e Corrente, 1943. 5 See C. Gian Ferrari (edited by), Verifica di confirm the presence of the work in the group “Corrente”, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Galleria show organized in the summer of 1941 when Gian Ferrari, from 13 May 1975), Milan: Galleria Gian Ferrari, 1975. the Bottega di Corrente also closed down: “Now 6 See M. Valsecchi (edited by), Gli artisti di we come to Treccani, whose only portrait known “Corrente”, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Palazzo to us (on show here), is very promising”.3 It Reale, 25 September – 20 October 1963), Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1963. then appeared in Cassinari-Morlotti-Treccani, a 7 See E. Pontiggia (edited by), Carla Maria Maggi joint show of work held in February 1943 at the e il ritratto a Milano negli anni Trenta, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 15 June newly opened Galleria della Spiga e Corrente. – 5 September 2010), Milan: Skira, 2010. The group show of 1943 marks the symbolic di- 8 See L. Sansone (edited by), Gallerie milanesi tra le due guerre, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Fondazione vide between the two phases of Corrente: from Stelline, 24 February – 22 May 2016), Cinisello the period of the “big brothers”, as Birolli and Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2016.

314 315 Ernesto Treccani Colombi assassinati

87 Title Colombi assassinati [Murdered Doves] Date 1941 Technique oil on canvas Dimensions 70 × 55 cm top left: E. Treccani

The early forties saw a change in the stylistic points of reference of the Corrente group: “First all the talk was about Van Gogh and then above all about Picasso”.1 The Spanish master’s influence thus led some artists to abandon the wavy, expressionistic brushstroke and move closer to the iconography of the “Picasso of bulls, horses injured in the bullring, still lifes with bucranium and finally Guernica [FIG. 8, P. 133]”.2 Their works were filled with what Mario De Micheli called “pictorial equivalents”, symbolic images referring to the drama of the closure of the group’s periodical: “This use of symbolism stemmed partly from our residual Hermeticism and partly from the impossibility of expressing ourselves clearly in the political conditions of the time”.3 It is thus significant that both Treccani and Cassinari should have produced paintings of dead doves [FIG. 1], inspired by a poem of Federico García Lorca, at the same time. This pair of dead birds thus became an emblem of betrayed innocence, political assassinations and the widespread violence of the Fascist regime and World War II. The work was first shown in the exhibition on the Corrente group held at the Galleria Gian Ferrari, Milan, in 1960.4 The following year it left the collection of Luigi Ardemagni and entered that of Enrico Brambilla Pisoni.5 R . P.

1 E. Treccani, “Il movimento di ‘Corrente’”, in Arte per amore, Milan: Teti, 1973, pp. 131−83. 2 M. De Micheli, “Saggio critico su Ernesto Treccani”, in Ernesto Treccani, Milan: Edizioni del Milione, 1962, pp. 9−10. 3 Ibidem. 4 See Belvedere, Bollettino della Galleria Gian Ferrari, no. 5, Milan, 1960, p. 7. 5 Luigi (Gino) Ardemagni is the subject of the artist’s dedication on the back of the painting: “10 dicembre 1946. A Gino con affetto Ernesto”.

1. Bruno Cassinari, I colombi morti (I colombi assassinati), 1942. Milan, Boschi collection

316 317 Ernesto Treccani Ritratto di Beniamino Joppolo

88 Title Ritratto di Beniamino Joppolo [Portrait of Beniamino Joppolo] Date 1941 Technique oil on canvas Dimensions 45 × 35 cm bottom left: Ernesto 41

Described by Mario De Micheli as a “tireless and fertile reasoner”,1 Beniamino Joppolo wrote poems, narratives and essays for the periodical Corrente and directed the associated publishing house with Treccani when it was closed down. The portrait was painted during one of the many gatherings of the Milanese group in Bruno Cassinari’s studio on Via San Tomaso and shows the influence of his “passionate figurative psychology”,2 above all in its concentration and the absence of details. Treccani focuses in Joppolo’s features, his big eyes and the pensive turn of his mouth. As Raffaele De Grada wrote, “He is well aware that in order to understand a figure, it is necessary to understand how that human being lives and the things that interest him”.3 The artist thus seeks to capture thoughts and psychology, overlooking indications of context to concentrate on the face, interpreted by Treccani as a metaphor of the dialogic potential of art: “A painter frees himself by addressing others. These are not your eyes? They are the ones I give you. This is not my mouth? It is the one you have given me”.4 In pictorial terms, just a year after the self-portrait, Treccani had clearly eliminated the residual influence of Van Gogh. His brushstroke was less wavy and his application of paint more compact. The artist gave the portrait to Joppolo in the forties and it was first shown in 1967 at the Galleria L’Indiano in Florence, where Treccani presented “all (or nearly all) figure paintings, portraits and studies for portraits. One head a day […] a highly partial parade of the people I love”.5 R . P.

1 M. De Micheli, “Testimonianza per Migneco”, in L. Barbera (edited by), Migneco, exhibition catalogue (Messina, Palazzo Zanca, December 1983 – February 1984), Milan: Vangelista, 1983, pp. 16–21. 2 M. De Micheli, Ernesto Treccani, Milan: Edizioni del Milione, 1962. 3 R. De Grada, in 12 opere di Renato Birolli, Bruno Cassinari, Ennio Morlotti, Ernesto Treccani, Milan: Edizioni del Milione, 1950. 4 E. Treccani, in A. Negri (edited by), Ernesto Treccani, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 18 May – 25 June 1989), Milan: Fabbri, 1989. 5 E. Treccani, “Dedica”, in Ernesto Treccani, exhibition catalogue (Florence, L’Indiano Galleria d’Arte Moderna, 28 January – 10 February 1967), Florence: Nuova Grafica Fiorentina, 1967.

318 319 Italo Valenti Gabbiani

89 Title Gabbiani [Seagulls] a personal style, as recognized also by the critics Date 1939 who had initially manifested reservations about Technique oil on canvas his talent. By comparison with his fellow mem- Dimensions 40 × 50 cm bers of Corrente, various critics noted his initial bottom right: I. VALENTI immaturity, his “frail and overly sweet style” and “excessively weak and uncertain vocabulary” This painting of deliberately elementary (L. Anceschi). “At first sight, you sensed a sen- draughtsmanship encapsulates the key ele- suous temperament and the danger of his work ments of Italo Valenti’s art in the late thirties, petering out in lazy indulgence in morbid mental above all the natural lyricism that lends his states and stagnant imaginings (G. Piovene). work its touch of magic and timelessness. His “The primary object of his study is the painting, compositions are simple and consist of a few the construction, the balance of tones […] His art stylized and unconventional objects or fig- develops in an area midway between the natural ures. This emblematic work shows three huge and the abstract, and what there is of abstrac- seagulls with gleaming and almost enamelled tion seems to perform the function of forcing him wings flying over the bare, dark branches of a into clear-cut pictorial construction and evident row of trees. The proportions are reversed so rhythms. And by debasing his tendency towards that these birds, usually seen in the distance, fable in semi-abstraction, Valenti has given his display a vast wingspan.1 The contrast between paintings another kind of poetry, a sort of reli- their vitality and the barrenness of the land- gious contemplation”.5 scape conceals the allegorical meaning of a R . P. hymn to freedom and the ability to “rise above hardship”2 in line with the link between art and life that distinguishes Corrente.3 Valenti joined 1 E. Pontiggia, in E. Pontiggia, N. Colombo (edited by), Milano Anni Trenta. L’arte e la città, exhibition the group in “a reaction against form (or at least catalogue (Milan, Spazio Oberdan, 2 December against form as it was conceived by those who 2004 − 27 February 2005), Milan: Mazzotta, 2004, p. 238. are now the living masters of our pictorial art) 2 Ibidem. that is certainly the most interesting develop- 3 Valenti showed work with the Corrente group as from their first exhibition in March 1939 in the ment in the painting of the last few years. It was upper rooms of the Palazzo della Permanente, a radical rejection of objective, finished art, of where he presented five works (La passeggiata formed and external beauty, a rejection of art [Walk], Nudo [Nude], La pesca [Fishing], Estate [Summer], Bozzetto [Sketch]) and was presented in 4 through art”. The young painter’s use of fa- the catalogue by Duilio Morosini. See D. Morosini, ble, in line with the neo-romanticism imbibed “Italo Valenti”, in Corrente di Vita Giovanile, issue in catalogue form, y. II, no. 6, Milan, 31 March 1939, through contact with Birolli and company, p. 5. He also took part in the Corrente exhibition in was also accompanied by an intense explo- December the same year at the Galleria Grande, ration of colour, as shown here and in other Milan, with Il sogno [The Dream], Le orfanelle [Little Orphans], Cani [Dogs], Composizione paintings of 1939 like Gli amanti [The Lovers] [Composition] and Gli amanti [The Lovers]. [FIG. 1] and Il sogno [The Dream] [FIG. 2]. Forms 4 G. Piovene, in Italo Valenti, Novara: Edizioni di Posizione, 1943 (edition of 200 numbered copies, are built up out of colour in deliberately uncer- no. 47), pp. 11−12. tain brushstrokes with vibrations that constitute 5 G. Piovene, in Italo Valenti, cit., 1943, pp. 20−21.

1. Italo Valenti, Gli amanti, 1939. Private collection 2. Italo Valenti, Il sogno, 1939. Private collection

320 321 Italo Valenti I giovani Greci

90 Title I giovani Greci [The Young Greeks] monumental monograph on Cézanne given to motionless figures waiting in a deserted square, Date 1939 him by its author Lionello Venturi, a work richly Sassu captured the scene of the heroes re- Technique oil on canvas illustrated with photographs that Valenti must sponding eagerly to Jason’s call. The entire Dimensions 40 × 50 cm have read and examined at his friend’s home. work is characterized by dynamism as the meta- bottom left: I. Valenti 39 The nudes of I giovani Greci are drawn in the phor of ideal impetus. intentionally primitive style also found in other Valenti’s young Greeks are also far removed An idyll of young people on the shores of a lake works of 1939 by Valenti (Il sogno [The Dream] from classicism and mythology. Like the quickly or the sea, or on an enchanted island, where the [FIG. 2, P. 320], Le fanciulle dell’isola [The Maiden of sketched figures of his Ragazzi al bagno [Boys bathers of nineteenth and twentieth-century art the Island]). Like Birolli, Valenti read Rousseau Bathing], 1937, Primavera 1860 [Spring 1860], take on overtones of fable through the addition in the light of lyrical expressionism as against 1939, and Al fiume [At the River], 1940, these of a miraculous flying figure in the sky to those the magical realism of many of the Douanier’s adolescents are the image of an Edenic life utopian visions. This is perhaps how we can de- Italian followers, such as Donghi, Usellini and completely immersed in the energies of nature. scribe the magic of I giovani Greci, one of Italo Garbari, with their precise, motionless figures. Seated on rocks as in a watery Garden of Eden, Valenti’s most lyrical paintings. According to The version he developed is instead more agi- they differ in no way from the youths on the river Croce, culture is what remains after everything tated and fraught with subtle vital tension. bank in Il sogno [The Dream] [FIG. 2, P. 320] or the else has been forgotten. And Persico, quoting The painting appears to have been exhibited flying lovers in Gli amanti [The Lovers] [FIG. 1, P. Venturi, claimed that the Impressionists (but only in recent years,4 even though it could be 320]. Everything in the composition expresses also the artists close to him in the early thir- the work simply entitled Composition in the sec- an idea of innocence, rebirth and freedom from ties) had forgotten perspective and anatomy: ond Corrente show of December 1939 at the the totems and taboos of civilization. More than “They replaced what they knew with what they Galleria Grande. The title I giovani Greci is, how- any other artist of the Corrente group, Valenti believed”.1 ever, to be found in the monograph of 1987 by thus approaches the utopian world depicted by Valenti too is a cultured painter who forgets Sylvio Acatos, compiled while the artist was still Birolli in works like La nuova Ecumene [The New culture. It is known that in 1936 he drew the alive and therefore with his approval. Ecumene] [W. NO. 13], L’Eletto [The Chosen One] attention of his friend Birolli to the edition of The subject is rare in the Corrente group. In the and Eldorado [FIG. 3, P. 93]), albeit with more inti- Wackenroder’s writings on poetry and aesthet- art of the twenties and thirties the Greek world mate overtones, replacing his friend’s visionary ics published two years earlier by Bonaventura had been evoked through the mythology taken prophecies with the tenderness of fable. Tecchi. A note to that effect appears on the first up by the Return to Order movement as a whole E.P. page of Birolli’s copy.2 And an old card of Birolli’s and explored in Italy above all by De Chirico found amongst his papers bears a phrase from (e.g. in his Pomeriggio di Arianna [Afternoon the Tao Te Ching of Laozi written by Valenti (“The of Ariadne], 1913; Partenza degli Argonauti 1 E. Persico, “L’Ottocento nella pittura europea”, 17 February 1934; now in E. Pontiggia (edited by), Tao of all beings is the treasure of the good and [Departure of the Argonauts], 1920; and Sala E. Persico, Destino e modernità. Scritti d’arte the refuge of the bad) together with a greeting. di Apollo [Room of Apollo], 1921), by Savinio (1929-1935), Milan: Medusa, 2001. 2 A. Della Latta (edited by), Renato Birolli. Biblioteca, The wording of the greeting is as follows (with (Edipo e Antigone [Oedipus and Antigone], 1928 Milan: Scalpendi, 2014, p. 168. the word tesoro crossed out): “Condividendo il [FIG. 1]), and more marginally by Sironi (Pandora, 3 I. Valenti to Birolli, n.d., Florence, Gabinetto 3 Scientifico Letterario G.P. Vieusseux, Archivio tuo tesoro ti penso sempre nel tao”. circa 1921) and other members of Novecento. Contemporaneo Alessandro Bonsanti, Fondo Rosa It is therefore against this sophisticated philo- Sassu was the only one of the young Corrrente e Renato Birolli. sophical background, ranging from romanticism group to have painted mythological sub- 4 The first certainly known exhibition of I giovani Greci was the one of 1991 at Villa dei Cedri, to Taoism, that we must consider the apparently jects — e.g. I Dioscuri [Castor and Pollux], Bellinzona, curated by the present author and simple painting of Valenti and a work like I gio- 1931 [W. NO. 75], Gli Argonauti in Colchide [The Matteo Bianchi. The works presented by Valenti in the Corrente show of December 1939 were Il sogno vani Greci. The figures in the composition are Argonauts in Colchis] (1935) and Gli Argonauti [The Dream], Le orfanelle (Le fanciulle dell’isola) related above all to the Bathers of Cézanne [FIG. [The Argonauts] (1938) — but from a different [Little Orphans (The Maiden of the Island], Cani 2] as filtered through Birolli, who had visited interpretive angle than De Chirico. Consider (L’isola dei cani) [Dogs (The Island of Dogs)], Composizione [Composition] and Gli Amanti Paris in 1936 and returned with a copy of the the Argonauts. While De Chirico depicted (Gli innamorati) [The Lovers].

1. Alberto Savinio, Edipo e Antigone, 1928. Cortina 2. Paul Cézanne, Bathers, circa 1892. Paris, d’Ampezzo, Regole d’Ampezzo, Galleria d’Arte Moderna Musée d’Orsay, on loan to the Musée des Beaux-Arts, “Mario Rimoldi” Lyon

322 323 Italo Valenti Nudo in un interno

91 Title Nudo in un interno [Nude in an Interior] Date circa 1944 Technique oil on canvas Dimensions 40 × 50 cm bottom left: I. VALENTI

This work of 1944 shows a nude female figure alone in a bare and unwelcoming interior, a subject that appears to refer the widespread wartime use of brothels. The woman’s pose is, however, not provocative and sensual but rather subdued and pensive, making her appear defenceless. The dreamlike and indeed almost childlike world of the works painted by the artist in the thirties gave way in the following decade to bitter reflection on the madness of the period, as in this blunt representation. Reserved and self-effacing by nature, Valenti used painting to express “what was joyful in his mind and exor- cise what was disturbed”.1 In the almost geometric construction of volumes, the Nudo shows the influence of Picasso, which was very strong in the forties. This was short-lived for Valenti, however, as he preferred the “stylization” of forms to their “re-construction”.2 The work appeared in the exhibition of 2003 Ernesto Treccani e il movimento di Corrente.3 R . P.

1 C. Carena, “Italo e i suoi quadri”, in C. Carena, S. Pult (edited by), Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Milan: Skira, 1998, pp. 9−14. 2 E. Pontiggia, “Italo Valenti. Il sogno e la magia”, in E. Pontiggia (edited by), Italo Valenti. Mostra antologica, exhibition catalogue (Bellinzona, Villa dei Cedri, April−June 1991), Bellinzona: Civica Galleria d’Arte, 1991, pp. 11−24. 3 M. Pizziolo (edited by), Ernesto Treccani e il movimento di Corrente, exhibition catalogue (Busto Arsizio, Fondazione Bandera, 25 October 2003 − 29 February 2004), Milan: Skira, 2003.

324 325 Emilio Vedova Il caffeuccio veneziano

92 Title Il caffeuccio veneziano at the Bergamo Prize. I recall the truly alarming and formation for artists, one that “took on a [Venetian Café] atmosphere of that day, the authentic anarchy role of intellectual opposition to the official tra- Date 1942 with plates flying into the air in the upper town of dition, a gathering place for angry young men Technique oil on canvas Bergamo, glasses smashing against glasses, a […] eager to open the windows to light against Dimensions 43 × 55 cm Fascist in a black shirt who was so furious that the mists of Novecento”.3 The central figure bottom left: VEDOVA 42 he pulled out a dagger to stab me in the back, holds a cigarette and the one beside him has the air of conspiracy circulating amongst us at a resigned air. The standing figure, who ap- Emilio Vedova wrote as follows to a collector of the table, the works of Migneco, Guttuso, Birolli, pears to hold a glass, has a wide-open mouth his works from Venice on 22 January 1958 to Treccani and Apollonio as well as Elio Vittorini that recalls Munch’s The Scream [FIG. 3, P. 160] or draw his attention to the magazine Quadrum pub- […]. A strange gathering of anti-fascist intellec- Schiele’s self-portraits. The figure behind them, lished in Brussels, prompting him to buy it: “The tual forces at a prize created by certain Fascists probably the waiter leaning against the bar, is latest issue includes a large number of pages on but almost turned into an official anti-fascist terrified. The curved lines of his face and mouth my work with 18 black and white reproductions point of departure. I remember the afternoon of promise nothing good. All of them, “laden with and two full-page photographs in colour. Those that day, at least twenty of us in that bedroom, hallucinatory pictorial sensuality […] present an in black and white include your Caffeuccio. It is halfway between slaughter and chaos: certainly intensely dramatic human figure carved into the a great satisfaction for me and I believe you will not an edifying symbol of the structure, organ- surface with brutal, violent strokes that tear and also be pleased to see your work reproduced ization, will power and order that was or was make wounds. Vedova understands ‘being’ as there. [...] I warmly remember and cordially greet supposed to be second nature to people run- fracture and absence but also as a condition of you, please pay my respects to your wife.” ning an empire. Every time I recall those hours, the constant alteration of the relations between He evidently attached great importance to this I am almost forced to see an entire symbolism things, the never-ending change that gives real- work, which was one of those he took with him in the actions and events of the day. For exam- ity its specificity and that is the stigmata of the to Milan. As he wrote in his diary: “I had seen the ple, Vittorini’s dismantling of the bed — and the period he lived through with torment and anx- Rouaults probably and the Vlamincks in some room and more besides if it had been possible ious forebodings, as indicated also by his initial books in the [Venice] Biennial library, works — [...] like an automatic detector of an appara- contacts with antifascist circles [...]”.4 of dense colour in which post-Impressionism tus to be destroyed, etc., etc. That little piazza in R . P. arrived at disruptions and rearrangements of the upper part of Bergamo certainly saw some planes going from Cézanne all the way to ex- alarming episodes that day: precise symptoms pressionism. The Bergamo Prize was an ap- of a more or less conscious upheaval. Guttuso 1 R. De Grada, Il movimento di “Corrente”, pointment […] I immediately realized where I with the Crocifissione [Crucifixion] that had Milan: Edizioni del Milione, 1952. 2 P. 18 (published in June 1960 by Galleria Blu, had friends and soon left that Venetian isolation caused such outcry, everything was really out of Milan; first published in April 1960 as Blätter aus for Milan He thus took his Caffeuccio and a few line [...]”.2 Emilio Vedova’s artistic origins were dem Tagebuch, Prestel Verlag, Munich); now in M. Lorandi, F. Rea, C, Tellini Perina (edited by, with the drawings and moved to Milan, where he became very different from all the rest of the group and assistance of O. Pinessi), Il premio Bergamo 1939- one of the Corrente group straight away. With he drew on the dynamism of Futurism to depict 1942 – Documenti, lettere, biografie, Milan: Electa, 1993, p. 360. his bushy beard, he looked like a character the violence of the human spirit in a cramped, 3 See E. Pontiggia, N. Colombo (edited by), Milano “from the pages of a nineteenth-century novel, claustrophobic space where the figures are just Anni Trenta. L’arte e la città, exhibition catalogue as tender hearted as the anarchists in novels”.1 inches apart, where shimmering red, yellow (Milan, Spazio Oberdan, 2 December 2004 − 27 February 2005), Milan: Mazzotta, p. 41. It was with the group that he took part in 1942 and green lines undergo distortion, and his al- 4 R. Chiappini (edited by), Emilio Vedova. Antologica, in the fourth Bergamo Prize exhibition of nation- ternately violent and gentle brushwork conveys exhibition catalogue (Lugano, Museo d’Arte moderna della Città di Lugano, Villa Malpensata, al painting. “All the most progressive forces in the sense of pain. His intense Caffeuccio is set September–November 1993), catalogue of works Italy had made an unspoken agreement to meet in a café, a place in those years of discussion edited by M. Vescovo, Milan: Electa, p. 115.

1. Artists and critics of the Corrente group in Bergamo in 1942. From the left: Renato Birolli, Emilio Vedova, Renato Guttuso, Duilio Morosini, Marco Valsecchi, Giuseppe Migneco and Cesare Peverelli

326 327 Alberto Ziveri Giocatori di birilli

93 Title Giocatori di birilli [Ninepin Players] abandon fully reflecting the age and the moral Date 1934 and physical health of his figures, their delight in Technique oil on canvas living a life that is modest but full and joyous and Dimensions 75 × 100 cm bright”.5 The work was shown together with four bottom left: A. Ziveri others at the 1936 Venice Biennial in the same room as paintings by Corrado Cagli, Giuseppe In 1934 Alberto Ziveri developed a personal style Capogrossi, Guglielmo Janni, Afro Basaldella, based on tonalism. Influenced by the painting of Mirko Basaldella and Renato Guttuso.6 Giuseppe Piero della Francesca, the subject of the mon- Marchiori’s review in Emporium spoke of Ziveri’s ograph published in 1927 by Roberto Longhi,1 “combinations of colour in the highest and he sought a new spiritual and artistic dimension brightest key”, which dispel “the greyness of be- understood as a new sense of space and light. fore in the warm light of a setting sun and tonal Dario Sabatello visited his studio the same year balance”.7 and selected him by virtue of his “highly poet- R . P. ic temperament”2 as one of the young artists to represent contemporary Italian painting in the United States.3 The opening of the Galleria della 1 R. Longhi, Piero della Francesca, Rome: Valori Plastici, 1927. Cometa, run by his friends Corrado Cagli and 2 D. Sabatello, “Pittura in America”, in L’Italia Libero de Libero, in 1935 offered him the oppor- Letteraria, y XI, no. 3, Rome, 19 January 1935, p. 6. tunity to hold his first solo show there in March 3 The Exhibition of Contemporary Italian Painting, curated by Dario Sabatello, opened in the United 1936. The works shown included Giocatori di States in February 1935. birilli, which the Contessa Anna Laetitia Pecci 4 R. Melli, in Un’esposizione di Alberto Ziveri, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Galleria della Cometa, Blunt, owner of the gallery, bought for her per- 26 February − 15 March 1936), Rome: Edizioni sonal collection. The presentation in the cata- della Cometa, 1936. 5 R. Lucchese, in Alberto Ziveri, presentation logue was written by Roberto Melli, who spoke by L. Sinisgalli, note by R. Lucchese, Rome: of Ziveri’s “full-bodied, calm and joyful colour” De Luca, 1952. with “extremely personal blues” and “yellows, 6 Room XXII. The other works presented by Ziveri were Giovani atleti [Young Athletes], Giovane col reds and pinks born out of the wholly rural sin- guanto [Young Man with a Glove] and two portraits; cerity of his emotions, whose transcendental see XX Esposizione Biennale d’Arte, exhibition catalogue, Venice: Officine Grafiche Carlo Ferrari, nature is born out of the spiritual intimacy of the 1936, pp. 84−85. world from which they come in communion with 7 See G. Marchiori, “La Biennale Veneziana”, the artist’s purity of spirit”.4 As Romeo Lucchese in Emporium, y. XLII, no. 9, Bergamo: Istituto Italiano d’Arti Grafiche, September 1936, p. 125. wrote, Giocatori di birilli was born out of the art- The quotation refers to the painting of Ziveri and ist’s relationship with nature and his portrayal of Capogrossi. For the Biennial, see also the articles by G. Marchiori, in Corriere Padano, Ferrara, “the countryside of the Emilia region, its inhabit- 31 May 1936, and C. E. Oppo, in La Tribuna, Rome, ants and their way of life [...] in an aura of joy and 31 May 1936.

328 329 Alberto Ziveri Autoritratto

94 Title Autoritratto [Self-Portrait] Date 1937 Technique oil on panel Dimensions 18 × 13.2 cm bottom left: a Katy, a. ZIVERI bottom right: 1937

Alberto Ziveri liked to portray himself in his works from the very beginning, often in the faces of the figures depicted. The small-sized self-portraits like one in the Iannaccone collection, produced long after the artist’s period of tonalism, display a particular focus on light. As Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco observed, “Anyone who produces the image of his own face so many times is either in love with himself (a modern Narcissus) or in search of something inside himself (ultimately the best model) or seeking self-knowledge (painstaking self-analysis)1 In particular, Ziveri “is more attracted by his face in times of the most intense search for vocabulary, in the tonal period and the discovery of realism”.2 The latter phase saw the production of the present work, where light focuses on the artist’s face, his “Pinocchio-like nose, gleaming eyes”3 and faint smile. The dedication4 indicates that it was painted as a gift for his friend Katy Castellucci. They had met in Rome in the early thirties and shared a modest studio on Via Margutta. Ziveri’s Composizione [Composition] (1933) was indeed inspired by her face and gestures. The self-portrait was not shown until 1988 in the monographic exhibition Z at the Studio d’Arte Scuola Romana in Turin.5 R . P.

1 M. Fagiolo dell’Arco (edited by), Z, exhibition catalogue (Turin, Studio d’Arte Scuola Romana, October 1988), text by P. Fossati, Turin: Umberto Allemandi & C., 1988. 2 Ibidem. 3 M. Venturoli, “Cronache romane”, in Sabato del lombardo, y. II, no. 2, 11 January 1947, p. 5. 4 On the canvas, bottom left: “a Katy, a. ZIVERI”. 5 M. Fagiolo dell’Arco (edited by), Z, cit., 1988.

330 331 Alberto Ziveri Studio per “La rissa”

95 Title Studio per “La rissa” “War never changes. It is always the same old [Study for “The Brawl”] brutish brawl around a chicken coop”.7 The work Date 1937 is a study for La rissa [The Brawl] (1938) [FIG. 1], Technique oil on canvas now in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Dimensions 65 × 70 cm Rome. Originally owned by the artist, it was first bottom right: a. ZIVERI shown in Mostra del rinnovamento dell’arte in Italia dal 1930 al 1945, an exhibition of 1960 cu- In 1937 Alberto Ziveri decided to set off for rated by Eugenio Riccomini.8 Paris in search of new stimuli: “I discovered a R . P. previously unknown life whose violent pressure could only give birth to violently expressionistic dreams”.1 He discovered El Greco at the Musée 1 A. Ziveri, unpublished notes for the monograph published by De Luca, on loan to the Archivio della des Beaux-Arts. The numerous works painted af- Scuola Romana; now in D. Durbè (edited by), Ziveri, ter his return to Rome include these two young exhibition catalogue (Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, 19 December 1984 − 3 February brawlers, whose “contorted limbs” and “green- 1985), Milan: Electa, 1984, p. 103. ish hues” recall the master’s paintings.2 Ziveri 2 Interview of October 1984 at the Archivio di Scuola himself confirmed this predilection for El Greco, Romana; now in D. Durbè (edited by), Ziveri, cit., p. 41. refuting the critics who claimed to discern the in- 3 C. Augias, “Quant’era bella Roma”, interview with fluence of Caravaggio in his use of incident light.3 A. Ziveri, in Panorama, y. XXII, no. 927, Milan: Mondadori, 23 January1984, pp. 66−69. He depicted “people from the market in Piazza 4 Ibidem. Vittorio [FIG. 2] knocking the hell out of each oth- 5 V. Rivosecchi, “Elogio dell’ombra”, in V. Rivosecchi er”4 in response to this new need for realism and (edited by), Alberto Ziveri. “Elogio dell’ombra”, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Galleria Netta “without donning any linguistic armour, armed Vespignani, December 1990 − January 1991), only with his eyes and colours”.5 According to Rome: Edizioni Netta Vespignani, 1990, pp. 13−24. 6 Ibidem. Valerio Rivosecchi, the paintings of brawls are 7 Ibidem. not simply genre pieces but “a bitter and disen- 8 See E. Riccomini (edited by), Mostra del rinnovamento dell’arte in Italia dal 1930 al 1945, chanted reply to Guernica [FIG. 8, P. 133]”,6 which exhibition catalogue (Ferrara, Casa Romei, June− Ziveri saw at the Exposition Universelle in Paris: September 1960), Bologna: Edizioni Alfa, 1960.

1. Alberto Ziveri, La rissa, 1938. Rome, Galleria 2. Alberto Ziveri, Piazza Vittorio di notte, 1961. Milan, Nazionale d’Arte Moderna Collezione Giuseppe Iannaccone

332 333 Alberto Ziveri Il postribolo

96 Title Il postribolo [The Bawdy House] rags that barely conceal her abundant charms. Date 1945 The soldier wears a dark uniform and fondles Technique oil on canvas her breast while gazing intensely into her eyes. Dimensions 100 × 125 cm Like Canova’s Amore e Psiche [Cupid and Psyche], that are not shown in a passionate kiss Rome was the centre of lively artistic rebirth in but an instant before. the post-war period. Unlike all those who fol- The elements distinguishing the couple ap- lowed the new European trends, Alberto Ziveri pear in the bottom right corner: a helmet on the decided to continue on his own path towards ground, the symbol of a soldier’s victory, and a realism. “He does not do like so many artists red flower, the symbol of a prostitute’s chastity. today, who experiment with style after style. He Everything in the lounge is mercilessly bathed in does not seek to construct a vocabulary whose a cold Flemish light. “No one after Hopper had causes and aims he does not feel”.1 He instead ever been so closely linked to everyday contem- depicted his everyday life in a romantic vein. In a porary life as Ziveri. To real life I mean, not to brothel, with its atmosphere of waiting and tedi- current political and social events like the more um, Ziveri takes us behind the scenes in a world fortunate Guttuso. But Ziveri! Having started out that is dirty and bitter but also attractive and sen- like Janni and Capogrossi with a tonalism mod- sual. As Enzo Siciliano wrote, “These whores elled on Piero della Francesca (1931−36), he ar- stage a tangle of impulses whose tragic nature rived parallel to Sciltian at a realism (1945−46) they are unaware of, just as filthy, greedy people of such intense and direct physical and bodily stage the vile blackmail of life in Moravia’s sto- reality as to reflect his era like no one else, with ries”.2 “Realism demands this too, as Ziveri well no theories or programmes”.4 understood”.3 The setting is the sham lounge of Il postribolo was shown at the Galleria di a brothel with an atmosphere of stale air and the Roma in 1946 together with some more recent acrid tang of sweat that, for all their differenc- works5 and in 1960 at the Galleria Nuova Pesa es, is in no way inferior to the sensual, refined with a presentation in the catalogue by Virgilio world depicted by Ingres in his Turkish Bath. In Guzzi.6 Having entered the Iannaccone collec- the foreground on the left, a woman clad only in tion in 2008, it was exhibited at the Museo del a sort of Arabian loincloth leans her soft, plump Novecento in Milan on temporary loan from 2010 body against the wall and looks with folded to 2013. arms at a whore and her soldier customer on R . P. the other side of the room. There are two more women in the background. One, the madam, is the only one fully dressed. Seated at a desk, 1 R. Lucchese, in Alberto Ziveri, presentation paying no attention to anything around her, she by L. Sinisgalli, Rome: De Luca, 1952. 2 E. Siciliano, “Corpo romano”, in Il corpo, exhibition gazes in boredom out of the canvas. The other, catalogue (Turin, Studio d’Arte Scuola Romana, perhaps younger and more roguish, with a strip December 1986), Turin: Allemandi & C., 1986. 3 R. Longhi, in Alberto Ziveri, exhibition catalogue of cloth concealing her charms, looks with inter- (Rome, Galleria La Nuova Pesa, 22 April – 9 May est at her colleague with the soldier. Locked in 1964), Rome: La Nuova Pesa, 1964. a close embrace on a chair, they wait their turn 4 V. Sgarbi, “Hopper? È italiano. Si chiamava Ziveri”, in il Giornale, 31 January 2015. to enter a brown door set in the wall. The wom- 5 Mostra personale del pittore Ziveri, Rome, Galleria an wear slippers like those of Manet’s Olympia di Roma, 1946. 6 Alberto Ziveri, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Galleria [FIG. 1, P. 294] , tawdry jewellery and a blue head- La Nuova Pesa, March–April 1960), presentation by scarf. She is not naked but dressed in yellow V. Guzzi, Rome: La Nuova Pesa, 1960, work no. 2.

334 335

LIST OF WORKS LIST OF WORKS — EDITED BY RISCHA PATERLINI 1 – 10

Arnaldo Badodi 3 2004, pp. 228–29; Pizziolo 2008, Provenance: private collection 1939; Ivrea, Verona, Milano, 1963; (1913–1943) Il biliardo (Giocatori di bigliardo, pp. 48–49; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 41, of the artist Arnaldo Badodi, Busto Arsizio, 2003–04; Milano, Giocatori di biliardo) 146–48, 150, 232; Il Movimento Milano; Antonio Stellatelli 2008; Milano, Badodi, 2016; 1 [Billiards] di Corrente 2012, p. 41; AA.VV. collection, Monza. Milano, 2017. L’armadio (Guardaroba, L’armadio 1940 2012, p. 78, pl. 25; Iannaccone, Exhibitions: Milano, 1969; Bibliography: Mastrolonardo 1942; aperto) [The Wardrobe] oil on canvas, 69 x 49.5 cm Paterlini 2016, pp. 3, 6, 21. Torino, 1971; Milano, Corrente, Di Genova 1982, p. 54; Falciano 1938 signed and dated at bottom left: 1985; Lacchiarella, 1987; Milano, 1995, pp. 209, 341; Pizziolo 2003, oil on canvas, 54.5 x 43.5 cm badodi 40 4v Corrente, 1998; Busto Arsizio, pp. 129, 158; Pizziolo 2008, pp. dated and signed at bottom right: verso: 2003-2004; Chieti, 2012; Milano, 22, 52; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 156, 232; 38 badodi Provenance: private collection of 1v Il suicidio del pittore Badodi, 2016; Milano, 2017. Audoli 2010, pp. 86–91; Iannaccone, 6 the artist Arnaldo Badodi, Milano; (L’impiccagione dell’artista) The catalogue of the posthumous Paterlini 2016, pp. 7, 25. Provenance: private collection Giuseppe Migneco collection, [The Painter’s Suicide] show held at the Galleria of the artist Arnaldo Badodi, Milano; Orazio Zanmattei collection, 1937 La Colonna in 1952 includes Milano; Galleria Genova, Genova; Milano; Enrico Brambilla Pisoni oil on plywood, 58 x 48 cm a work entitled Il pagliaccio Renato Birolli Galleria Gian Ferrari, Milano; Tosi collection, Busto Arsizio. 1 (The Clown, no. 8 in the list), (1905–1959) collection, Milano; Galleria Exhibitions: Verona, Ivrea, Milano, Provenance: as back of Caffè: which may be the same painting. il Chiostro, Saronno. 1963; Milano, 1969; Milano, private collection of the artist Bibliography: Valsecchi 1969; 9 Exhibitions: Milano, Corrente, Ravenna, Napoli, 1971; Napoli, Arnaldo Badodi, Milano; Galleria Crispolti, Fagone, Ruju 1978, L’Arlecchino [Harlequin] 1939; Milano, Genova, 1941; 1978; Trezzano sul Naviglio, Genova, Genova; Emilio Libero p. 59; De Micheli 1985, p. 117; 1931 Ivrea, Verona, Milano, 1963; 1980-1981; Milano, Anni Trenta, collection, Genova; Emilio Bossaglia, De Micheli, Pontiggia oil on canvas, 84 x 56 cm 7 Milano, 1969; Milano, 1971; 1982; Milano, Corrente, 1985; Libero’s heirs collection, Genova; 1987, p. 25; Pontiggia 1991, signed and dated at bottom left: Milano, 2007; Milano, 2008, Milano, 2008; Milano, 2017. Galleria Narciso, Torino; Giovanni p. 8; Falciano 1995, p. 353; R. Birolli 31 Chieti, 2012; Milano, 2017. Bibliography: Valsecchi 1963, Rosa collection, Milano; Antonio AA.VV., Novecento 1996, p. 37; Bibliography: Anceschi 1939; pp. 54, 110; Valsecchi, Artisti di Stellatelli collection, Monza. Pizziolo 1998, pp. 26, 112; Pizziolo Provenance: private collection Bini, Arnaldo Badodi, 1939, Corrente, 1963, p. 38; Mascherpa Exhibitions: Milano, 1937. 2003, p. 129; AA.VV. 2012, p. 81; of the artist Renato Birolli, Milano; p. 5; Bonardi 1939; Mastrolonardo 1969; Valsecchi 1969, p. 6; Fagone Exhibitions as back of Caffè: Iannaccone, Paterlini 2016, Galleria Narciso, Torino; private 1940; Mastrolonardo 1941; 1970, pp. 6–7; De Grada 1971; Milano, Genova, 1941; Ivrea, pp. 3, 7, 25. collection Moreni family, Torino; Piovene 1941; Sette Giorni 1942; Ricci 1971; Crispolti, Fagone, Verona, Milano, 1963; Vigevano, private collection Maria Luisa Cairola 1946, p. 2; De Grada 1952; Ruju 1978, pp. 61, 180; Barilli, 2001; Milano, 2004–05; Milano, 7 Moreni, Modena. Ballo 1956, p. 166; Valsecchi 1963, Caroli, Fagone 1982, pp. 140, 635; 2008; Chieti, 2012; Milano, Badodi, Ragazza (Lettura, Ritratto Exhibitions: Milano, 1932; Ferrara, 2 3 pp. 52, 110; Valsecchi, Artisti di Di Genova 1982, p. 54; Anzani, 2016; Milano, 2017. di ragazza) [Young Woman] Mantova, 1970; Torino, 1976; Corrente, 1963, p. 39; Ballo 1964, Caramel 1983, p. 276; De Micheli Bibliography: Bucci 1937; 1941 Lodi, 1982; Milano, Roma, Verona, 8 p. 298; Mascherpa 1969; Valsecchi 1985, pp. 114–15; Di Genova Falciano 1995, pp. 297, 323; oil on canvas, 39,5 x 55 cm 1989-1990; Milano, 2010; Torino, 1969, p. 5; AA.VV. 1971, p. 154; 1990, p. 66; Pirovano 1992, p. 227; Agnellini 1996, p. 26; Pizziolo signed at bottom right: badodi 2016; Milano, 2017. De Grada 1975; Di Genova 1982, Falciano 1995, pp. 104–05,189, 2008, p. 49; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 21, Bibliography: Birolli 1960; Maltese p. 53; Di Genova 1990, p. 69; 318–19; Pizziolo 2008, pp. 50–51; 42, 150, 231. Provenance: private collection 1970, p. 27, pl. 2; AA.VV., Renato Pirovano 1992, p. 742; Falciano AA.VV. 2009, pp. 10, 172, 232. of the artist Arnaldo Badodi, Birolli 1976, pp. 17, 242; Narciso 1995, pp. 15, 91, 116, 119, 299– 5 Milano; Galleria Genova, Genova; 1976, pp. 4, 7; Birolli Z., Sambonet 300, 304, 339, 399; AA.VV., Arte 4 Donna al caffè (Ragazza al caffè) Emilio Libero collection, Genova; 1978, p. 186; Quintavalle 1989; moderna 2000, p. 12; Pontiggia, Caffè (Il caffè) [Café] [Woman at the Café] Emilio Libero’s heirs collection, Vivarelli 1989, p. 140; Pontiggia Colombo 2004, p. 306; Gian Ferrari 1940 1940 Genova; Galleria Narciso, Torino; 1996; Birolli Z., Bruno, Rusconi 2007, p. 129; Pizziolo 2008, pp. 22, oil on plywood, 48 x 58 cm oil on panel, 40 x 30 cm Galleria Appiani Trentadue, Milano. 1997; Pontiggia, Cecchetti 2001, 45; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 21, 140, 231; signed and dated at bottom left: signed and dated at bottom right: Exhibitions: Milano, Genova, p. 12; Pontiggia 2006, pp. 66, 67; AA.VV. 2012, p. 79. badodi 40 badodi 40 1941; Milano, Maggi, 2010; Pontiggia 2010, p. 112; AA.VV. Milano, 2017. 2012, p. 59; Pontiggia, Birolli V., 1v Provenance: private collection Provenance: private collection Bibliography: Piovene 1941; 2016, p. 19. verso: of the artist Arnaldo Badodi, of the artist Arnaldo Badodi, Agnellini 1995, p. 48; Falciano Abbozzo di una sartoria Milano; Galleria Genova, Genova; Milano; Galleria Gussoni, Milano; 1995, pp. 207, 337, 339–40; 10 [Sketch of a Tailor’s Shop] Emilio Libero collection, Genova; Enrico Brambilla Pisoni collection, Pontiggia 2010, p. 57; AA.VV. 2009, Periferia (Grottammare) 1938 Emilio Libero’s heirs collection; Busto Arsizio. pp. 154, 232; Pontiggia, Carla [Outskirts (Grottamare)] oil on canvas, 43.5 x 54.5 cm Galleria Narciso, Torino; Giovanni Exhibitions: Milano, 1969; Napoli, Maria Maggi 2010, pp. 30, 57. 1932 9 Rosa, collection Milano; Antonio 1978; Milano, Corrente, 1985; oil on canvas, 54 x 53 cm 4 2 Stellatelli collection, Monza. Milano, 2017. 8 signed and dated at bottom left: Ballerine [Ballerinas] Exhibitions: Milano, Genova, Bibliography: Mastrolonardo Soprabito su divano (Soprabito R. Birolli 932 1938 1941; Ivrea, Verona, Milano, 1941; Valsecchi 1969, p. [19]; animato, Il cappotto grigio, oil on canvas, 65.5 x 49.5 cm 1963; Vigevano, 2001; Milano, Crispolti, Fagone, Ruju 1978, p. Interno con cappotto) [Overcoat This is not the artist’s autograph dated and signed at bottom right: 2004–05; Milano, 2008; Chieti, 180; De Micheli 1985, pp. 114–15; on a Sofa] title for the work. See Zeno Birolli, 38 badodi 2012; Milano, Badodi, 2016; Pirovano 1992, p. 742; Falciano 1941 Catalogo delle opere, in Renato Milano, 2017. 1995, pp. 199, 331; Pontiggia, oil on canvas, 60 x 70 cm Birolli, Milan: Feltrinelli, 1978, Provenance: private collection Bibliography: De Grada 1941; Colombo 2004, pp. 228; AA.VV. signed and dated at bottom p. 179; illustration n. 49 p. 188). of the artist Arnaldo Badodi, Mastrolonardo 1941; Piovene 2009, pp. 10, 148, 232; Pontiggia, right: badodi 41 Milano; Giuseppe Prisco 1941; Radius 1941, p. 3; Carla Maria Maggi 2010, p. 57; Provenance: private collection collection, Milano. Sette Giorni 1942; Valsecchi 1963, AA.VV. 2012, p. 80. Provenance: private collection of the artist Renato Birolli, Milano; Exhibitions: Milano, 2004–05; p. 51; Valsecchi, Artisti of the artist Arnaldo Badodi, Birolli heirs collection, Milano. 10 Milano, 2017. di Corrente, 1963, p. 38; Buzzoni, 6 Milano; Pietro Porro collection, Exhibitions: Milano, Bibliography: Falciano 1995, D’Amico, Gualdoni 1993, p. 387; Il circo [The Circus] Milano; private collection Espressionismo, 1990; Volta pp. 175, 301; Pontiggia, Colombo Falciano 1995, pp. 119, 193, 323; 1941 of heirs Alfredo, Gianni Porro and Mantovana, 1996; Roma, Birolli, 2004, pp. 228–230; AA.VV. 2009, Agnellini 1996, p. 26; De Grada 4v 5 oil on canvas, 55 x 70 cm Jacqueline Bonello. 1997; Vigevano, 2001; Torino, pp. 142, 144, 231. 2001, p. 82; Pontiggia, Colombo signed at bottom left: badodi Exhibitions: Milano, Corrente, 2016; Milano, 2017.

340 341 LIST OF WORKS — EDITED BY RISCHA PATERLINI 11 – 18

Bibliography: Maltese 1970, p. 27; Santi 2000; Salvagnini 2000, pp. 18; Carrà 1936; Bini, Birolli 1941, Mascherpa 1989; Vivarelli 1989, 1939; Capasso 1940; Interlandi oil on canvas, 63 x 77.5 cm Birolli Z., Sambonet 1978, p. 188; 22, 23, 466; Pontiggia, Cecchetti pp. 24, 94–95; De Micheli 1941; pp. 57, 143–44; Lanza Pietromarchi 1940; Bini, Birolli 1941, p. 107; signed and dated at bottom left: Lanza Pietromarchi 1990, AA.VV., 2001, p. [80]; Pontiggia, Colombo De Grada 1950, p. [4]; Mostra 1990, p. 26; AA.VV., Arte moderna Birolli 1943, pp. 17, 30, 48; Carrieri Birolli 38 Novecento 1994 p. 60; Pontiggia 2004, pp. 122, 123, 330; Spagnesi panoramica 1955, p. 25; Marchiori 1990, p. 10; AA.VV., Arte moderna 1950, p. 267; De Grada 1950, 1996, pp. 70, 191; Krumm 1996, 2004; Butturini 2006, pp. 34, 211; 1960, pp. 231, 239, 244; Riccomini 1991, p. 32; Pontiggia 1991, p. 57; p. [4]; Maltese 1950; Valsecchi, Provenance: private collection p. 31; Birolli Z., Bruno, Rusconi Barilli 2007, pp. 351, 550; Pizziolo 1960, p. 38; De Grada 1967; AA.VV. 1993, p. 140; AA.VV. 1995, Apollonio 1950, p. 5; Venturi 1954; of the artist Renato Birolli, Milano; 1997, pp. 74, 124; De Grada 2001, 2008, p. 54, AA.VV. 2009, p. 15, Ragghianti 1967, pp. LII, 417; Gian p. 81; Falciano 1995, pp. 62, 63; Ballo 1956, p. 184; Marchiori Pietro Feroldi collection, Brescia; p. 49; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 21, 126, 21, 128, 230; Vanzetto 2010, p. Ferrari 1975; Birolli Z., Sambonet Lanza Pietromarchi 1996, pp. 22, 1957, p. 306; Venturi 1958, p. 46; Emilio Jesi collection, Milano; 230; Audoli 2010; Pontiggia, 25; Vanzetto, I colori degli angeli 1978, p. 156; Del Guercio 1980, 31, 32, 33, 37, 58, 90, 109, 126–28; Birolli 1960, pp. 49, 253; Gambillo Galleria Annunciata, Milano; Birolli V. 2016, p. 29. impacciati 2010, p. 19; Pontiggia p. 94; Crispolti 1983, p. CV; De Pontiggia 1996, p. 199; Agnellini 1960; Valsecchi 1960, pp. 36–39; Emilio Jesi collection, Milano; 2010, p. 99; AA.VV. 2012, p. 33; Micheli 1985, p. 37; Morosini 1985, 1997; Birolli Z., Bruno, Rusconi Marchiori 1962; Marchiori 1963, p. Finarte Milano; Antonio Stellatelli 16 11 Expo 2015, p. 106; Pontiggia, Birolli pp. 131-132; Galmozzi 1989, p. 1997, p. 10; Pizziolo 1998, p. 126; 58; Ballo 1964, p. 119; De Grada collection, Monza; Finarte Milano; 11 Tassì rosso (Taxi rosso) [Red Taxi] V., 2016, p. 19. 178; Vivarelli 1989, pp. 143, 159; Sebastiani 1998, p. 113; Salvagnini 1967; Maltese 1970, p. 38, pl. 17; Cogolo collection, Udine; 1932 Lanza Pietromarchi 1990, pp. [59], 2000, pp. 122–23, 466; Fagone AA.VV. 1971, p. 148; Gian Ferrari Finarte Milano. oil on canvas, 58 x 60 cm 12 [65]-[66]; AA.VV. 1993, p. 140; 2001, pp. 63–64, 340; Menato 1975; AA.VV., Renato Birolli 1976, Exhibitions: Milano, Annunciata, dated and signed at bottom right: La città degli studi AA.VV., Novecento 1993, p. 37; Di 2001, p. 17; Belli 2002, p. 254; p. 95; Birolli Z., Sambonet 1978, 1972; Genova, 1995–96; Roma, 32 R. Birolli [Città degli Studi, the Milan Genova 1996, pp. 173–74; Lanza Castellaneta 2002, p. 36; Righetti pp. 156, 202; Passoni 1982, p. [4]; Birollli, 1997; Milano, 2004–05; University District] Pietromarchi 1996, pp. 31–32, 90- 2003, pp. 90, 149, 168; Pontiggia, Erbesato 1986, p. 19; Pontiggia Mendrisio, 2005; Taranto, 2006; There are another three coeval 1933 91; Pontiggia 1996, p. 136; Birolli Colombo 2004, pp. 206–08; 1991, p. 15; Falciano 1995, p. Fabriano, 2007; Milano, 2008; works with the same subject and oil on canvas, 67.5 x 84.5 cm Z., Bruno, Rusconi 1997, pp. 81, Spagnesi 2004; AA.VV., Arte 62; Lanza Pietromarchi 1996, pp. Seravezza, 2011; Chieti, 2012; title produced by the artist in the signed and dated at bottom right: 125; Pirani 1998, p. 106; Rusconi moderna 2005, p. 27; Barilli 2007, 96–97; Pontiggia 1996, p. 199; Torino, 2016; Milano, 2017. period 1931–32. As pointed out by R. Birolli 1933 2000, p. 10; Fagone 2001, p. 208; p. 352, 552; Pizziolo 2008, p. 22, Salvagnini 2000, pp. 12, 415–16, Bibliography: Bini, Birolli 1941, 17 Professor Zeno Birolli, the critical Righetti 2003, p. 90; Pontiggia, 57; Troisi 2008, pp. 38–40; AA.VV. 466; Fagone 2001, pp. 63, 289, p. 99; Apollonio 1950, p. 144; 12 debate about two of the four Provenance: private collection Colombo 2004, pp. 206–07; Troisi 2009, pp. 130, 134, 230; Pontiggia 299; Righetti 2003, p. 90; Pontiggia, Ballo 1956, pp. 158, 184; Marchiori versions of the Tassì rosso, one of of the artist Renato Birolli, Milano; 2008, pp. 38–40, 48, 160; AA.VV. 2010, p. 102; AA.VV. 2012, p. 66; Il Colombo 2004, pp. 34-37; Bruno, 1960, p. 244; Marchiori 1963, pp. which being the Iannaccone work, private collection Lurani, Milano; 2009, pp. 28, 132, 134; Pontiggia Movimento di Corrente 2012, Soldini 2005, p. 33; Pizziolo 2008, 26, 28; Ballo 1964, vol. I p. 289, stems from the fact that they are private collection Mario, Piero and 2010, p. 166; AA.VV. 2012, p. 66; pp. 90–92; Pontiggia, Birolli V., p. 18; Troisi 2008, pp. 38–40, 49, vol. II p. 119; p. 289; Birolli Z., unanimously regarded as those Emilio Strada; Casa d’Aste Farsetti Pontiggia, Birolli V., 2016, p. 47. 2016, p. 43; Zangrando 2016, p. 34. 160; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 21, 136, 231; Sambonet 1978, p. 206; Di Genova best representing the series. Arte, Milano. AA.VV. 2012, pp. 38,40; AA.VV., 1982, p. 58; Vivarelli 1989, pp. 15, Exhibitions: Torino, 2016; Milano, 14 15 Anni ’30 2012, p. 153; D’Amico 30; Di Genova 1990, p. 69; AA.VV., Provenance: private collection 2017. I poeti [The Poets] Il caos [Chaos] 2012, pp. 50, 51; Il movimento Novecento 1993, p. 36; Sborgi of the artist Renato Birolli, Milano; Bibliography: Bini, Birolli 1941 1935 1936 di Corrente 2012, pp. 90–92, 102; 1995, pp. 27, 226, 346; Agnellini private collection Maria Birolli; [pp. 78, 79]; Valsecchi 1960, oil on canvas, 90 x 108 cm oil on canvas, 110 x 90 cm Pontiggia, Birolli V., 2016, p. 50. 1997, p. 28; Birolli Z., Bruno, Cesare Tosi collection, Milano; p. 35; Birolli Z., Sambonet 1978 signed and dated at bottom left: signed and dated at bottom left: Rusconi 1997, pp. 89, 127; Finarte, Milano; Raimondo [p. 192]; Lanza Pietromarchi 1996 R. Birolli 935 R. Birolli ’36 16 Di Genova 1997, pp. 175–76; 18 Rezzonico collection; Studio A.Z. [p. 14]; Pontiggia, Cecchetti 2001, Le signorine Rossi AA.VV., Arte moderna 2002, 13 Galleria d’Arte, Milano; Galleria p. 12; Pontiggia, Birolli V., 2016, Provenance: private collection There is another version of the [The Misses Rossi] p. 121; Pontiggia, Colombo 2004, Tega, Milano. pp. 33, 34. of the artist Renato Birolli, Milano; work, entitled Il caos 2 and dated 1938 p. 24; Bruno, Soldini 2005, pp. 34, Exhibitions: Milano, 1951; Milano, Giuliano Buttini collection, Carrara; 1937 (oil on canvas, 91 × 113 cm), oil on canvas, 100 x 120 cm 152; Pontiggia, Perrone 2006, pp. Corrente, 1960; Ivrea, Verona, 13 Antonio Stellatelli collection, in the Fondazione Museo signed and dated at bottom right: 46–47; Dehò, Pontiggia 2007, p. Milano, 1963; Milano, Roma, La nuova Ecumene (La visione Monza. Boschi-Di Stefano in Milan. birolli 38 46; Pizziolo 2008, p. 58, AA.VV. Verona, 1989–1990; Milano, di Ezechiele, La nuova Exhibitions: Londra, 1935; San The existence of a third version 2009, pp. 138, 139, 231; Barbera, 1998; Medole, 1999; Brescia, ecumenica, Nuova Ecumene, Francisco, 1935; Verona, 1959; (Caos terza scena) is suggested Provenance: private collection Ruta 2009, p. 33; Dei 2011, p. 54; 2000; Milano, 2004–05; Mantova, Visione di Ezechiele) Verona, 1963; Firenze, 1967; by the catalogue of the solo show of the artist Renato Birolli, Milano; AA.VV. 2012, p. 74; Il Movimento 2006; Milano, 2008: Milano, 2010; [The New Ecumene] Milano, 1982; Milano, Corrente, Birolli held at the Galleria Genova private collection G. Rossi, Milano. di Corrente 2012, pp. 90–93; Milano, Expo, 2015; Torino, 2016; 1935 1985; Milano, Mantova, 1986; in 1938. The unfortunate lack of Exhibitions: Genova, 1938; Pontiggia, Birolli V., 2016, p. 57. Milano, 2017. oil on canvas, 136 x 155.5 cm Lacchiarella, 1987; Milano, Roma an illustration makes it, however, Venezia, 1938; Milano, Corrente, 14 Bibliography: Bini, Birolli 1941, signed and dated at bottom right: Verona 1989–1990; Busto Arsizio, impossible to establish whether 1939; Venezia, 1960; Ferrara, 18 p. 21; Ballo 1956, p. 184; Belvedere B. 1935 Ferrara, 1991–92; Milano, 1995; the painting was actually one Mantova, 1970; Milano, 1971; Paese a Monluè [Landscape 18v 1960; Marchiori 1962, p. 25; Verona, 1996; Milano, Corrente, of the two already known versions Roma, Birolli, 1997; Milano, 2008; at Monluè] Marchiori 1963, pp. 9, 52–53, 106; Provenance: private collection of 1998; Rovereto, 2002–03; Milano, presented under another title Chieti, 2012; Torino, 2016; Milano, 1939 Valsecchi 1966, pp. X, XI; Bini the artist Renato Birolli, Milano; 2004–05; Milano, 2008; Chieti or another, perhaps subsequently 2017. oil on canvas, 65 x 70 cm 1971, pp. 30–32; AA.VV., Renato Galleria La Colonna, Milano; 2012; Torino, 2016; Milano, 2017. destroyed and in any case now Bibliography: Balestrieri 1938; signed and dated at bottom left: Birolli 1976, pp. 134, 240; Birolli Galleria La Nuova Pesa, Roma; Bibliography: Franco-Italian 1935; of unknown location. Silva 1939, p. 7; Birolli 1960, 39. Birolli Z., Sambonet 1978, p. 63; Barilli, Alberto Mondadori collection, Joppolo 1935; Marchiori 1963, p. p. 102; Marchiori 1963, p. 60; Caroli, Fagone 1982, p. 132; Milano; Finarte, Milano; Mondadori 57, 106; De Micheli 1967, p. 211; Provenance: private collection Maltese 1970, p. 27; Birolli Z., Provenance: private collection Zeri 1982, pp. 251, 253; Anzani, heirs collection, Milano; Paolo Ragghianti 1967, p. 360; AA.VV., of the artist Renato Birolli, Milano; Sambonet 1978, p. 80; Birolli Z.; of the artist Renato Birolli, Milano; Caramel 1983, pp. 259, 261; Baldacci collection, Milano; Galleria Renato Birolli 1976, pp. 246, 247; Sandro Bini collection, Milano; Bruno, Rusconi 1997; p. 88, 127; Ernesto Treccani collection, Crispolti 1983, p. CXI; De Micheli dello Scudo, Verona; Antonio Birolli Z., Sambonet 1978, pp. 156, Giuliana Bini collection; Galleria Pontiggia, Colombo 2004, pp. Milano; private collection, Milano; 1985, p. 35; Quintavalle 1989; Stellatelli collection, Monza. 196; Passoni 1982, p. [6]; Crispolti dello Scudo, Verona; Galleria 305, 306; Pizziolo 2008, p. 23; Dei Galleria Mazzoleni, Torino; private Vivarelli 1989, pp. 12, 13, 29, 33–35, Exhibitions: Londra, 1935; Milano, 1983, p. CXI; AA.VV., Migneco Tega, Milano. 2011, p. 56; AA.VV. 2012, p. 74; collection, Torino. 49, 141; AA.VV., Toni 1989, p. 49; 1936; L’Aquila, 1955; Ferrara, 1984, p. 12; De Micheli 1985, pp. Exhibitions: Venezia, 1960; Pontiggia, Birolli V., 2016, p. 55. Exhibitions: Londra, 1935; Pontiggia 1991, p. 171; AA.VV., Arte 1960; Firenze, 1967; Milano, 94–95; Margonari, Modesti 1986, Verona, 1963; Venezia, 1966; San Francisco, 1935; Verona, 15 moderna 1992, p. [35]; Anzani, Espressionismo, 1990; Verona, p. 109; Bossaglia, De Micheli, Ferrara, Mantova, 1970; Milano, 17 1959; Ivrea, Verona, 1963; Firenze, Pirovano 1992, p. 204; Falciano 1996; Roma, Birolli, 1997; Milano, Pontiggia 1987; Bruno 1987, p. 15; 1971; Parma, 1976; Verona, 1996; Maschere (Maschere vaganti, 1967; Milano, 1982; Milano, 1985; 1995, p. 56; Lanza Pietromarchi 2004–05; Marsala, 2008; Chieti De Micheli 1987; AA.VV., Toni 1989, Mendrisio, 2005; Marsala, 2008; Maschere vaganti sulla pianura, Lacchiarella, 1987; Milano, Roma, 1996, pp. 15, 16; Pontiggia 1998, 2012; Torino 2016; Milano, 2017. pp. 49, 50; Argan 1989, p. 348; Firenze, 2012–13; Torino, 2016; Maschere viaggianti, Verona 1989–1990; Milano, 2017. pp. 136-139; Pontiggia 1999, p. Bibliography: Franco-Italian Barilli 1989; Hulten, Celant 1989, Milano, 2017. Maschere fluttuanti) [Masks] Bibliography: Bini, R. Birolli, 1939, 17–21; AA.VV. 2000, p. 235; De 1935; AA.VV., Sindacato 1936, p. p. 249; Galmozzi 1989, p. 178; Bibliography: Interlandi 1938; Bini 1938–39 p. 113; Ballo 1964, p. 119; Z. Birolli

342 343 LIST OF WORKS — EDITED BY RISCHA PATERLINI 18v – 28

1978, p. 212; Vivarelli 1989, p. signed at bottom left: [Jessie] 22 con satiro, Paesaggio romano Bruno Cassinari 66; De Grada 1990; AA. VV., Arte Boswell Ballerina con figura) [Roman Landscape (1912–1992) Moderna, 1990, p. 15. 1938 with Reclining Figure] Provenance: private collection bronze sculpture, 32 x 19 x 17 cm 1932 27 18v of the artist Jessie Boswell, signed on the base: Broggini ink wash on paper, 330 x 240 mm Ritratto di Ernesto Treccani verso: Torino; private collection, Torino; copy number one of three dated and signed at bottom left: (Ritratto di Treccani) Gineceo [Gynaeceum] Galleria del Ponte, Torino; private Roma 1932 Broggini [Portrait of Ernesto Treccani] 1934 collection, Torino. Provenance: private collection 1941 oil on canvas, 70 x 65 cm Exhibitions: Aosta, 1999; Bra, of the artist Luigi Broggini, Milano; Provenance: private collection oil on panel, 60 x 45 cm signed and dated at bottom left: 1999; Torino 2004; Torino 2009; collection of the artist’s son of the artist Luigi Broggini, Milano; signed and dated at bottom right: R. Birolli 1934 Milano, 2017. Stefano Broggini, Milano. “A.F.”, Roma; Eredi Broggini cassinari 41 20 Bibliography: Bandini 1993; Exhibitions: Ivrea, Verona, Milano, collection, Milano. Provenance as back of Paese Bandini 1999, p. 63; Testa 2004, 1963; Milano, 1970; Milano, 1977; Exhibitions: Milano, 1957; Provenance: private collection of a Monluè: private collection of p. 13; Mulatero 2009. Milano, Corrente, 1985; Busto Borgomanero, 1974; Milano, the artist Bruno Cassinari, Milano; the artist Renato Birolli, Milano; Arsizio, 1989; Milano, 1991; Varese, Corrente, 1985; Saronno, 1995; Luigi Ardemagni collection, Ernesto Treccani collection, 1991; Saronno, 1995; Civitanova Civitanova Marche, 1998; Milano, Milano; Enrico Brambilla Pisoni Milano; private collection, Milano; Luigi Broggini Marche Alta, 1998, Milano, 2010, 2017. collection, Busto Arsizio. Galleria Mazzoleni, Torino; private (1908–1983) Chieti, 2012; Milano, 2017. Bibliography: Broggini, Sereni Exhibitions: Milano, Cassinari, 25 19 collection, Torino Bibliography: Carrieri 1950, p. 1957; Carrieri 1957, p. 91; Broggini 1941; Milano, 1962; Ivrea, Verona, Exhibitions as back of Paese 21 308; Valsecchi, Artisti di Corrente, disegni 1974, p. 38; De Micheli Milano, 1963; Milano, Cassinari, a Monluè: Londra, 1935; San Testa di ragazzo (Testa di 1963, p. 42; Vitali 1970; Gatto 1977, 1985, p. 83; Margonari, Modesti 1970; Milano, 1971; Napoli, 1978; Francisco, 1935; Verona, 1959; fanciullo, Ritratto di ragazzo) p. [25]; Broggini 1983; De Micheli 1986, 125, 126; Modesti 1990; Busto Arsizio, 1981; Milano, Ivrea, Verona, 1963; Firenze, [Boy’s Head] 1985, pp. 78–79; Luigi Broggini, Bossaglia 1995, pp. [39], [46]; Anni Trenta, 1982; Piacenza, 1967; Milano, 1982; Milano, 1985; 1932–35 1989; Pontiggia 1989; Cavallo 1990, Pontiggia, Broggini 1998, pp. 33, 1983; Milano, 1986; Ferrara, 1993; Lacchiarella, 1987; Milano, Roma, bronze sculpture, pp. 15–25, 92–93; Modesti 1991, p. 184; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 182, 235. Ivano Fracena, 2003; Busto Arsizio, Verona 1989–90; Milano, 2017. 28 x 17 x 20 cm 68; Modesti, Luigi Broggini, 1991, 2003–04; Chieti, 2012; Milano, Exhibitions: Busto Arsizio, 1991; dated and signed on the neck: pp. 75, 177; Bossaglia 1995, pp. 25 2016; Milano, 2017. Verona, 1996; Milano, 2017. 932 Broggini [18–19]; Pontiggia, Broggini, 1998, Paesaggio romano con statua Bibliography: Vittorini 1941, p. [5]; Bibliography: Pontiggia 1991, p. sole copy pp. 62–63, 186; Pontiggia 2000, pp. di Nettuno (Paesaggio con statua Carrà 1962, p. [9]; Valsecchi 1963, 55; Lanza Pietromarchi 1996, p. 48. 156, 161, 179; Pontiggia, Colombo di Nettuno, Roma 1933) pp. 43, 49, 110; Valsecchi, Artisti Provenance: private collection 2004, p. 222; Pontiggia 2009; AA.VV. [Roman Landscape with Statue di Corrente, 1963, p. 36; Pirovano 19 of the artist Luigi Broggini, Milano; 2009, pp. 180, 235; Di Marzio 2010, of Neptune] 1969, pp. 8, [34]; Pirovano 1970, Signora col cappello private collection of the artist’s son p. 54; Gualdoni, Pellegatta 2010, pp. 1933 pp. 14, [42]; AA.VV. 1971, p. 162; (Ritratto di Enrica Cavallo, Stefano Broggini, Milano. 55, 112; AA.VV. 2012, p. 111. ink wash on paper, 320 x 220 mm Crispolti, Fagone, Ruju 1978, pp. Signora con cappello, Ritratto Exhibitions: Milano, Broggini, 1943; signed and dated at bottom left: 76, 180; Bruno Cassinari 1981; 26 di pianista) [Lady in a Hat] Varese, 1944; Milano, Corrente, 23 Broggini Roma 1933 Barilli, Caroli, Fagone 1982, pp. 1941 1985; Milano, 1986; Busto Arsizio, Figura al sole (Figura allo 134, 635; Di Genova 1982, p. 62; 21 22 oil on canvas, 84 x 57 cm 1989; Milano, 1991; Varese, 1991; specchio, Ragazza allo specchio, Provenance: private collection of Dell’Acqua, Anzani 1983, pp. 16, dated and signed at top left: Saronno, 1995; Volta Mantovana, Ragazza con cappello, Figura) the artist Luigi Broggini, Milano; 196-198; Rosci 1983; Anzani 1984, 41. Birolli 1996; Civitanova Marche, 1998; [Figure in the Sun] “A.F.”, Roma; Galleria Bottega pp. 31, [81], 170; AA.VV. 1986, Mantova, 2006; Milano, 2008, 1938–39 d’Arte Repetto & Massucco, pp. 2, 117, 121, 217; Pirovano Provenance: private collection Milano 2010; Milano, 2017. bronze sculpture, Acqui Terme; Galleria Il Chiostro, 1992, p. 807; Buzzoni, D’Amico, of the artist Renato Birolli, Milano; Bibliography: Gatto 1940; Gatto 43.5 x 29 x 13 cm Saronno. Gualdoni 1993, pp. 203–04; Emilio Jesi collection, Milano; 1941; Gatto, Broggini e Valenti, signed on the base: Broggini Exhibitions: Milano, 1957; Pirovano 1993, p. 657; Rosci Galleria Ettore Gian Ferrari, 1941; Podestà 1941; Radius, copy number five of six Civitanova Marche, 1998; Milano, 1996, pp. 18, 36, 106; Eccher, Milano; private collection Serena Broggini 1941; Luigi Broggini, 2017. Auregli 1997, p. 76; Rosci 1998, Corvi Mora Coloni, Piacenza; 1943; Gatto 1944; Gatto, Mostra Provenance: private collection of Bibliography: Broggini, Sereni vol. I, pp. 14, 50, vol. II 658; Galleria Claudia Gian Ferrari, personale, 1944; Montanari 1944; the artist Luigi Broggini, Milano; 1957; Valsecchi 1975; Modesti, Anzani, Staudacher 2003, pp. 28, Milano, Sotheby’s Milano. Cairola 1946, p. 109; Veronesi 1954, collection of the artist’s son Luigi Broggini, 1991, p. 140; 63; Pizziolo 2003, pp. 131, 168; Exhibitions: Bergamo, 1941; Chieti, p. [23]; Valsecchi, Broggini, 1969, Stefano Broggini Stefano Broggini, Pontiggia, Broggini 1998, pp. 34, Pontiggia, Colombo 2004, pp. 243, 2012, Torino, 2016; Milano, 2017. pp. [2–3]; Vitali 1970; Caramel, Milano; Antonio Stellatelli 184; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 182, 236. 246, AA.VV. 2009, pp. 164, 233; Bibliography: AA.VV. 1941, p. 39; Pirovano 1973, p. 15; Gatto 1977; collection, Monza. Pontiggia 2010, p. 61; AA.VV. 2012, Gorgerino 1941, p. 3; Piovene, De Micheli 1985, p. 78; Margonari, Exhibitions: Milano, 1943, Milano, 26 p. 90; Sansone 2016, p. [181]. 27 Primato 1941, pp. 17–19; Birolli Z. Modesti 1986, p. 128; Luigi 1977; Busto Arsizio, 1989; Milano, Donna che allaccia la calza Sambonet 1978, p. 218; Galmozzi Broggini, 1989; Cavallo 1990, 1991; Busto Arsizio, Ferrara, (Ragazza che si allaccia le calze) 23 24 1989, p. 178; Vivarelli 1989, p. pp. 23, 70–71; Modesti 1991, pp. 61, 1991–92; Civitanova Marche, 1998, [Woman Fastening her Stocking] Gigi Chessa 146; AA.VV. 1993, pp. 90, 141; 137; Modesti, Luigi Broggini, 1991, Milano, 2008; Milano, 2017. 1937 (1898–1935) AA.VV. 2012, p. 54; Il Movimento pp. 62–63, 177; Bossaglia 1995, pp. Bibliography: Gatto 1940; pencil and wash, 350 x 250 mm di Corrente 2012, p. 77; Pontiggia, [4], [6–7], [10–11]; Pontiggia 1996, Valsecchi 1954; Gatto 1977, p. signed and dated at bottom right: 28 Birolli V. 2016, p. 63. pp. 32, 80, 192; Pontiggia, [22]; Cavallo 1990, p. 94; Modesti Broggini 1937 Nudo (Nudo sdraiato) [Nude] Broggini, 1998, pp. 46–47, 185; 1991, pp. 16, 53, 77; Pontiggia 1934 Pontiggia, Colombo 2004, pp. 144, 1991, p. 71; Pizziolo 1998, p. 230; Provenance: private collection oil on canvas, 65.7 x 50.5 cm Jessie Boswell 147, 330; Butturini 2006, pp. 122, Pontiggia 1998, pp. 68, 138, 177; of the artist Luigi Broggini, Milano; signed and dated at bottom left: (1881–1956) 211; Pontiggia 2006, p. 72; Barilli Pontiggia, Colombo 2004 p. [321]; private collection of the artist’s son Chessa 1934. Agli amici Aloisio 2007, p. 354; Pizziolo 2008, p. 62; Pizziolo 2008, p. 24. Stefano Broggini, Milano. con migliori auguri Gigi Chessa 20 Pontiggia 2009; AA.VV. 2009, pp. Exhibitions: Milano, 1991. Marina [Seascape] 178, 235; Fergonzi, Negri, Pugliese 24 Bibliography: Broggini, Sereni Provenance:private collection 1929 2010, p. 175; Pontiggia 2010, Paesaggio romano con figura 1957; Valsecchi 1975; Pontiggia, of the artist Gigi Chessa, Torino; oil on cardboard, 33 x 34 cm p. 122. sdraiata (Paesaggio romano Broggini 1998, pp. 34, 184. private collection, Torino;

344 345 LIST OF WORKS — EDITED BY RISCHA PATERLINI 29 – 37

Galleria del Ponte, Torino; private Milano; Galleria dell’Annunciata, Angelo Del Bon Monchietto collection, Torino; Trombadori collection, Roma. collection, Torino. Milano; Mazzotta collection, (1898–1952) Galleria Biasutti, Torino. Exhibitions: Roma, 1938; Exhibitions: Torino, 1984; Torino, Milano; Falsetti Arte, Prato; private Exhibitions: Milano, 1929; Torino, Bagheria, Milano, 1987–88; 2004; Milano, 2017. collection, Firenze; Farsetti Arte, 33 1963; Torino, 1965; Torino, 1977; Milano, 1988; Roma, Verona, Bibliography: Guasco, Prato. Rocca delle Caminate n. 2 Torino, 1983; Torino, 1993; Milano, 1989–1990; Roma, 1995; Parigi, Mistrangelo 1984, p. 16; Fossati, Exhibitions: Cortina d’Ampezzo, 1935 1998; Aosta, 1999; Monsummano 1997–98; Castelbasso, 2011; Sanfo 1988, pp. 159, 291; Testa 1967–68; Prato, 1973; Focette, oil on canvas, 127 x 148 cm Terme, 2002–03; Settimo Torinese, Roma, 2012–13; Milano, 2017. 2004, p. 11. 1976; Parma, 2013; Milano, 2017. signed at bottom left: 2005–06; Milano, 2017. Bibliography: Savarese 1938; Bibliography: Raimondi 1952, A. Del Bon Bibliography: Bardi 1929, p. [2]; Savarese, Pittura di Renato p. [102]; Briganti 1991, p. 538; L’Ambrosiano 1929, p. [6]; Pinottini Guttuso 1938, p. 4; Crispolti 1983, Filippo de Pisis Campiglio 2013, p. 18. Rocca delle Caminate, painted by 1963, pp. [28], [62]; AA.VV. 1965, pp. LXXV, 50; Favatella (Luigi Filippo Del Bon in 1935, was shown in the pp. 100, 107; Bovero 1965, pp. 131, Lo Cascio 1987, pp. 66, 370; Tibertelli de Pisis) first edition of the Bergamo Prize [243], 268; Guasco, Martinengo Fagiolo dell’Arco 1988, pp. 122, Francesco De Rocchi and subsequently reworked by the 1977, pp. 22, 31; Pinottini 1983; 269, 314; Fagiolo dell’Arco, I fiori, (1896–1956) (1902–1978) artist, who eliminated the scene Bandini 1993, pp. 115, 171, 192, 1989; Fagiolo dell’Arco, Roma, 28 of ploughing in the foreground and 234; Di Genova 1994, pp. 922, 1989; Hulten, Celant 1989, p. 705; 29 32 renamed the work Rocca delle 923; AA.VV., Novecento 1996, pp. D’Amico 1995, pp. 52–53, 81; 32 32v Il suonatore di flauto Popolana (Giovane contadina) Caminate n. 2. 111–12; Pontiggia 1998, pl. 41, AA.VV. 1997, p. 105; Crispolti, Ruta [The Flute Player] [Young Peasant Woman] p. 99; Bandini 1999, pp. 15, 115, 2001, p. 142; Morelli, Rivosecchi 1940 1933 Provenance: private collection of 202; Moretti 2002, p. 72; Bellini, 2006, p. [96]; AA.VV. 2009, pp. oil on canvas, 65 x 60 cm oil on panel, 93 x 65 cm the artist Angelo Del Bon, Milano; Mulatero 2005, pp. 215, 298; AA.VV. 21, 100–02, 104, 227; Poli 2011, signed and dated at bottom right: signed and dated at bottom right: Bruno Grossetti collection, Milano; 2009; pp. 192, 193, 236. pp. [24, 25]; Carapezza, Crispolti Pisis 40 F. De Rocchi – 12.33 XII private collection, Mantova; 2012, pp. 28, 29, [95], 197, 198. Galleria d’arte B&B, Mantova. Provenance: private collection of Provenance: private collection Exhibitions: Bergamo, 1939; Tullio Garbari 36v the artist Filippo de Pisis; Milano; of the artist Francesco De Rocchi, Milano, Del Bon, 1959; Milano, (1892–1931) verso: Galleria Edmondo Sacerdoti, Milano; Pier Rosa De Rocchi 1960; Milano, 1968; Milano, Del Studio per “Ritratto di Mimise” Milano; Galleria Farsetti, Prato; Cresseri collection, Milano. Bon, 1972; Milano, Del Bon, 1981; 35 (incompiuto) [Study for “Portrait Galleria Davico, Torino; Salice Exhibitions: Vienna, 1933; Milano, Mantova, 1986; Bergamo, La famiglia [The Family] of Mimise” (unfinished)] 29 collection, Torino; Galleria Firenze, 1967; Milano, Anni Trenta, 1993–94; Volta Mantovana, 1996; 1931 1938 Sant’Agostino, Torino. 1982; Milano, Mantova, 1986; Milano, Del Bon, 1998; Monza, oil on canvas, 65 x 80 cm oil on pasteboard mounted Exhibitions: Taranto, 2006; Milano, Milano, 1990; Milano, 1994; 2003–04; Milano, 2016; Milano, on canvas, 54 x 47 cm Maggi, 2010; Parma 2013; Milano, Viggiù, 1994; Saronno, 2002; 2017. Provenance: private collection 2017. Mantova, 2006; Milano, 2010; Bibliography: Sellani 1939, p. 46; of the artist Tullio Garbari, Milano; The female figure on the back can Bibliography: Marchiori, Zanotto Milano, 2017. Veronesi 1959; Taccani 1960, private collection Gino Lizzola, be identified as a portrait of Mimise 1973, p. 304; Briganti 1991, p. Bibliography: Ragghianti 1967, p. 97; Giani 1961, cover; Venti Milano; Galleria del Milione, Dotti, later the artist’s wife. It was 480; Pontiggia, Perrone 2006, p. 374; Barilli, Caroli, Fagone anni, 1972, p. 19; Carrà, Marchiori Milano; Galleria dell’Annunciata, sketched in all probability shortly pp. 28–29; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 218, 1982, pp. 116, 634; Anzani, 1977, p. 179; Carluccio 1981, Milano; private collection after they met in Rome in 1937. 30 219, 238; Pontiggia 2010, p. 48; Caramel 1983, pp. 247–48; p. 42; Margonari, Modesti 1986, Gianmaria Battiato; private Campiglio 2013, pp. 122, 182. Margonari, Modesti 1986, p. 85; p. 69; AA.VV. 1993, pp. 148, 226; collection, Milano. Provenance: private collection of 33 Modesti, Mascherpa 1987, pp. 11, Froldi 1996; Pontiggia 1996, pp. Exhibitions: Milano, 1936; Milano, the artist Renato Guttuso, Roma; 30 82; Colombo 1990, pl. I; Pontiggia 115, 137, 194; De Stasio, Pontiggia 2017. Mimise Guttuso collection, Roma; Pesce e coltello [Fish and Knife] 1994, pp. 5, 24, 25; Anzani 1994, 1998; Biscottini, Crispolti, Negri Bibliography: Sironi 1931 Carapezza Guttuso collection, 1940 pp. 1, 2, 6; Pontiggia 2002, pp. 16, 2003, p. 72; Pontiggia 2006, Il popolo; Severini 1936; Villari Roma; Antonello Trombadori oil on cardboard, 30 x 50.5 cm 70–72, 157; Pontiggia 2006, pp. p. 119; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 202, Cataldi 1971; Silvio Branzi 1975; collection, Roma; Duccio signed at bottom left: de Pisis 47, 48, 81; Butturini 2006, pp. 139, 203, 237; Pontiggia 2010, p. 170; Mascherpa 1984; Belli 1986; Trombadori collection, Roma. dated at bottom right: XVIII 211; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 200, 237; Sansone 2016, pp. [171, 191]. Primerano Turrina 2007. Exhibitions as back of Natura on the knife handle: […] Elba Pontiggia 2010, pp. 37, 57. morta con garofani e frutta: Roma, 1940 1938; Bagheria, Milano, 1987–88; 32v Nicola Galante Renato Guttuso Milano, 1988; Roma, Verona, Provenance: private collection of verso: (1883–1969) (1912–1987) 1989–1990; Roma, 1995; Parigi, 34 35 the artist Filippo de Pisis, Milano; Nudo di donna (incompiuto) 1997–98; Castelbasso, 2011; Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, Bologna; [Female Nude (unfinished)] 34 36 Roma, 2012–13; Milano, 2017. private collection, Pisa; Pandolfini 1932 Paese per la Casetta (Vasto) Natura morta con garofani Casa d’Aste, Firenze. oil on panel, 93 x 65 cm (Paesaggio a Vasto, Paesaggio e frutta (Mele e fiori, Garofani 37 Exhibitions: San Giovanni in per la Casetta, Vasto: e frutta sul tavolo, Ritratto di Mimise 31 Valdarno, 2001; Milano, 2017. Provenance: private collection la casetta, Casetta per Natura morta con fiori) [Still Life [Portrait of Mimise] Bibliography: Cavallo 2001, of the artist Francesco De Rocchi, l’Uliveto, Paese per la Casetta) with Carnations and Fruit] 1938 pl. 11, p. 109. Milano; Pier Rosa De Rocchi [Little House in the Country 1938 oil on cardboard mounted Cresseri collection, Milano. (Vasto)] oil on pasteboard mounted on canvas, 70.6 x 50 cm 31 Exhibitions as back of Popolana: 1929 on canvas, 47 x 54 cm Il Foro Bonaparte a Milano Vienna, 1933; Firenze, 1967; oil on canvas, 50 x 60 cm signed and dated at bottom right: Provenance: private collection [The Foro Bonaparte in Milan] Milano, Anni Trenta, 1982; Milano, signed and dated at bottom left: Guttuso 38 of the artist Renato Guttuso, 36 1941 Mantova, 1986; Milano, 1990; N. GALANTE 1929 Provenance: private collection Roma; Archivi Guttuso, Roma. oil on canvas, 70 x 50 cm Milano, 1994; Viggiù, 1994; of the artist Renato Guttuso, Exhibitions: Frascati, 2000; Torino, signed at bottom right: [De] Pisis Saronno, 2002; Mantova, 2006, Provenance: private collection Roma; Mimise Guttuso collection; Guttuso, 2005, Castelbasso, 2011; 36v Milano, 2010; Milano, 2017. of the artist Nicola Galante, Torino; Carapezza Guttuso collection, Chieti, 2012; Bagheria, 2015; Provenance: private collection Bibliography: Modesti, Mascherpa Cesare Ghiglione collection, Pegli; Roma; Antonello Trombadori Milano, 2017. of the artist Filippo de Pisis, 1987, p. 76. Galleria Narciso, Torino; Rinaldo collection, Roma; Duccio Bibliography: Crispolti 1983, pp.

346 347 LIST OF WORKS — EDITED BY RISCHA PATERLINI 38 – 46

CXVIII, 50; Crispolti 1987, p. 49; p. 322; Agnellini 1995, pp. 134, Milano, 2008; Castelbasso, 2011; Crispolti 1983, pp. LXVII, LXXIV, Bibliography: Ragghianti 1948; Masi, Turco Liveri 2000, pp. [88, 264; AA.VV., Arte moderna 1995, Chieti, 2012; Roma, 2012–13; CLV, 121; Rubiu 1984, p. 22; Fondazione Carlo Levi 2000; 89]; Carapezza Guttuso 2005, p. 167; AA.VV., Novecento 1995, Milano, Expo, 2015; Milano, 2017. AA.VV. 1985, p. 22; Favatella Fondazione Carlo Levi 2014, p. 84. pp. 20, 58, [59]; Haftmann 2005, p. 129; Sacchi 1999, p. 89; De Bibliography: Longhi 1963, p. Lo Cascio 1987, pp. 42, 48; Benzi, pp. 14, 15; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 99, Chirico et la Peinture 2003, 70; Del Guercio, Lassaigne 1971; Mascelloni, Lambarelli 1988, 44 100–02, 103, 104, 105, 227; Poli pp. 249–250; Pizziolo 2003, pp. AA.VV. 1982; Crispolti 1983, pp. p. 113; Fagiolo dell’Arco 1988, p. Nudo sdraiato (Nudo di schiena, 2011, pp. [24, 25]; Ragozzino 133, 178, 179; Pizziolo 2008, 100, 112; Cortenova, Mascelloni 305; Fagiolo dell’Arco, Rivosecchi Nudo dormiente) [Reclining Nude] 2011, pp. 40–49; AA.VV. 2012, pp. 27, 80, 81; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 1987, p. 23; Mistrangelo 2005, pp. 1988, p. [58]; Hulten, Celant 1989, 1934 pp. 94, 95; G. Mafai 2012, p. 106; 99, 106, [107], 228; Ragozzino 9, 32–33; Pontiggia, Perrone 2006, p. 724; Di Genova 1990, oil on canvas, 92 x 73.5 cm Carapezza Guttuso, Favatella Lo 2011, pp. 19, 20, 30, 36–38, pp. 52–53; Pizziolo 2008; AA.VV. p. 82; AA.VV. 1991, pp. [60], 107; Cascio 2015, pp. [26], 102–04; 40-49; AA.VV. 2012, pp. 94, [96]; 2009, pp. 99, 108–10, 228; AA.VV. Buzzoni, D’Amico, Gualdoni 1993, Provenance: private collection Grasso 2015, p. 49. Carapezza Guttuso, Favatella Lo 2012, p. 94; Carapezza, Crispolti p. 176; D’Amico 1995, pp. 124–25; of the artist Carlo Levi, Torino; Cascio 2015, pp. 56, 142, [143], 2012, pp. 32, 70, 198; Expo 2015, Borgese 2001, p. 59; Rusconi Galleria Accademia, Torino; 38 144; Grasso 2015, p. 49. p. 548. 2001, pp. 12, 14–16; Testori 2001, Fiz collection, Torino; Christie’s, Ritratto di Mario Alicata p. 153; Hamel 2003, p. 58; Sgarbi Milano. [Portrait of Mario Alicata] 39 41 2003, p. 157; Sgarbi, La ricerca, Exhibitions: Genova, 1936; Torino, 1940 La finestra blu [The Blue Window] Ritratto di Antonino Santangelo 2003, p. 243; Pizziolo 2008, pp. 1980; Torino, 1997; Bergamo, 37 41 42 oil on canvas, 55 x 45 cm 1940–41 (Ritratto di Santangelo) 27, 85; AA.VV. 2009, pp. [13]–15, 2014; Milano, 2017. dedicated and signed at bottom oil on canvas, 45 x 50 cm [Portrait of Antonino Santangelo] 21, 99, 112, 228; Ragozzino 2011, Bibliography: Ferrata 1936; right: a Mario Guttuso signed at bottom right: Guttuso 1942 pp. 19, 20, 30, 36, 40–49; AA.VV. Ragghianti 1948, p. 48; Carlo (in an earlier version the oil on canvas, 100 x 70 cm 2012, pp. 60, 94, [99]; Carapezza Levi 1980, p. 7; Vescovo 1997, Provenance: private collection signature was in the upper right signed and dated at upper left: Guttuso, Crispolti 2012, pp. 31, pp. 100–01, 169; Bellini, Mulatero of the artist Renato Guttuso, section, where the background Guttuso 43 200; Mafai G. 2012, p. 99; 2005, p. 99; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 190, Roma; private collection Mario was subsequently altered) Il Movimento di Corrente 2012, 236; Piazzoli, Ubiali 2014, p. 33. Alicata, Roma; Eredi Alicata The work was painted in the studio pp. 83, 105; Sgarbi 2014, p. 52; collection, Roma; Galleria Toninelli Provenance: private collection of on Via Pompeo Magno in Rome Vallora 2014, p. 35; Arte 2015, Arte Moderna, Milano-Roma; the artist Renato Guttuso, Roma; during a period of leave from p. 38; Salò 2016, p. 350. Umberto Lilloni private collection, Bologna; Galleria della Spiga, Milano; the army and subsequently dated (1898–1980) Pieri collection, Faenza; Trivelli Galleria Medea, Milano; Galleria by the artist. 42 Casavecchia collection, Faenza; Alessandro Gazzo, Bergamo; Autoritratto [Self-Portrait] 45 Farsetti Arte, Prato. private collection, Verona; Galleria Provenance: private collection 1936 Uliveto ad Arenzano d’Arte Mazzoleni, Torino. of the artist Renato Guttuso, India ink on paper, 450 x 320 mm [Olive Grove at Arenzano] In a number of publications, Exhibitions: Milano, Corrente, Roma; Galleria della Spiga signed and dated at bottom right: 1931 38 including the monographs 1985; Verona, 1987; Torino, 2005; e Corrente, Milano; Alberto Guttuso 36 oil on canvas, 65 x 80 cm 43 44 published by Fabbri in 1976 and Milano, 2008; Castelbasso, 2011; and Fausta Mancini Lapenna signed and dated at bottom right: 1983, the location of the portrait Chieti, 2012; Roma, 2012–13; collection, Strassoldo; Ottavio Provenance: private collection 193 lilloni 1931 of Mario Alicata is confused with Milano, 2017. Jacorossi collection, Roma; of the artist Renato Guttuso, that of the portrait of Alberto Bibliography: Crispolti 1983, Galleria Tega, Milano. Roma; Enrico Brambilla Pisoni Provenance: private collection Moravia, painted by Guttuso in the pp. 100, 110; De Micheli 1985, Exhibitions: Roma, Quadriennale, collection, Busto Arsizio. of the artist Umberto Lilloni, same year (1940) and owned by pp. 100, 139, 140; Cortenova, 1943; Parma, 1963–64; Trieste, Exhibitions: Reggio Emilia, Milano; Adele Lilloni Schubert the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan Mascelloni 1987, pp. 24–25, 56; 1965; Udine, 1970; Milano, Como, Salerno, Milano, collection, Milano. (see “Indice delle illustrazioni”, Mistrangelo 2005, pp. 36, 37, 1981; Venezia, 1982; Bagheria, 1983–85; Milano, 2004–05; Milano, Exhibitions: Volta Mantovana, in Renato Guttuso, F.lli Fabbri, 134; Pizziolo 2008, pp. 27, [82]. Milano 1987–88; Venezia 1989; 2017. 1996; Medole, 1999; Milano, 2016; Milan, 1976, work no. 20 in the list AA.VV. 2009, pp. 108–10, 228; Tubinga, Düsseldorf, Amburgo, Bibliography: De Micheli 1963, Milano, 2017. on p. 54; C. Brandi, “Indice delle Poli 2011, pp. [36, 37]; AA.VV. 1991–92; Ferrara, 1993; Roma, pp. [43], 47, [49]; Ragghianti 1963, Bibliography: AA.VV., Novecento 39 illustrazioni”, in Guttuso, 2nd ed., 2012, pp. 94, [97]; Carapezza, 1995; Milano, 2001; Cagliari, p. 16; S. 1963, p. 67; De Micheli 1994, p. 138; Pontiggia 1996, pp. F.lli Fabbri, Milan, 1987, work no. Crispolti 2012, pp. 32, 70, 2003; Palermo, 2003–04; Milano, 1966, p. [41]; Crispolti, Guttuso nel 100, 194; Pontiggia 1999, 20 in the list on p. 56. 200 [110]. 2008; Chieti, 2012; Roma, 2012; disegno 1983, pp. 26–27; Crispolti pp. 15–17, 70; R. Lilloni 2002, Favignana, 2014; Bagheria, 2015; 1987, pp. 43, 237; Bernabei 1993, p. 353; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 198, 237; Exhibitions: Palermo, 1971; 40 Salò, 2016; Milano, 2017. p. 191; Pontiggia, Colombo 2004, Sansone 2016, pp. [168, 191]. Parigi, 1971; Berlino, 1972; Gabbia bianca e foglie (Natura Bibliography: AA.VV. 1943, p. 202; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 10, 114, Praga, Budapest, Bucarest, 1973; morta con gabbia bianca e foglie) p. IX; Guzzi 1943; Podestà 1943; 115, 229; AA.VV. 2012, p. 38; Colonia, 1977; Ravenna, 1987; [White Cage and Leaves] Rizzo 1943; Torriano 1943; Sgarbi 2014, p. [19]. Mario Mafai Lodève, 2003; Busto Arsizio, 1940–41 Venturoli 1943, p. [41]; Marchiori (1902–1965) 2003–04; Milano, 2008; Chieti, oil on canvas, 45 x 55 cm 1952, pp. 65, 107; Berger 1957; 45 2012; Bagheria, 2015; Milano, signed at bottom right: Guttuso Castelfranco, Durbè 1960, pp. 19, Carlo Levi 46 40 2017. 38; Morosini 1960, p. 16; Moravia, (1902–1975) Strada con casa rossa Bibliography: Rosi 1942, pp. 6, Provenance: private collection of Grasso 1962, p. 189; Longhi (Strada sul Palatino, La casina 9; Del Guercio, Lassaigne 1971, the artist Renato Guttuso, Roma; 1963, p. 72; Il Contemporaneo 43 rossa) [Street with Red House] pp. [29], [86]; Sciascia, Russoli, Alberto Della Ragione collection, 1964; Omaggio a Guttuso, 1964; Ritratto di donna 1928 Grasso 1971, pp. 35, [104]; AA.VV. Genova; Galleria della Spiga e Portalupi 1964; Salvi 1964, p. 3; [Female Portrait] oil on canvas, 38 x 38.5 cm 1972, p. 27; Deac 1973; Del Corrente, Milano; Mario De Ponti La collezione Mancini 1965; I.N. 1932–33 signed and dated at bottom left: Guercio 1973, p. [5]; AA.VV. 1976, collection, Milano; Galleria d’Arte 1965; Longhi 1965; De Micheli oil on canvas, 60 x 50 cm Mafai 28 pp. 54, 75; Renato Guttuso, 1977, Mazzoleni, Torino. 1966, p. 162; Del Guercio 1971, Provenance: private collection of Provenance: private collection pp. 78, [85]; Brandi, Rubiu 1983, Exhibitions: Parma, 1963–64; p. 157; Renato Guttuso 1981; the artist Carlo Levi, Torino; private of the artist Mario Mafai, Roma; p. 56, pl. 20; Crispolti 1983, pp. Darmstadt, Recklinghausen, 1967; Testori 1981; AA.VV. 1982, p. 136; collection Fondazione Carlo Levi, Alfredo Casella collection, Roma; LXII, LXVII, LXVIII, LXXIV, [95, 102], San Giminiano, 1970; Parigi, Benincasa, Calvesi 1982, p. 27; Roma; Galleria F. Russo, Roma. Eredi Casella collection; Studio CXL, CCXLVI; Trombadori 1987, 1971; Berlino, 1972; Venezia, Di Genova 1982, p. 70; Micacchi, Exhibitions: Roma, Levi, 2014; Sotis, Roma; Galleria d’Arte Netta pp. [5], [11], [29]; Fergonzi 1994, 1982; Torino, 2005; Taranto, 2006; Guttuso, 1982; Zeri 1982, p. 556; Milano, 2017. Vespignani, Roma.

348 349 LIST OF WORKS — EDITED BY RISCHA PATERLINI 46v – 53

Exhibitions: Roma, 1984–85; 47 oil on panel, 24 x 34 cm D’Amico, Gualdoni 1986, pp. 21, Macerata, 1986; New York, Tramonto sul Lungotevere (Ponte signed at bottom right: 202–03; Fagiolo dell’Arco, I fiori, 1987; Milano, 1988; Bologna, Garibaldi, Tramonto su Roma, mafai 41 1989, pp. 44, [134, 135]; Agnellini 1991; Ferrara, 1993; Roma, Tramonto sul ponte Garibaldi) 1994, p. 50; AA.VV. 2004, pp. 23, I Mafai, 1994; Modena, 1995–96; [Sunset on the Lungotevere] Provenance: private collection 157, 159, AA.VV. 2009, pp. 22, 42, Conegliano, 1996–97; Parigi, 1929 of the artist Mario Mafai, Roma; 223; G. Mafai 2012, p. 106. 1997–98; Brescia, 2000; Ravenna, oil on plywood, 41.3 x 50.8 cm Galleria Bonaparte, Milano. 2003; Roma, 2004–05; Milano, signed and dated at bottom right: Exhibitions: Fabriano, 2007; 2017. Mafai Mario 1929 Milano, 2008; Milano, 2017. Roberto Melli Bibliography: Casella 1939, p. Bibliography: Dehò, Pontiggia (1885–1958) 256; Trombadori 1984, p. 11; Provenance: private collection 2007, pp. 22, 49; Pizziolo 2008, 46 46v Calvesi 1985, p. 80; Appella, of the artist Mario Mafai, Roma; pp. 28–88; AA.VV. 2009, 51 Gualdoni, D’Amico 1986, p. 37; Principessa Marguerite Caetani pp. [40], 222. La lettura [The Reading] Di Genova 1986, pp. 73, 76; di Bassiano collection, Roma; 1942 Fagiolo dell’Arco, Rivosecchi Lelia Caetani Howard collection, 49 oil on canvas, 80 x 90 cm 1986, p. 75; Rivosecchi, Roma; Sotheby’s, Milano; Marisa Autoritratto (Doppio ritratto) signed and dated at top right: 49 Trombadori 1986, p. 76; Baldacci Romualdi collection, Como; [Self-Portrait] Melli 42 1987, p. 53; Fagiolo dell’Arco, Farsetti Arte. circa 1933 1988, pp. 59, 62, 256, 264; Exhibitions: Roma, Sindacato, oil on unprimed canvas, Provenance: private collection 50 Fagiolo dell’Arco, Realismo 1929; Roma, Mafai, 1969; Roma, 56.5 x 44 cm of the artist Roberto Melli, Roma; Magico, 1988, pp. 119, [126, 297]; 1984–85; Milano, 1988; Ravenna, signed at bottom left: mafai Giuseppe Natale collection, Roma; AA.VV., Arte moderna 1989, p. 2003; Brescia, 2005; Milano, 2008; Erica Fiorentini collection, Roma. 16; Hulten, Celant, 1989, p. 108; Roma, 2014; Milano, 2017. The first version, shown at the Exhibitions: Firenze, 1950; Milano, AA.VV., Arte moderna 1990, p. 180; Bibliography: AA.VV. 1929, p. Venice Biennial in 1934, was 1950; Roma, 1957; Pordenone, Di Genova 1990, p. 40; Fagiolo 39; Longhi 1929; De Libero 1949; signed “Mafai 33”. The “33” was 2005–06; Milano, 2017. dell’Arco, Rivosecchi 1990, p. 58; Carrieri 1950, p. 230; Ballo 1956, then eliminated by the artist in Bibliography: Ragghianti 1950, p. D’Amico 1991, p. 53; D’Amico, p. 104; Castelfranco, Durbé 1960, his subsequent reworking of the 28; Calvesi 1954, p. 46; Sangiorgi Il cuore 1991, p. 14; Buzzoni, p. 27; Ballo 1964, pp. 232–33; painting. 1957, p. 10; Appella, Calvesi 1992, D’Amico, Gualdoni 1993, p. 129; Martinelli 1967, pp. 16-158; Mafai p. 229; Pauletto 2005, pp. 17, 50; Fagiolo dell’Arco 1994, p. 48; 1969, p. [15]; De Grada 1969, Provenance: private collection AA.VV. 2009, pp. 80, [81], 226. Fergonzi 1994, p. 785; Mafai 1994; pp. 22, 248, 256; AA.VV. 1969, pp. of the artist Mario Mafai, Roma; D’Amico, Guadagnini 1995, p. 50; 118, 146; Terenzi 1977, p. 96; La private collection, unknown Di Genova 1996, pp. 95, 97; AA.VV. Scuola romana 1983, p. 6; AA.VV., location; Casa d’aste Capitolium 47 Francesco Menzio 1997, p. 57; Goldin 1997, Arte moderna 1984, pp. 345–46; Art, Brescia. (1899–1979) p. 90; Vescovo, Vespignani Trombadori 1984, p. 16; AA.VV. Exhibitions: Venezia, 1934; 1997, p. 22; AA.VV. 2000, p. 230; 1985, p. 140; D’Amico, I misteri Milano, 2017. 52 Spadoni 2003, p. 310; AA.VV. 1985; Appella, D’Amico 1986, p. 18; Bibliography: Appella, Gualdoni, Ritratto di giovane 2004, pp. 21–22, 54; D’Amico, Appella, D’Amico, Gualdoni 1986, D’Amico 1986, p. 194; Fagiolo [Portrait of a Young Man] Goldin 2004, p. 19; Siciliano 2004, pp. 13, 192; Di Genova 1986, pp. dell’Arco 1986, p. 187; Fagiolo 1929 pp. 91, 132; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 38, 84–85; Fagiolo dell’Arco 1986, p. dell’Arco 1994, pp. 90, 91; oil on canvas, 72 x 59 cm 222. 232; Fagiolo dell’Arco, Rivosecchi Siciliano 2004, p. 143. signed at bottom right: Menzio 1986, pp. [23], 47, 75; Rivosecchi, 46v Trombadori 1986, pp. 74–75, 233; 50 Provenance: private collection verso: Benzi, Mascelloni, Lambarelli 1988, Garofani bianchi con mammole of the artist Francesco Menzio, Ritratto (Ritratto femminile, Testa) p. 107; Fagiolo dell’Arco 1988, pp. (Garofani bianchi) [White Torino; private collection, Torino; [Portrait] 27–28, 259, 285; Fagiolo dell’Arco, Carnations and Sweet Violets] Galleria del Ponte, Torino; private circa 1928 Rivosecchi 1988, p. [80]; AA.VV., circa 1936 collection, Torino. oil on canvas, 38.5 x 38 cm Scuola romana 1989, p. 6; Fagiolo oil on canvas, 51 x 39 cm Exhibitions: Torino, 2004; Settimo 51 dell’Arco 1989, p. 111; Hulten, signed at bottom right: mafai Torinese, 2005-2006; Salò, 2016; Provenance: private collection Celant 1989, p. 669; Rivosecchi Milano, 2017. of the artist Mario Mafai, Roma; 1990, pp. 160, 161; Vespignani A smaller canvas, probably not Bibliography: Solmi 1937; 48 Alfredo Casella collection, Roma; 1992, pp. 115, [147, 368]; Fagiolo by the same artist, was mounted Galvano 1971; Testa 2004; Bellini, Eredi Casella collection; Studio dell’Arco 1994, p. 83; Di Genova on the back of the painting. Mulatero 2005; Salò 2016, p. 348. Sotis, Roma; Galleria d’Arte Netta 1996, pp. 96, 104–05; Moravia It presents a still life of flowers Vespignani, Roma. 1997, cover; Lamberti 1998, in a vase with other objects. 53 Exhibitions as back of Strada p. 202; Salvagnini 2000, p. 483; Lo scialle verde (La sciarpa con casa rossa: Roma, 1984–85; Castellaneta 2002, p. 118; Goldin Provenance: private collection verde) [The Green Shawl] Macerata, 1986; New York, 1987; 2002, p. 85; Spadoni 2003, of the artist Mario Mafai, Roma; 1929 Milano, 1988; Bologna, 1991; pp. 304–11; D’Amico, Goldin 2004, Luisa and Giuseppe Natale oil on canvas, 53 x 45 cm Ferrara, 1993; Roma, pp. 25–26, 58–59, 116; Spagnesi collection, Roma; Enrica and signed at bottom left: Menzio M. Mafai, 1994; Modena, 1995–96; 2004; Barilli 2007, Gabriella Caligiuri collection. Conegliano, 1997; Parigi, 1997–98; p. 357; Pizziolo 2008, pp. 28, 88; Exhibitions: Roma, 1945–46; Provenance: private collection Brescia, 2000; Ravenna, 2003; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 20, 40, [41], Roma, 1947; Roma, 1967; Roma, of the artist Francesco Menzio, Roma, 2004–05; Milano, 2017. 222; Walch 2010, p. 32. Mafai, 1969, Roma, Verona, Torino; Colongo collection, Biella; 52 Bibliography: Trombadori 1984, 1989–1990; Milano, 2017. Galleria d’arte Biasutti e Biasutti, p. 10; Appella, Gualdoni, D’Amico 48 Bibliography: Guttuso 1941; Ballo Torino. 1986, p. 84; Di Genova 1986, Tramonto su Roma 1956, p. 107; Micacchi 1967, Exhibitions: Torino, 1930; Ivrea, p. 98; Fagiolo dell’Arco 1988, [Sunset over Rome] p. 20; AA.VV. 1969, pp. 66, 125; 1959; Torino, 1966; Torino, 1978; p. 264; AA.VV. 2009, p. 222. 1941 De Grada 1969, p. 38; Appella, Torino, 1983; Verona, Roma, 1992;

350 351 LIST OF WORKS — EDITED BY RISCHA PATERLINI 54 – 62

Torino, 1993; Torino, Menzio, 1993; AA.VV., Novecento 1995, [Still Life with Masks] Milano, 1985; Milano, 1987; Pirandello 1982, p. 15, pl. 5; 1995, p. 35; Vescovo, Poli 1997, Aosta, 1999; Settimo Torinese, p. 161; Pizziolo 2003, pp. 134, 1941 Riva del Garda, 1988; Marina di Giuffré 1984, pp. 15, 19; Benzi, pp. 44, [128]; Troisi, Gian Ferrari 2005-2006; Bergamo, 2014; 189; Pontiggia, Colombo 2004, oil on canvas, 49 x 39 cm Pietrasanta, 1990; Ferrara, 1993; Mascelloni, Lambarelli 1988, 1998, p. [47]; Fagiolo dell’Arco Milano, 2017. pp. 240–41; Pizziolo 2008, pp. signed at bottom left: migneco Ferrara, Morlotti, 1994; Milano, p. 87; Gian Ferrari 1991, pp. 15, 1999, pp. 23, 179, 239; Pizziolo Bibliography: Francesco Menzio 29, 96; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 168, 234; Le ragioni, 1995; Conegliano, 100. 101; Gian Ferrari 1995, pp. 2008, pp. 31, 110; AA.VV. 2009, 1959; Bovero 1965, pp. 42, Barbera, Ruta 2009, pp. 16, 24, 31; The painting is often referred to 1996–97; Milano, 2001; Milano, 80, 165; Fagiolo dell’Arco 1999, pp. 70, 225; Gian Ferrari 2009, 250, 269; Fossati 1966, p. 35; AA.VV. 2012, p. 86; Il Movimento as Natura morta con tre maschere 2008; Chieti, 2012; Milano, 2017. pp. 134, 228; Gian Ferrari 2009, pp. 55, 129; Gian Ferrari 2010, Pinottini 1983, pp. 21, 28; AA.VV., di Corrente 2012, pp. 58–61; [Still Life with Three Masks]. Bibliography: De Micheli, Ennio pp. 27, 90; Benzi, Matitti 2016, p. 83; D’Amico, Bonani 2013 Da Cézanne 1992, p. 112; Bandini AA.VV. 2015, p. [13]; Sansone It is hard to understand why it Morlotti 1963; Politi 1963; Volpe pp. 64, 65. pp. 19, 21 [56]; Sgarbi 2014, 1993, pp. 131, 173; I Sei Pittori 2016, pp. [186, 191]. should bear this title, as there are 1963, pp. [33], [103]; Crispolti, pp. 19, [36], Benzi 2015, p. [53]. 57 1993; Bandini 1999, pp. 151, 206; unquestionably only two masks. Del Guercio 1967; Tassi 1970, 59 Bellini, Mulatero 2005, pp. 227, 55 The reason may be a misreading pp. [33-34]; AA.VV. 1971, p. La lettera (Tavolo e sedia 61 300; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 188, [189], L’uomo dal dito fasciato of the artist’s title in italics on the 164; De Grada 1971; Ricci 1971; con carte e drappo bianco, La famiglia dell’artista 236; Piazzoli, Ubiali 2014, p. [27]. (Il dito fasciato) [The Man with back of the work as Tre maschere Biamonti 1972, pp. 21, 46, 55; Lettre) [The Letter] [The Artist’s Family] 53 a Bandaged Finger] rather than Le maschere. Tassi 1972, p. 19; Tassi 1975, 1929 circa 1942 1940 pp. 14, 22; Bruno Cassinari, 1981; oil on cardboard, 70 x 53 cm oil on panel, 100 x 67.5 cm Giuseppe Migneco oil on canvas, 60 x 46 cm Provenance: private collection Barilli, Caroli, Fagone 1982, pp. signed and dated at bottom signed at bottom left: (1908–1997) signed and dated at bottom left: of the artist Giuseppe Migneco, 144, 635; Quintavalle 1982, pp. 47, centre: PIRANDELLO 29 PIRANDELLO Migneco 40 Milano; Galleria dello Scudo, 62, [187], 284; Anzani, Caramel 54 Verona; Galleria Bonaparte, 1983, p. 273; Castagnoli 1983, pp. Provenance: private collection of Provenance: private collection of Amanti al parco (Sedile al parco, Provenance: private collection Milano; Boscolo collection, Busto 17, 51–52; Ennio Morlotti, 1983, p. the artist Fausto Pirandello, Roma; the artist Fausto Pirandello, Roma; 58 Panchine, Amanti, Gli amanti of the artist Giuseppe Migneco, Arsizio; Galleria Bonaparte, 9; De Micheli 1985, p. 151; Bruno Galleria dello Zodiaco, Roma; private collection of the artist’s sulla panchina, Amanti sulla Milano; Piero Porro collection, Milano. 1987, pp. 42, 128; Fossati 1988, Domenico Maselli collection, son Pier Luigi Pirandello, Roma; panchina) [Lovers in the Park] Milano; Alfredo Porro collection, Exhibitions: Genzano, Verona, pp. 40, 85; AA.VV., Arte moderna Belluno; Raccolta Silvano Lodi, private collection Claudia Gian 1940 Milano. 1987; Milano, Migneco, 1995; 1990, p. 25; Garboli 1990, pp. [16– Milano; Christie’s, Londra. Ferrari, Milano. oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm Exhibitions: Genova, 1940; Torino, 1998; Vigevano, 2001; 17]; AA.VV., Arte moderna 1992, Exhibitions: Parigi, 1929; Vienna, Exhibitions: Roma, 1976–77; signed and dated at bottom right: Milano, 1941; Monaco di Baviera, Milano, 2008; Taormina, 2009; p. 159; Pirovano 1992, pp. 232, 1929; Roma, 1951; Venezia, 1956; Ferrara, 1982; Palermo, 1982–83; Migneco 40 1957; Milano, Corrente, 1960; Chieti 2012; Milano, 2017. 234, 988; Quintavalle 1992, pp. 47, Gerusalemme, 1994; Tokyo, Macerata, 1990; Ferrara, 1993; Ivrea, Verona, Milano, 1963; Bibliography: Butturini 1987, p. 62, [187], 284; Buzzoni, D’Amico, Niigata City, Hokkaido, Toyama, Milano, Pirandello, 1995; Roma, Provenance: private collection Milano, 1971; Milano, Anni Trenta, 38; Fabiani 1987, p. 38; Luciani Gualdoni 1993, p. 195; Tassi, Ashikaga, Yamagata, 2001; 1999–2000; Sorrento, 54 of the artist Giuseppe Migneco, 1982; Messina, 1983–84; Milano, 1990, pp. 74, [426]; AA.VV., Arte Pirovano 1993, p. 58; Agnellini Ravensburg, 2003; Marsala, 2008, 2005; Milano, 2006, Favignana, Milano; Renato Birolli collection, 1984; Milano, 1985; Busto Arsizio, moderna 1991, p. 142; Luciani 1994, p. 188; Buzzoni 1994, pp. Bergamo, 2014; Milano, Expo, 2014; Londra, 2015; Milano, Milano; Eredi Birolli collection. 2003–04; Milano, 2004–05; 1994, p. [373]; Grasso 1995; 40–41, 43, 70, 163; AA.VV. 1995, 2015; Milano, 2017. 2017. Exhibitions: Genova, 1940; Taranto, 2006; Milano, 2008; Krumm 1995, p. [25]; Agnellini p. 102; Goldin 1996, p. 85; Bruno, Bibliography: Reichpost 1929; Bibliography: Mantura 1976; Milano, 1941; Milano, Migneco, Taormina, 2009; Chieti, 2012; 1996, p. 145; Di Genova 1996, Castagnoli, Biasin 2000, pp. 55, Bellonzi 1951; Guzzi, 1951; Mascherpa, D’Amico 1982, 1945; Ferrara, 1960; Milano, Favignana, 2014; Milano, 2017. p. 178; Levi 1998, p. 27; De Grada 61; Rusconi 2001, p. [12]; Pizziolo AA.VV. 1956, p. 246; Appella, pp. 24, 97; Mascherpa, D’Amico, Corrente, 1960; Ivrea, Verona, Bibliography: Joppolo 1940; Silva 2001, p. 81; Castellaneta 2002, 2008, pp. 30, 102; AA.VV. 2009, pp. Giuffré 1990, pp. 173, 187, 193; Pirandello, 1982, pp. 34, 47; Milano, 1963; Napoli, 1978; 1941; Anceschi 1945; Anceschi, p. [220]; Pizziolo 2008, p. [97], 10, 172, [173] 234; AA.VV. 2012, Natura morta italiana 1994, p. Appella, Giuffré 1990, p. 80; 59 Messina, 1983–84; Milano, 1984; Migneco, 1945; De Grada 1952; Barbera, Ruta 2009, pp. [58, 59]; pp. 59, 60, 61, 102, 105. 123; D’Amico, De Chirico, 2007, Gian Ferrari 1991, pp. 122, 123; Milano, 1985; Busto Arsizio, Ballo 1956, p. 167; Anceschi 1958; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 170, 234; AA.VV. p. 34; D’Amico, Goldin 2007, Buzzoni, D’Amico, Gualdoni 1993; 2003–04; Milano, 2004–05; Milano, De Micheli 1960; Valsecchi 1963, 2012, p. 86, pl. 32; AA.VV. 2016, pp. 106–07, 158, 177, 191; Troisi Gian Ferrari 1995, p. 109; 2008; Taormina, 2009; Chieti, pp. 34, 36, 110; Valsecchi, Artisti di p. 86. Fausto Pirandello 2008, pp. [56, 160], AA.VV. 2009, Fagiolo dell’Arco 1999, pp. 121, 2012; Milano, Caglio, 2015; Corrente, 1963, p. 32; Quasimodo, (Calogero Fausto pp. 11, 68, 225; Piazzoli, Ubiali 225; Gian Ferrari 2005, pp. 39, Milano, 2016; Milano, 2017. Raffa 1967, p. 149; AA.VV. 1971, 2014, p. 10, [26], 53; Expo 2015, 76–77; Gian Ferrari 2006, p. 13; Bibliography: Joppolo 1940; p. 161; Barilli, Fagone, Caroli 1982, Ennio Morlotti Pirandello) pp. 542–43. AA.VV. 2009, pp. 72, [73] 74, Silva 1941, p. [4]; Anceschi 1945; p. [635]; AA.VV., Migneco 1983, pp. (1910–1992) (1899–1975) 225; Gian Ferrari 2009, p. [46]; Anceschi, Migneco, 1945, pp. 48, 173; Quasimodo, Fagone 1983, 60 D’Amico, Bonani 2013, pp. 21, [30–31], 65; De Grada 1952; Ballo pl. 4, pp. 23, 30; AA.VV., Migneco 57 58 Spiaggia [Beach] 27, [62, 63]; Sgarbi 2014, 60 55 1953; G.B. 1953; Ballo 1956, p. 1984, pp. 12, 20, 48, 172; De Natura morta con bucranio Composizione (Siesta rustica) circa 1940 p. [40]; Benzi 2015, p 53; Salò 160; Riccomini 1960, pp. 65, 118; Micheli 1985, pp. 147–48; D’Eramo (Bucranio, Natura morta) [Composition (Rustic Siesta)] oil on panel, 74 x 106 cm 2016, p. 349. Valsecchi 1963, pp. 34, 36, 110; 1986, pp. 91, 399; Luciani 1990, [Still Life with Bull Skull] 1924-1926 signed at bottom left: Valsecchi, Artisti di Corrente, 1963, p. [422]; Pontiggia 1991; Luciani 1942 oil on canvas, 100 x 126 cm PIRANDELLO 62 p. 32; Ballo 1964, pp. 289, 300; 1994, p. [369]; Luciani 1997, p. oil on canvas, 46 x 60 cm dated and signed at bottom right: Natura morta con strumenti Quasimodo, Raffa 1967, pp. 15, [419]; Fagone 2001, pp. [203, signed at top left: Morlotti 24 F. Pirandello Provenance: private collection musicali [Still Life with [29], pl. 1; Valsecchi, Migneco, 341]; Pizziolo 2003, pp. 134, 189; (the signature is hard to read of the artist Fausto Pirandello, Musical Instruments] 1969; Carrieri, Migneco, 1971; Pontiggia, Colombo 2004, because it is in the same colour Provenance: private collection Roma; Galleria Penelope Arte circa 1942 De Grada 1975; Crispolti, Fagone, pp. 240–42; Pontiggia, Perrone as the painting) of the artist Fausto Pirandello, Contemporanea, Roma; Bianca oil on panel, 50.5 x 60 cm Ruju 1978, pp. 96, 180–81; Fagone 2006, pp. 50–51; Pizziolo 2008, Roma; private collection, Roma; Lucherini Attolico collection, signed at top left: PIRANDELLO 1982; AA.VV., Migneco 1983, p. 45; pp. 29, 96; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 166, Provenance: private collection Galleria Russo, Roma. Roma; Galleria d’Arte Netta Quasimodo, Fagone 1983, pl. 1, [167] 234; Barbera, Ruta 2009, of the artist Ennio Morlotti, Exhibitions: Roma, 1976–77; Vespignani, Roma. Provenance: private collection pp. 23, [24–25]; AA.VV., Migneco pp. 15, 16, 24, 30, 31; [52]; AA.VV. Milano; private collection Orazio Milano, Bologna, 1977; Ferrara, Exhibitions: Verona, 1988; of the artist Fausto Pirandello, 1984, pp. 45, 172; De Micheli 2012, pp. 86, 87; Il Movimento di Zanmattei; Enrico Brambilla Pisoni 1982; Palermo, 1982-1983; Alessandria, 1997; Marsala, 1998; Roma; private collection Igino 1985, pp. 102, 148; Morosini 1985, Corrente 2012, pp. 58–61, 65, 102, collection, Busto Arsizio. Verona, 1988; Milano, Pirandello, Roma, 1999–2000; Milano, 2008; Zanda, Roma; private collection p. 148; D’Eramo 1986, pp. 93, 397; 103; Pontiggia 2014, p. 36; Sgarbi Exhibitions: Lecco, 1963; Arezzo, 1995; Roma, 1999–2000; Roma, Roma, 2010; Favignana, 2014; of one of Igino Zanda’s children, Bossaglia, 2014, p. [47]. Roma, 1967; Milano, 1970–71; 2016; Milano, 2017. Londra, 2015; Milano, 2017. Roma; Casa d’aste Dorotheum, 56 De Micheli, Pontiggia 1987, p. 16; Milano, Ravenna, Napoli, 1971; Bibliography: Mantura 1976, Bibliography: Giuffrè 1984, p. Vienna. Luciani 1990, p. 420; AA.VV., Arte 56 Parma, 1975; Busto Arsizio, p. 1; Mascherpa 1981, pl. 1; 121; Benzi, Mascelloni, Lambarelli The work has been in the 61 moderna 1990, p. 20; Pirovano Natura morta con maschere 1981; Milano, Anni Trenta, 1982; Mascherpa, D’Amico 1982, 1988, pp. 91, 113; Gian Ferrari possession of the Zanda family 1992, p. 232; Luciani 1994, p. 367; (Natura morta con tre maschere) Ravenna, Ivano Fracena, 1983; pp. 2, 15; Mascherpa, D’Amico, 1991, pp. 120–21; Gian Ferrari ever since its purchase from

352 353 LIST OF WORKS — EDITED BY RISCHA PATERLINI 63 – 69

the artist and has never been 64 65 oil on panel, 27.4 x 21 cm oil on canvas, 44 x 55.5 cm published or shown in public Arco di Settimio Severo all’alba Veduta dalla terrazza unsigned, undated signed and dated at bottom left exhibitions, presumably in (Arco di Severo all’alba, Arco di via Cavour (Paesaggio, near the centre: RAphAEL 39 accordance with the owners’ di Settimio Severo, Foro dall’Arco Paesaggio dalla terrazza, Provenance: private collection signed and dated on right edge: wishes. di Settimio Severo, Foro romano, Via Cavour, Veduta dal balcone of the artist Antonietta De Simon Raphaël 39 Veduta con l’Arco di Settimio di via Cavour, Veduta dal terrazzo Raphaël, Roma; Nicola Maria Severo, L’Arco di Severo) [Arch dello studio, Il Colosseo visto De Angelis, Roma. Provenance: private collection Antonietta Raphaël of Septimius Severus at Dawn] da via Cavour) [View from Exhibitions as back of Veduta dalla of the artist Antonietta De Simon (Antonietta De Simon 1929 the Terrace in Via Cavour] terrazza di via Cavour: Roma, Raphaël, Roma; Galleria Narciso, Raphaël) oil on canvas, 48 x 41 cm 1929 Sindacato, 1929; Todi, 1979; Torino; Appiani Arte Trentadue, 65 62 signed and dated at bottom right: oil on panel, 21 x 27.4 cm Roma, Raphaël, 1983; Milano, Milano. (1895–1975) Raffael ’29 signed and dated at bottom right: 1988; New York, 1989–90; Ferrara, Exhibitions: Ferrara, 1960; Torino, Raffaël ’30 1990; Modena, 1991; Roma, 1993; Narciso, 1961; Genova, 1979; 63 There is an inscription on the Ferrara, 1994; Roma, I Mafai, Torino, 1985; Oslo, Helsinki, 1988; Natura morta con chitarra architrave of the arch. Provenance: private collection 1994; Brescia, 2000; Ravenna, Conegliano, 1997; Torino, 2003; (Natura morta con la chitarra, of the artist Antonietta De Simon 2003; Brescia, 2005; Roma, Roma, 2007; Milano, 2017. Natura morta, La chitarra) Provenance: private collection Raphaël, Roma; Nicola Maria 2007; Padova, 2013; Roma, 2014; Bibliography: Riccomini 1960, 65v [Still Life with Guitar] of the artist Antonietta De Simon De Angelis, Roma; Associazione Milano, 2017. p. 73; Carluccio 1961, p. [77]; 1928 Raphaël, Roma; Silva collection, Culturale Il Carmine, Roma. Bibliography: D’Amico 1991, Bruno 1979, p. 34; Pinottini 1985, oil on panel, 39 x 45 cm Genova, Galleria d’Arte Netta Exhibitions: Roma, Sindacato, p. 116; AA.VV. 2009, p. 223. p. [37]; Mantura 1988, p. [46]; signed and dated at top right: Vespignani. 1929; Todi, 1979; Roma, Raphaël, Goldin 1997, p. 95; Mattarella, Raffaël 28 Exhibitions: Roma, 1929; Roma, 1983; Milano, 1988; New York, 66 Pontiggia, Sparagni 2003, p. 177; 63 1952; Roma, 1a Mostra di Pittura, 1989–1990; Ferrara, 1990; Yom Kippur in the Sinagogue D’Amico 2007, p. 50; AA.VV. 2009, Provenance: private collection 1952; Roma, 1955; Torino, 1957; Modena, 1991; Roma, 1993; (Yom Kippur alla sinagoga) pp. 48, [49], 223. of the artist Antonietta De Simon Ivrea, 1960; Ferrara, 1990; Ferrara, 1994; Roma, I Mafai, 1931 Raphaël, Roma; private collection Bologna, 1991; Modena, 1991; 1994; Brescia, 2000; Ravenna, oil on canvas, 48 x 64 cm Giulia Mafai, Roma; private Roma, I Mafai, 1994; Modena, 2003; Brescia, 2005; Roma, signed and dated at bottom right: Ottone Rosai 66 67 collection Ovidio Jacorossi, Roma; 1995–96; Conegliano, 1997; 2007; Padova, 2013; Roma, 2014; Raffael 1932 (1895–1957) Galleria Arco Farnese, Roma; Parigi, 1997–98; Ravenna, 2003; Milano, 2017. dated subsequently by the artist private collection Serena Corvi Roma, 2007; Marsala, 2008; Bibliography: AA.VV. 1929; Longhi 68 Mora Coloni, Piacenza; Padova, 2013; Roma, 2014; 1929; Pavolini 1929; Castelfranco, Two letters of 1931 to Mario Mafai L’attesa [Waiting] Casa d’Asta Sotheby’s, Milano, 2017. Durbé 1960, p. 27; Martinelli provide proof that the work was 1920 Milano. Bibliography: Pavolini 1929; 1967, p. 158; Pinottini 1971, p. painted 1931 and subsequently oil on canvas, 29 x 32 cm Exhibitions: Roma, 1929; Firenze, Strinati 1929; AA.VV. 1952; Guzzi 257; Briganti 1977, p. 68; Vinca dated on the front and back of the signed at bottom right: 1967; Grosseto, 1970; Firenze, 1952; Guzzi, Raphaël Mafai 1952; Masini 1979, pp. 5, 35, 71; La canvas. We have chosen to retain O. ROSAI 1971; Roma, 1972; Roma, 1983; M.M. 1952, p. 3; Mezio 1952; scuola romana 1983, cover; p. the misspelling “Sinagogue”, as Mesola, 1987, Milano, 1988; Venturoli 1952; D’Arrigo 1955; 6; AA.VV. 1984, p. 68; D’Amico written by the artist on the back of Provenance: private collection New York, 1989–1990; Modena, Del Guercio 1955; Mezio 1955; 1985, pp. 14, 88; AA.VV. 1986, p. the canvas, rather than correct it to of the artist Ottone Rosai, Firenze; 1991, Roma, 1997; Roma, Micacchi 1955; Venturoli 1955; 36; Fagiolo dell’Arco, Rivosecchi “Synagogue”. private collection Agnese Brown, 64 1998, Padova, 2013; Milano, Brandi, Mezio, Moravia 1956; 1986, pp. 44, 47; Rivosecchi, Firenze; Emilio Jesi collection, 2017. Martinelli 1959, p. 12; Maltese Trombadori 1986, pp. 74, 82, 83, Provenance: private collection Milano. Bibliography: Dottori 1929; 1960, p. 387; Mezio 1960, pp. 45, 227, 233; Fagiolo dell’Arco 1988, of the artist Antonietta De Simon Exhibitions: Firenze, 1960; Torino, Strinati 1929; Mottola 1962, [64]; Mezio, I Romanisti, 1960, pp. 76, 78, 265; Fagiolo dell’Arco, Raphaël, Roma; private collection Roma, Firenze, 1983; Firenze, p. 26; Ragghianti 1967, p. [LIX]; p. 13; De Grada 1969, Rivosecchi 1988, p. [70]; Fagiolo of Antonietta De Simon Raphaël’s 1995; Firenze, 2008; Milano, 2017. Fagiolo dell’Arco 1978 pp. [35], p. 57; AA.VV. 1985, pp. 144, 147; dell’Arco 1989, p. 111; Mann 1989, heirs, Roma. Bibliography: Volta 1931, pl. IX; 36, [37]; Barilli, Caroli, Fagone Benzi, Mascelloni, Lambarelli pp. 152–53, 172, 173, 325; Mann Exhibitions: Ivrea, 1960; Torino, Santini 1960, p. 21, pl. 21; Santini, 1982, p. [634]; Daverio 1984, 1988, p. 107; Fagiolo dell’Arco, 1990, pp. 172–73, 325; D’Amico 1960; Milano, 1982; New York, Rosai, 1960, pp. 35, 152; Cavallo pp. 69, 76; Fagiolo dell’Arco 1984, Rivosecchi 1988, pp. 86, [88, 1991, pp. 8, 22, 52, 116; Pirovano 1989–90; Roma, I Mafai, 1994; 1973, p. 58; Santini 1983, p. 137; Fagiolo dell’Arco 1986, 89]; Hulten, Celant 1989, p. 671; 1992, p. 525; Vespignani 1992, Padova, 2013; Roma, 2014; pp. 64, 235; Cavallo 1995, pp. 42, p. 38; Sgarbi 1987, p. [61]; Mann 1990, p. 310; D’Amico pp. [193, 218, 369]; Bonito Oliva Milano, 2017. 43; Parronchi, Capecchi 1995, Fagiolo dell’Arco 1988, 1991, pp. 21, 53, 59, 60, 61, 116; 1993, p. 104; AA.VV. 1994, pp. 88, Bibliography: Mezio 1960, p. 45, pl. pp. 57, 133; Cavallo, Rosai 2001, 68 pp. 80, 82, 265; Fagiolo dell’Arco, D’Amico, Il cuore, 1991, pp. 2, 126; Fagiolo dell’Arco 1994, p. 44; XIV; Narciso 1960; Fagiolo dell’Arco pp. 11, 16, 237; Cavallo 2008, Rivosecchi 1988, pp. 86, 87, 89; 15; Maltese 1992, pp. 224, 387; AA.VV. 1997, pp. 24–26; AA.VV. 1978, pp. 2, 16; Mann 1989, p. pp. 24, 29, [56, 57], 167–70, pl. 8. Mann 1989; D’Amico 1991, Vespignani 1992, pp. 192-193, 2000, p. 232; AA.VV. 2003, 173; Fagiolo dell’Arco 1994, p. pp. 19, 53, 62–66, 115–16; 369; Fagiolo dell’Arco 1994, pp. pp. 304–06; D’Amico, Goldin 52; Appella, D’Amico, Vespignani 69 Vespignani 1992, pp. [190], 46, 103; D’Amico 1995, p. 51; 2004, pp. 56, 57; Siciliano 2004, 2003, p. 152; De Dominicis 2006, L’intagliatore (Scultore in legno, 192, [369]; Baldacci 1995, p. 26; AA.VV. 1997, p. 57; Goldin 1997, p. 133; De Dominicis 2006, p. [1]; pp. 38, 40; D’Amico 2007, p. 47; G. Ritratto del padre, L’artigiano) Benzi, Mercurio, Prisco 1998, pp. 94–95, 211; Appella, D’Amico, D’Amico 2007, pp. 12, 13, 46; Mafai 2012, pp. 42, 43, 53; Bakos, [The Wood Carver] p. [264]; La collezione Claudio Vespignani 2003, p. 146; Spadoni AA.VV. 2009, pp. 15, 20, 44, 45, Baradel, De Dominicis 2013, pp. 1922 e Elena Cerasi 2002, p. [44]; 2003, p. 307; D’Amico, Goldin 223; Bakos, Baradel, De Dominicis 35, 89, 172; Pontiggia 2013; Bakos, oil on pressed cardboard Appella, D’Amico, Vespignani 2004, p. 50; Siciliano 2004, p. 2013, pp. 34, 92, 172; Bakos, Malasecchi, Pirani 2014; pp. 18, attached to a wooden panel, 2003, pp. [146, 168]; D’Amico, 91; De Dominicis 2006, p. 36; Malasecchi, Pirani 2014, p. 158. 41, 156, 161; Appella 2016, pp. 62.3 x 46.5 cm Goldin 2004, p. 56; De Dominicis D’Amico 2007, pp. 16, 45; Troisi [110], 112. signed at bottom left: 2006, pp. [1], 38; G. Mafai 2012, 2008, p. 160; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 46, 65v O. ROSAI p. 72; Bakos, Baradel, 47, 223; G. Mafai 2012; Bakos, verso: 67 De Dominicis 2013, pp. 92, 172; Baradel, De Dominicis 2013, Mario Mafai La strada al mare According to the studies of Pier Appella 2016, pp. 10, [165]; pp. 34, 91, 171; Bakos, Paesaggio con figura (La strada del Mar, Via del mare) Carlo Santini (Rosai, Vallecchi La collezione Claudio e Elena Malasecchi, Pirani 2014, p. 159; [Landscape with Figure] [The Road to the Sea] Editore, Florence, 1960, pl. 19) Cerasi 2016, [p. 48]. Appella 2016, p. 107. 1929 1939 the original title of the work is

354 355 LIST OF WORKS — EDITED BY RISCHA PATERLINI 70 – 78

L’artigiano. The title L’intagliatore, dated “O. Rosai XIII” in the bottom Provenance: private collection 2010, pp. 117, 118; Negri, Pirovano Scipione which the artist placed on the back right) produced the following year of the artist Ottone Rosai, Firenze; 2011, p. 60. (Gino Bonichi) of the work, has been retained (1935) and shown at the 1936 Aldo Gonnelli collection, Firenze; (1904–1933) here, however, as L’artigiano Venice Biennial. Barsotti collection, Firenze; 75 is also the title of a work of Galleria Pananti, Firenze; Farsetti I Dioscuri [Castor and Pollux] 1930 (oil on panel, 50 × 70 cm) Provenance: private collection Arte, Prato. 1931 77 published in the Farsetti catalogue of the artist Ottone Rosai, Firenze; Exhibitions: Firenze, 1920; oil on canvas, 70 x 58 cm Villa Corsini of 1983 (pl. II), where the figure’s Alberto Mondadori collection, Firenze, 1922; Firenze, 1953; dated and signed at bottom right: 1929 eyes are open. Milano; Galleria Rotta, Genova; Firenze, 1995; Milano, 2017. 31 SASSU oil on panel, 36.5 x 29.5 cm Merlini collection, Milano; Bibliography: Franchi 1942, p. Provenance: private collection Leopoldo Tega collection, Milano. 11; Torriano, Pittura, 1943, p. Provenance: private collection The autograph inscription of the artist Ottone Rosai, Firenze; Exhibitions: Milano, Rosai, 1939; 17; Parronchi 1952, p. 38, pl. 23; of the artist Aligi Sassu, Milano; “Opera di Scipione” by Mario Francesca Rosai collection, Milano, 1959; Firenze, 1960; Ragghianti 1953, p. [16]; Santini Galleria d’Arte Cafiso, Milano. Mafai is clearly visible on the back Firenze; Galleria d’Arte Santa Fabriano, 2007; Milano, 2017. 1957, pp. 15, 66; Parronchi 1958, Exhibitions: Milano, 1932; Milano, of the work. Croce, Firenze; Benesperi Bibliography: Rosai 1939; Santini pp. 154, 314; Santini 1960, pp. Sassu, 1941; Milano, 2004–05; 69 70 collection, Pistoia; private 1960, p. 61, pl. 59; Santini, 150-151; Cavallo 1968, p. 14; Mantova, 2006; Marsala, 2008; Provenance: private collection of collection Luigi Poggi, Firenze; Rosai, 1960, pp. 97, 104, [109], Santini 1972, pp. 150–51; Cavallo Milano, 2010; Chieti, 2012; Milano, the artist Scipione, Roma; Zoccoli Farsettiarte, Prato. 134, 192; Dehò, Pontiggia 2007, p. 1973, pp. 77, 168, 244; Santini 2017. collection, Roma; Barbaroux 76 Exhibitions: Firenze, 1932; 37; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 209–11, 238. 1977, pp. 150–51; AA.VV., Ottone Bibliography: Esposizione 1932; collection, Milano; Galleria Firenze, 1953; La Spezia, 1953; Rosai 1983, pp. [45], 152, 177; Anceschi 1941; Ballo 1956, p. 164; Annunciata, Milano; Marmont Torino, 1953; Ivrea, 1957; 72 Parronchi, Capecchi 1995, pp. 45, Valsecchi 1963, p. 58; Carrieri collection, Milano; Pandolfini Casa Pontedera, 1957; Firenze, 1960; All’osteria [In the Tavern] 91, 152, 177; AA.VV., Arte moderna 1971, n. 274; Solmi 1984, pp. d’Aste, Firenze. Pistoia, 1964–65; Prato, 1965; 1938 1997, p. 76; Agnellini 1997, 12, 170, 232, 240; De Martino Exhibitions: Roma, 1930; Milano, Firenze, 1967; Torino, Roma, oil on canvas, 75.5 x 65.5 cm p. [186] 280; Salvagnini 2000, 1994, p. 12; Fagone 1995, pp. 8, Scipione, 1941; Milano, 2017. Firenze, 1983; Firenze, 1995; signed and dated at bottom right: pp. 294, 493; AA.VV. 2009, 44; Negri 1995, p. 49; Birolli Z., Bibliography: Neppi 1930; Firenze, 2008; Milano, 2017. O. ROSAI XVI pp. 210, [211], 238. Bruno, Rusconi 1997, pp. 34, 51; Bucarelli 1954, p. 17; Mafai 1984; Bibliography: Luchini 1932; Oteri 1997, pp. 17, 111; Pizziolo Fagiolo dell’Arco, Rivosecchi Ragghianti 1952; p. 30; Novi Provenance: private collection 1999, p. 257; Fagone 2001, p. 191; 1988, pp. 117, 118, [197], 300; 1957, p. 3; Santini 1957, pp. of the artist Ottone Rosai, Firenze; Aligi Sassu Pontiggia, Colombo 2004, pp. D’Amico, Goldin 2004, p. 130; 86, 87; Del Guercio 1959, p. Rossini collection, Torino; private (1912–2000) 124–25; Butturini 2006, pp. 123, Vespignani, Terenzi 2007, p. 101. 72 46; Mucchi 1959; Santini 1960, collection, Firenze; Farsetti arte, 211; Barilli 2007, pp. 353, 550; p. 37, pl. XIII; Santini, Rosai, Prato. 74 Bonini 2008, pp. 129, 135; Troisi 78 1960, pp. [51], 77, 163, 164; pl. Also the following galleries are Concerto 2008, p. 160; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 122, Angolo di Collepardo 71 92–95; Betocchi 1965, pl. 37; to be considered, which we do 1930 [123], 229; Pontiggia 2010, p. 117, (Paesaggio, Collepardo) 77 Ragghianti 1967; Cavallo 1968, not insert in the list because oil on canvas glued onto [119], 166; Negri, Pirovano 2011, [A Corner of Collepardo] p. 8; Cavallo 1973, p. 67; Rosai, neither the period not the order plywood, 65 x 57 cm p. 46; AA.VV. 2012, pp. 11, [18]. circa 1929 Corti 1974; Santini 1983, pp. 24, of affiliation are known: Galleria signed at bottom right: SASSU oil on panel, 44 x 44 cm 59; Parronchi, Capecchi 1995, pp. del Cavallino, Venezia; Galleria 76 50, 134, pl. 14; Cavallo 2008, pp. d’arte Edmondo Sacerdoti, Milano; Provenance: private collection of Nu au divan vert The work was part of a panel [70, 71], 190–92. Galleria d’arte Piemonte artistico the artist Aligi Sassu, Milano; Ballo (Nudo su una poltrona verde) painted on two sides and divided e culturale, Galleria Gissi, Torino. collection, Milano. [Nude on a Green Couch] around 1949. The front shows 70 Exhibitions: Venezia, Rosai, 1938; Exhibitions: Milano, Sassu, 1941; 1941 a landscape with riders. Conversazione [Conversation] Torino, 1957; Firenze, 1960; Prato, Milano, 1945; Milano, Sassu, 1945; oil on canvas, 97 x 65 cm 1922 1965; Milano, 2017. Milano, Sassu, 1959; Torino, 1961; signed at bottom right: SASSU Provenance: private collection of oil on canvas, 43 x 33.5 cm Bibliography: AA.VV. 1938, p. 117; Genova, 1966; Milano, Sassu, the artist Scipione, Roma; Galleria signed and dated at bottom right: Rosai, Raimondi 1960; Santini 1984; Monaco di Baviera, 1987; Provenance: private collection Sandri, Venezia; private collection O. ROSAI 1922 1960, p. 66, pl. 168; Santini, Rosai, Rivoli, 1987; Bergamo, 1995–96; of the artist Aligi Sassu, Milano; Carlo Cardazzo, Venezia; Galleria 1960, p. 167; Betocchi 1965, pp. Finalborgo, 1996-1997; Firenze, Museo Svizzero, Lugano; Galleria d’Arte del Cavallino, Venezia; 78 Provenance: private collection of 120, 121, pl. LIV; Parronchi 1982, 1999; Taranto, 2006; Milano, Sassu, Brera, Milano; Sotheby’s, Milano. Galleria Toninelli, Milano; Galleria the artist Ottone Rosai, Firenze; pp. 72–73, pl. 29. 2008; Milano, 2010; Milano, 2017. Exhibitions: Genova, Sassu, 1941; d’Arte del Naviglio, Milano; Sergio Colongo collection, Biella; Bibliography: Anceschi 1941; Roma, 1994; Oderzo, 1994–95; Galleria La Bussola, Torino; Blotto private collection, Lucca; private 73 Emanuelli, Bo 1945; Emanuelli, Bergamo, 1995–96; Finalborgo, collection, Biella; Valla collection, 73 collection. Giocatori di toppa (Giuocatori Sassu, Tullier 1945 p. [9]; De 1996–97; Firenze, 1999; Vigevano, Torino; Galleria Tega, Milano. Exhibitions: Torino, 1953; Biella, di toppa) [“Toppa” Players] Grada 1952; Ballo 1956, pp. 124, 2001; Milano, Lugano, 2008–09; Exhibitions: Venezia, 1949; Torino, 1959; Firenze, 1963; Prato, Milano, 1920 160, [161], 164, 178; Ballo 1959; Milano, 2016; Milano, 2017. 1967; Brescia, 2000; Roma, 2007– 1995; Milano, 2011; Milano, 2017. charcoal on cardboard mounted Guttuso 1959; Ballo 1961, pp. [10], Bibliography: Anceschi, Aligi 08; Pesaro, 2008; Venezia, 2008–09; Bibliography: Cavallo 1995, pp. on canvas, 490 x 690 mm [11], [19]; Ballo 1964, pp. 290, Sassu 1941; AA.VV., Arte moderna Milano, 2010–11; Milano, 2017. 98, 228; Cavallo Rosai 2001, p. 17; signed at bottom right: ROSAI 298; Pittura di Birolli 1966, p. 18; 1993, p. 225; AA.VV., Novecento Bibliography: S.B. 1949; Emporium Pontiggia 2011, p. 228. Russoli, Maltese, Naitza 1967, p. 1993, p. 210; De Martino 1994, 1950; Capolavori di Natale 1967; The back of the work bore 29; Carrieri 1971, p. 196; Bonini, p. 96; Lombardo 1994, p. [45]; AA.VV. 1985, p. 188; Di Genova 71 a well-executed sketch of the De Micheli 1984, pp. 17, 33; AA.VV., Fagone 1995, p. 37; De Micheli, 1986, p. 80; Fagiolo dell’Arco, I fidanzati (Gli innamorati) same subject until 1995. The two Sassu 1985, p. 18; Ballo 1987, pp. Riolfo Marengo 1996, pp. [47], Rivosecchi 1988; pp. 204, 302; Di [The Betrothed] drawings were shown separately 40, 119; Steingräber 1987, pp. 27, [106]; Pizziolo 1999, pp. 108, Genova 1996; p. 101; AA.VV. 2000, 1934 for the first time in the exhibition 28; Fagone 1995, p. 21; De Micheli, [109], 239; De Grada 2001, p. 83; p. 231; Vespignani, Terenzi 2007, oil on panel, 70 x 49.7 cm of December 1995 at the Riolfo Marengo 1996, pp. [18], Fagone 2008, pp. [2], 22–23, [41]; pp. 46, 87; Barbero 2008, pp. 77, signed and dated in basso Accademia del disegno in [106]; Pizziolo 1999, pp. 60, 235; Pizziolo 2008, pp. 31, 117; AA.VV. 113; Morelli, Pirani, Pratesi 2008; a destra: O. ROSAI XII Florence, after which one ended Pontiggia, Perrone 2006, pp. 44–45; 2009, pp. 124, [125]; 230; Negri, p. 26; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 50, 224; 74 75 There is another work with the up at the Pananti gallery Bonini 2008, pp. 44, 45; AA.VV. Pirovano 2011, p. 219; Sansone Gualdoni, Pellegatta 2010, same subject and title (signed and and the other at the Farsetti. 2009, pp. 120, [121], 229; Pontiggia 2016, p. [187]. pp. 39, 112.

356 357 LIST OF WORKS — EDITED BY RISCHA PATERLINI 79 – 86

79 Macerata, 1985; Roma, 1998; 82 Bibliography: Almanacco degli Provenance: private collection Natura morta con piuma Brescia, 2005; Monchiero, 2013; Flagellazione di Cristo artisti 1930, p. 216; Manzini 1944, of the artist Scipione, Roma; (Natura morta con trine) Milano, 2017. (Bozzetto per la “Flagellazione p. 18; Maltese 1948, pp. 229, 231, Michelangelo Masciotta collection, [Still Life with Feather] Bibliography: Masciotta 1941, di Cristo”) [The Flagellation Bucarelli 1954, p. [21]; Marussi Firenze; Galleria Farsetti Arte, 1929 p. 166; Guzzi 1943, p. 189; Cairola of Christ] 1963; Fagiolo dell’Arco 1983, Prato. oil on panel, 45.5 x 50.7 cm 1946; Macerata 1948; Carrieri 1929 p. 146; Appella 1984, pp. 82, 314; Exhibitions: Macerata, 1948; 1950, p. 223, pl. 271; Sinisgalli ink wash on paper, 206 x 261 mm Fagiolo dell’Arco, Rivosecchi 1988, Venezia, 1948; Roma, 1954; Provenance: private collection of 1950, p. 295; Borghi 1960, p. 106; signed and dated at bottom right: pp. [270], 323; AA.VV., Firenze, 1970; Macerata, 1985; 84 the artist Scipione, Roma; Galleria Marussi 1963, p. 9; Vinca Masini Scipione 29 Arte moderna 1989, p. 10; AA.VV., Roma, 2007–08; Pesaro, 2008; del Milione, Milano; Francesco 1979, p. 43; Barilli, Caroli, Fagone Scuola romana 1989; Vespignani Venezia, 2008–09; Milano, 2010–11; 79 De Dombrowski collection, 1982, pp. 109, 634; Poggio 1983, Provenance: private collection 1992, pp. 160, 369; La collezione Milano, 2017. Milano; Francesco De Dombroso pp. 79–84; AA.VV. 1985, p. 71; of the artist Scipione Roma; Claudio e Elena Cerasi 2002, p. Bibliography: Masciotta 1941, collection, Roma; Christie’s Casa Cialini 1985, p. 3; Micacchi 1985, Enrico Falqui collection, Roma; [42]; Vespignani, Terenzi 2007, p. 173, pl. 4; Marchiori 1944; d’Aste, Milano. p. 11; Spadoni 1985; p. 3; Zoccoli Michelangelo Masciotta collection, pp. 66, 93; AA.VV. 2009, p. 56, [57], Parronchi 1944, pp. 61, 65, 89; Exhibitions: Roma, 1954; Macerata, 1985; p. 4; Appella 1988; Fagiolo Firenze; Galleria d’Arte Netta 224; La collezione Claudio e Elena AA.VV. 1948, p. [141]; Carrieri 1950, 1985; Torino, 1987; Milano, 2017. dell’Arco, Rivosecchi 1988, pp. Vespignani, Roma. Cerasi 2016 [p. 46]. p. 223; Bucarelli 1954, p. 21; Ballo Bibliography: Bucarelli 1954, [247], 313, pl. XII; Vespignani 1992, Exhibitions: Roma, 1954; Firenze, 1956, p. 101; Appella 1984, p. 129; 80 p. 19; Borghi 1960, p. 107; Fagiolo p. [152]; Benzi, Mercurio, 1970; Macerata, 1985; Torino, 1987; 84 AA.VV. 1985, pp. 50, 54; Fagiolo dell’Arco 1978, p. 41; AA.VV. 1985, Prisco 1998, p. 255; D’Amico, Torino 1989; Bologna, 1991; Parigi, Il cardinale Vannutelli dell’Arco 1988, p. 85; Fagiolo p. 50; Micacchi 1985, p. 11; Fagiolo Goldin 2004, p. 32; Vespignani, 1997-1998; Venezia, 2001–02; sul letto di morte [Cardinal dell’Arco, Rivosecchi 1988, p. dell’Arco, Rivosecchi 1988, pp. 107, Terenzi 2007, p. 25; AA.VV. 2009, Roma, 2007–08; Pesaro, 2008; Vannutelli on His Deathbed] [123]; D’Amico, Goldin 2005, 150, 305, [213], pl. II; AA.VV., p. [37]. Milano, 2010–11; Milano, 2017. 1930 p. [22]; Vespignani, Terenzi 2007, Toni 1989, p. 9; Vespignani 1992, Bibliography: L’Italia Letteraria ink wash on paper, 210 x 320 mm pp. 78, 81, 95; Barbero 2008, p. pp. 156, 163; La collezione Claudio 81 1929; Marchiori 1944, p. 13; signed at bottom left: Scipione 114; Morelli, Pirani, Pratesi 2008, 85 e Elena Cerasi 2002, Profeta in vista di Gerusalemme Carrieri 1950, p. 223; Bucarelli p. 31; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 56, [57], p. [42]; Iannaccone 2015, p. 25; [Prophet in Sight of Jerusalem] 1954, p. 21; AA.VV. 1970, p. 147; Provenance: private collection of 224; Gualdoni, Pellegatta 2010, La collezione Claudio e Elena 1930 Appella 1984, pp. 65, 312; AA.VV. the artist Scipione, Roma; Arduini pp. [12, 19]. Cerasi 2016 [p. 48]. oil on panel, 42.3 x 46.5 cm 1985, pp. 53, 151, 152; De Angelis collection, Roma; Galleria della 82 1985, pp. 30, 32, 57, 89; Fagiolo Lanterna, Genova; Barbaroux 81 80 Provenance: private collection dell’Arco 1986, pp. 29, 156; Fagiolo collection, Milano; Visconti Ernesto Treccani Autoritratto [Self-Portrait] of the artist Scipione, Roma; Luigi dell’Arco, Il corpo, 1986, p. 21; collection, Roma; De Blasio (1920–2009) 1930 De Luca collection, Roma; private Benzi, Mascelloni, Lambarelli collection, Roma; Jesi collection, oil on panel, 54 x 37 cm collection Hilde De Luca; Christie’s 1988, p. 107; Fagiolo dell’Arco Milano; Galleria Philippe Daverio, 86 signed at top right: Scipione Milano. 1988, pp. 13, 238, [241]; Fagiolo Milano; Galleria d’Arte Netta Autoritratto [Self-Portrait] Exhibitions: Roma, 1930; Roma, dell’Arco, Rivosecchi 1988, pp. Vespignani, Roma. 1940–41 The work was originally painted 1954; Monaco di Baviera, 1957; 95, 97, 295, 325; AA.VV., Scuola Exhibitions: Roma, 1935; Milano, oil on canvas, 40 x 35 cm on the back of Il principe cattolico Roma, 1964; Città del Messico, romana 1989; D’Amico, Il cuore, Scipione, 1941; Venezia, 1948; signed at bottom left: Ernesto (L’assistente al Soglio, Ritratto del 1966; Roma, 1968; Roma, 1991, p. 15; Pirovano 1992, p. Roma, 1954; Roma, 1983; principe Ruspoli) 1968–69; Bochum, 1969; Pesaro, 1062; Vespignani 1992, pp. 154, Macerata, 1985; New York, 1987; Provenance: private collection of 86 [The Catholic Prince]. 2008; Milano, 2010–13; Milano, 163, 343, 369; Bernabei 1993, p. Roma, 1988; Parigi, 1997–98; the artist Ernesto Treccani, Milano; The panel was divided between Expo, 2015; Milano, 2017. 208; AA.VV., Novecento 1995, p. Potenza, 2005–06; Roma, Luigi Ardemagni collection, Milano; 1941 and 1943 while it was owned Bibliography: Neppi 1930; 391; Agnellini 1995, p. 212; Di 2007–08; Pesaro, 2008; Milano, Enrico Brambilla Pisoni collection, by Giuseppe Ungaretti, who Trombadori 1930; Marchiori 1939, Genova 1996, p. 96; AA.VV. 1997, 2017. Busto Arsizio; Antonio Stellatelli sold Il principe cattolico to p. 30; De Libero 1949, p. 11; pp. 60, 143; Antomarini, Stewart Bibliography: Domus 1935, collection, Monza. Vittorio De Sica. Bucarelli 1954, p. 21; Borghi 1960, 2001, p. 6; Salvagnini 2001, p. p. 21; Marchiori 1939, pl. XIV; Exhibitions: Milano, Broggini, The self-portrait instead ended p. 103; Marussi 1963; Ballo 1964, 183; Vespignani, Terenzi 2007, pp. Santangelo 1941; Marchiori 1941; Milano, 1943; Milano, 1952; up in a private collection in Milan. pp. 223, 231; Lucchese 1964; 60–62, 93; Morelli, Pirani, Pratesi 1944, pl. 6; AA.VV. 1948, p. 141; Livorno, 1958; Milano, 1959; Bucarelli 1968, p. [89]; 2008, p. 30; AA.VV 2009, pp. 58, Maltese, Scipione 1948; Carrieri Milano, Corrente, 1960; Ferrara, Provenance as back of Il principe Bucarelli, Argan, Ponente 1968, [59], 224; Gualdoni, Pellegatta 1950, p. 223; Bucarelli 1954, p. 1960; Torino, 1962; Ivrea, Verona, cattolico: private collection of the pp. [5], [24]; Fagiolo dell’Arco 2010, pp. 38, 112. 23; Fagiolo dell’Arco 1984, p. 148; Milano, 1963; Milano, Ravenna, 83 artist Scipione, Rome; private 1978, p. 39; AA.VV. 1985, pp. Fagiolo dell’Arco 1986, p. 242; Napoli, 1971; Ferrara, 1974; Milano collection Marguerite Caetani di 19, 163, 164; Benzi, Mascelloni, 83 Fagiolo dell’Arco 1988; Fagiolo 1975; Milano, Premio, 1975; Bassiano, Rome; private collection Lambarelli 1988, p. 108; Fagiolo La toeletta (Tavolo di una dell’Arco, Rivosecchi 1988, pp. 86, Roma, 1978; Todi, 1980; Berlino, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Rome. dell’Arco 1988, p. 85; Fagiolo cortigiana) [The Dressing Table] 207 [277], 323; Vespignani 1992, 1981; Brugherio, 1981; Milano, Provenance: private collection, dell’Arco, Rivosecchi 1988, circa 1929 pp. 170, 369; Gavioli 2005, pp. Anni Trenta, 1982; Caserta, 1983; Milano; private collection Falsetti, pp. [120], 121, 125, [244], 312; India ink on paper, 220 x 275 mm 76, 81, 186; Vespignani, Terenzi Genova, 1985; Milano, Corrente, Prato; Galleria dell’Oca, Roma; Vespignani 1992, p. 158, 177; 2007, pp. 80, 95; Morelli, Pirani, 1985; Milano, 1989; Busto Arsizio, private collection Antonio and AA.VV. 2004, p. 42; Ratti 2004, Provenance: private collection of Pratesi 2008, p. 31; AA.VV. 2009, Ferrara, 1991–92; Busto Arsizio, Marina Forchino, Torino; private p. 12; Vespignani, Terenzi 2007, the artist Scipione, Roma; Riccardo pp. 60, 235. 2003–04; Milano, 2004–05; Milano, collection Marina Grisolia, p. 20; D’Amico 2008, p. 38; Morelli, Gualino collection, Roma; Eva 2008; Milano, Maggi, 2010; Chieti, Forchino widow, Torino. Pirani, Pratesi 2008, pp. 21, 25; Menzio collection, Torino; Pistoi 85 2012; Milano, 2016; Milano, 2017. Exhibitions as back of Il principe AA.VV. 2009, pp. 11, 21, 52, 54, collection, Torino; Studio Scuola Studio per “Gli uomini Bibliography: Costantini 1942; cattolico: Roma, 1930; Roma, 224; Colombo 2010, p. 40; Romana, Torino; Galleria d’Arte che si voltano” [Study for De Grada 1943; De Grada 1952; 1935; Milano, Scipione, 1941; Di Marzio 2010, p. 54; Fergonzi, Netta Vespignani, Roma. “Men Who Turn Around”] Ballo 1956, p. 170; De Grada Milano, 2017. Negri, Pugliese 2010, pp. 170, Exhibitions: Roma, 1954; Biella, 1930 1958; Taccani 1959, p. 31; De Exhibitions: Roma, 1943; 188, 189; Vanzetto 2010, 1963; Roma, 1983; New York, 1987; ink wash on paper, 230 x 187 mm Micheli 1962, pp. 41, 46; Ernesto Macerata, 1948; Milano, 1950; p. 25; Expo 2015, p. 344; Sgarbi, Torino, 1987; Roma, 1988; Torino, signed at bottom right: Scipione 3 Treccani 1962; Valsecchi 1963, Roma, 1954; Todi, 1979; Milano, Dipingere tra le due guerre 2015, 1997–98; Roma, 2007–08; Milano, at bottom centre: Gli uomini pp. 94–95, 111; Valsecchi, Artisti Anni Trenta, 1982; Roma, 1983; p. 29. 2017. che si voltano di Corrente, 1963, pp. 52–53;

358 359 LIST OF WORKS — EDITED BY RISCHA PATERLINI 87 – 96

Ballo 1964, p. 300; De Grada Eccher, Auregli 1997, p. 82; Levi 1939 1958; Valsecchi 1963; Barilli, 1937 1971, p. [3]; AA.VV. 1974; De 1998, p. [40]; Pizziolo 1998, p. oil on canvas, 40 x 50 cm Caroli, Fagone 1982, p. 634; oil on canvas, 65 x 70 cm Grada 1975; De Santi 1975, p. 11; 90; Pizziolo 2003, pp. 19, 37, 126, signed and dated bottom left: AA.VV. 1993, vol. I pp. 218, 233, signed at bottom right: Gian Ferrari 1975; De Bartolomeis 127; Pizziolo 2008, pp. 21, 128; I. Valenti 39 vol. II pp. 359, 360. a. ZIVERI 1978; De Micheli 1978; Amendola, AA.VV. 2009, pp. 162, [163], 235; De Santi, Sereni 1979, pp. [26], Il Movimento di Corrente 2012, p. Provenance: private collection Provenance: private collection [27]; Del Guercio 1980, p. 93; 107; AA.VV. 2012, pp. 100, 101. of the artist Italo Valenti, Milano; Alberto Ziveri of the artist Alberto Ziveri, Roma; Ernesto Treccani 1980; De Micheli Archivio Italo Valenti collection, (1908–1990) Galleria d’Arte Netta Vespignani, 1981, pp. 15, 25, 33; Ernesto 88 Svizzera, Mendrisio. Roma. 93 Treccani 1981, pp. 13, 19; Barilli, Ritratto di Beniamino Joppolo Exhibitions: Milano, Corrente, 93 Exhibitions: Ferrara, 1960; Caroli, Fagone 1982, pp. 144, [Portrait of Beniamino Joppolo] 1960; Bellinzona, 1991; Vicenza, Giocatori di birilli Milano, 2017. 635; De Micheli 1982, pp. 15, 1941 2001; Milano, 2016; Milano, 2017. (I Birilli, Giuocatori di birilli) Bibliography: Riccomini 1960, 25, 33; De Micheli 1983, pp. 15, oil on canvas, 45 x 35 cm Bibliography: Acatos 1987, p. 134; [Ninepin Players] p. 87; Fagiolo dell’Arco, Alberto 25, 33; Bugatti 1985, pp. 2, 35; signed and dated at bottom left: Pontiggia, Italo Valenti 1991, pp. 1934 Ziveri, 1988, p. [120]; AA.VV. 2009, Caprile 1985, p. 84; Caprile, La Ernesto 41 16, 38, 39; Carena, Pult 1998, p. oil on canvas, 75 x 100 cm pp. 88, 89, 226; Sgarbi, Hopper, 87 88 mia corrente, 1985; De Micheli 47; Menato 2001, p. 20; Bianchi signed at bottom left: A. Ziveri 2015, p. 24. 1985, pp. 166, 168; Negri 1989, Provenance: private collection of 2012, p. 38; Sansone 2016, pp. pp. 14, 49, 51, 219; AA.VV., Arte the artista Ernesto Treccani, Milano; [185, 191]. Provenance: private collection 96 moderna 1990, p. 20; Di Genova Beniamino Joppolo collection, of the artist Alberto Ziveri, Roma; Il postribolo (Postribolo, Interno) 1991, p. 14; Pontiggia 1991, pp. Paris; Museo Treccani, Milano. 91 Galleria della Cometa, Roma; [The Bawdy House] 19, 42, 140, 141, 177; AA.VV., Arte Exhibitions: Firenze, 1967; Nudo in un interno Countess Anna Laetitia Pecci 1945 moderna 1992, p. 220; Pirovano Palermo, 1968; Milano, Ravenna, [Nude in an Interior] Blunt collection; Alberto Marircucci oil on canvas, 100 x 125 cm 1992, p. 1095; Bossaglia 1996, Napoli, 1971; Ferrara, 1974; Urbino, circa 1944 collection; Finarte, Roma; p. 428; Eccher, Auregli 1997, 1975; Milano, Corrente, 1985; oil on canvas, 40 x 50 cm Semenzato case d’aste, Roma. Provenance: private collection p. 82; Pizziolo, Ernesto Treccani Sondrio, 1985; Montichiari, 1986; signed at bottom left: Exhibitions: Roma, 1936; of the artist Alberto Ziveri, Roma; 1999, p. 18; Grasso 2000, p. 29; Milano, 1989; Feltre, 1992; Milano, I. VALENTI Venezia, 1936; Roma, Fazzini private collection Nella Ziveri Pizziolo 2003, pp. 18–19, 34–35; 2008; Milano, 2017. e Ziveri, 1984–85; Modena, 1992; Exhibitions: Roma, 1946; Roma, 94 Pontiggia, Colombo 2004, pp. Bibliography: Morosini 1949; Provenance: private collection Marsala, 2008; Milano, 2017. 1960; Roma, 1982; Roma, 1983–84; 246–47; Pizziolo 2008, pp. 32, De Grada 1950, p. [14]; De Micheli of the artist Italo Valenti, Milano; Bibliography: Melli 1936; Milano, 1988, Milano, 1988–89; 124, 125; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 158, 1962, pp. 9, 10; Treccani 1967; Galleria Schettini, Milano; Castelfranco, Durbé 1960, p. 33; Viareggio, 1989; Roma, 1990–91; 159, 233; Pontiggia, Carla Maria De Grada 1971; Ricci 1971; De Galleria del Milione, Milano; Lucchese 1964, p. 14; Crispolti, Modena, 1992; Ferrara, 1993; Maggi 2010, pp. 30, 60; AA.VV. Santi 1975, p. 6; De Micheli 1985, Galleria Mediterranea, Napoli; 1982, p. 33; AA.VV. 1983, pp. 298, Milano, 2010–13; Salò 2016; 2012, pp. 100, 101; Sansone 2016, p. 169; Monforte 1985; De Santi Finarte casa d’aste, 299; AA.VV. 1984, p. 38; Durbé Milano, 2017. pp. [180, 191]. 1986, p. 22; Negri 1989, pp. 49, 51; Milano. 1984, pp. 9, 28, 101; Appella, Bibliography: Sinisgalli 1952, De Grada, Guarnieri 1992; Buzzoni, Exhibitions: Busto Arsizio, 2003- D’Amico 1986, p. 246; Benzi, p. 16; Guzzi 1960; Micacchi 1960; 87 D’Amico, Gualdoni 1993, 2004; Chieti, 2012; Milano, 2017. Mascelloni, Lambarelli 1988, Micacchi 1982; Augias 1983; 89 Colombi assassinati pp. 206–08; Pizziolo 2003, p. 144; Bibliography: Carena, Pult 1998, pp. 111, 228, 241; Fagiolo dell’Arco, Rivosecchi 1983, (Colombi uccisi, Colombi morti) Pizziolo 2008, pp. 126–27, AA.VV. p. 74; Pizziolo 2003, pp. 137, 208; Fagiolo dell’Arco, Alberto Ziveri, p. 305; Durbé 1984, p. 53; Fagiolo 95 [Murdered Doves] 2009, pp. 160, [161], 233. AA.VV. 2009, pp. 176, [177], 235; 1988, pp. 24–25; AA.VV., Arte dell’Arco 1986, p. 98; Fagiolo 1941 AA.VV. 2012, p. 85. moderna 1989; AA.VV., Scuola dell’Arco 1988, pp. 141, 271, 315; oil on canvas, 70 x 55 cm romana 1989; De Libero, Appella Fagiolo dell’Arco, Alberto Ziveri, signed at top left: E. Treccani Italo Valenti 1989; D’Amico 1992, p. 15; 1988, pp. [136, 137], 188; Sgarbi (1912–1995) Emilio Vedova Vespignani 1992, p. 303; Troisi 1988, pp. 35, 306; AA.VV., Scuola Provenance: private collection of (1919–2006) 2008, p. 160; AA.VV. 2009, pp. 86, romana 1989; Fagiolo dell’Arco the artist Ernesto Treccani, Milano; 89 87, 226. 1989, pp. 15, 92–93; Rivosecchi Luigi Ardemagni collection, Milano; Gabbiani [Seagulls] 92 1990, pp. 18, 23, 66, 133; D’Amico Enrico Brambilla Pisoni collection, 1939 Il caffeuccio veneziano 94 1992, p. 10, 14, [40]; Vespignani Busto Arsizio. oil on canvas, 40 x 50 cm (Caffeuccio veneziano, Autoritratto [Self-Portrait] 1992, pp. 312, 322, 369; Buzzoni, Exhibitions: Milano, Corrente, signed at bottom right: Cafferuccio veneziano, Al caffè, 1937 D’Amico, Gualdoni 1993, pp. 140, 96 1960; Torino, 1962; Ivrea, Verona, I. VALENTI Al caffeuccio) [Venetian Café] oil on panel, 18 x 13.2 cm 143; Piermattei Masetti 1994, Milano, 1963; Milano, Ravenna, 1942 dedicated and signed at bottom p. 126; Troisi 2005, pp. 39, 145; Napoli, 1971; Milano, Corrente, Provenance: private collection oil on canvas, 43 x 55 cm left: a Katy, A. ZIVERI Barilli 2007, p. 364; AA.VV. 2009, 1985; Ferrara, 1993; Milano, of the artist Italo Valenti, Milano; signed and dated at bottom left: dated at bottom right: 1937 pp. 92, 94, 227; Fergonzi, Negri, Le ragioni, 1995, Torino, 1998; Giuliano Girotto collection, Vicenza; VEDOVA 42 Pugliese 2010; pp. 170, 189; Busto Arsizio, 2003–04; Milano, Archivio Italo Valenti, Mendrisio. Provenance: private collection Sgarbi, Hopper, 2015, p. 24, 2008; Chieti, 2012; Milano, 2017. Exhibitions: Vicenza, 2001; Milano, Provenance: private collection of the artist Alberto Ziveri, Salò 2016, p. 354. Bibliography: Belvedere 1960, 2004–05; Fabriano, 2007; Milano, of the artist Emilio Vedova, Roma; Katy Castellucci collection, 90 p. 7; De Micheli 1962, pp. 41, 2008; Chieti, 2012; Milano, 2017. Venezia; private collection Renzo Roma; Ovidio Jacorossi collection, 46, 47; Ernesto Treccani 1962; Bibliography: Carena, Pult 1998, Camerino, Venezia; private Roma, Farsetti arte, Prato. Valsecchi 1963, pp. 95, 111; p. 52; Menato 2001, p. 43; collection Maurizia Camerino, Exhibitions: Torino, 1988; Valsecchi, Artisti di Corrente Pontiggia, Colombo 2004, pp. Venezia-Milano. Milano, 2017. 1963, pp. 52–53; De Grada 1971; 238–39; Dehò, Pontiggia 2007, Exhibitions: Bergamo, 1942; Bibliography: Fagiolo dell’Arco, Z, Ricci 1971; De Santi 1975, p. 11; p. 47; Pizziolo 2008, p. 133; AA.VV. Milano, 1959; Ivrea, Verona, 1988, p. [9]; AA.VV., Scuola romana De Micheli 1985, pp. 108, 168; 2009, pp. 174, [175], 235; AA.VV. Milano, 1963; Trezzano sul Naviglio, 1989; Agnellini 1995, p. 290; AA.VV., Arte moderna 1990, p. 2012, p. 8; Bianchi 2012, p. 38. 1980–81; Milano, Anni Trenta, AA.VV. 2009, pp. 90, 91, 227. 29; Pontiggia, Italo Valenti 1991; 1982; Venezia, 1984; Bergamo, Pirovano 1992, p. 1095; Buzzoni, 90 1993–94; Milano, 2017. 95 D’Amico, Gualdoni 1993, pp. 12, I giovani Greci Bibliography: AA.VV. 1942; Studio per “La rissa” 92 91 207-208; AA.VV. 1995, pp. 100–03; [The Young Greeks] De Grada 1952, p. [38]; Quadrum (Una rissa) [Study for “The Brawl”]

360 361 CRITICAL CHRONOLOGY 1920–1945 CRITICAL CHRONOLOGY 1920–1945 — EDITED BY ALESSANDRA ACOCELLA AND CATERINA TOSCHI 1920 – 1924

1920 ► (68) Ottone Rosai, L’attesa “And so he can finally look on the 1921 1922 ► (69) Ottone Rosai, L’intagliatore 1923 1924 [Waiting], 1920 mankind around him with a gaze of [The Wood Carver], 1922 Treaty of Rapallo, marking the oil on canvas, 29 × 32 cm deep penetration. And what is the Socialist Congress in Livorno and Intensification of armed clashes oil on pressed cardboard attached Mussolini delivers the speech Victory of the national list in end of D’Annunzio’s occupation Iannaccone collection since 2004 mankind that he discovers? Rosai’s founding of the Italian Communist in the streets and Fascist attempts to a wooden panel, 62.3 × 46.5 cm inaugurating the Novecento group a general election marked by of Fiume. man is the one we encounter every Party. to take over “red” towns. Iannaccone collection since 2012 exhibition at the Galleria Pesaro. violence. The Socialist politician “The result of pensive, incisive day, laden with experience, marked The headquarters of the Socialist Giacomo Matteotti is murdered Economic depression and expressive power is attained by sorrow, vice and disillusionment, Birth of the National Fascist Party. party newspaper Avanti! “The fashioning of the eye socket, Carlo Levi makes his debut at after accusing the Fascists in occupation of factories by workers through careful calibration of but still worthy of love. A far cry devastated and set on fire. the way the face is built up of the Turin Quadrennial in a room parliament of rigging the election in Turin. Increase in episodes of volume and space, and draws from experimentalism! Rosai is Victory of the nationalist bloc echoes and stressed contrasts organized by Felice Casorati, and calling for the results to be violence by Fascist squads. meaning from the gradation denied to us. He has only to seek in the general election. March on Rome organized of plastic and graphic elements, a key figure in his development declared null and void. of shadows from dark to light, an idea of art in himself. […] The by Benito Mussolini to take and basically all the adaptation first encountered during the year. Ottone Rosai presents 29 from a dense, dark colour to a discovery of mankind is never- Roberto Melli joins the editorial power by force. Victor Emanuel of the figuration with a precise Another participant is Gigi Chessa, Members of the opposition led paintings, 16 drawings and 48 diffuse luminosity that seems to ending. Rosai’s painting becomes staff of the Rome-based industrial III asks Mussolini to form a new reduction of style to customary now resident in Rome. by Giovanni Amendola abandon notes in Florence at his first solo embrace and enclose the figures constant investigation, an eye magazine Energia. government. modules (suffice it to observe the parliament and withdraw to the show. in an organism of rare intensity. piercing man and nature. No man corner of the garment in front as ► F. de Pisis, La città delle 100 Aventine. Rosai’s language is concentrated, sets himself up as an ideal or term ► G. D’Annunzio, Notturno, Milan: Anselmo Bucci, Leonardo it moves from the barely creased meraviglie, Rome: Casa d’Arte Founding in Florence of Rete not so much embracing reality as of comparison, and every face is Tip. Treves, 1921. Dudreville, Achille Funi, Emilio wrinkle of the face to continue in Bragaglia, 1923 (with a watercol- Mario Mafai and Scipione begin to Mediterranea, a quarterly journal transforming it into real mystery, different from all the others.” Malerba, Pietro Marussig, Ubaldo a soft roundness that the hands our by the author on the cover). attend classes in drawing together edited by Ardengo Soffici and a condition of presence-absence ► G. Severini, Du cubisme au Oppi and Mario Sironi combine docilely take up): all this recalls in Rome at the Scuola libera del published by Vallecchi, which in which Rosaian man acquires [A. Parronchi, “Rosai: centenario della classicisme, Paris: J. Povolozky to form a group of Sette Pittori the characteristics of the group of nudo, where Mafai and Antonietta nascita”, in Ottone Rosai nel Centenario folds after just a year. memory of the past and an della nascita. Opere dal 1919 al 1957, & Co, 1921. del Novecento (Seven twentieth- works of 1922 too closely […] not Raphaël meet the following year. awestruck sense of the present in an exhibition catalogue (Florence, Galleria century painters) in Milan and to provide us with new grounds Pananti, 18 March – 15 June 1995), Filippo de Pisis moves from instant. This, in the group of mute Florence: Edizioni Pananti, 1995, p. 13] an exhibition bearing its name, for dating this masterpiece a few Solo show of work by Filippo Ferrara to Rome and holds his figures, is Rosai’s metaphysics, Sette pittori del Novecento, as years earlier. Nor should too much de Pisis organized in November first solo show at the Casa d’Arte suggested by a timeless atmosphere its title is organized by Margherita importance be attached to the by the magazine La Fiamma in Bragaglia. of drama and certainly not by any Sarfatti at the Galleria Pesaro. summary execution of the garment, the foyer of the Teatro Nazionale formal or theoretical models of as it is not unreasonable to suggest in Rome. Paul Cézanne is granted a De Chirico or Carrà. A condition Carlo Levi begins to write for the that the painting was not entirely personal room at the Venice which, if not philosophical, is journal La rivoluzione Liberale, finished.” Ottone Rosai joins the movement Biennial. existential and palpable in the editor Piero Gobetti. L’Italia Liberista but is expelled for gloom of the post-war period, [P. C. Santini (edited by), Mostra dell’opera dissidence. di Ottone Rosai 1911-1957, exhibition Enzo Ferrieri founds Il Convegno, where life struggled to resume Felice Carena and the sculptor catalogue (Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, a journal of art and literature, acceptable rhythms. The ‘tomorrow’ Attilio Selva open an art school May–June 1960)] A room at the XIV Venice Biennial in Milan. of peace had finally arrived but in Piazza degli Orti Sallustiani, is devoted to six painters of the anguish, anxiety and alarm still Rome. The pupils include ► (70) Ottone Rosai, Novecento group, while the The first issue of the art journal weighed heavily. Anything physical Fausto Pirandello (as from 1922) Conversazione [Conversation], seventh, Oppi, is given a personal Dedalo, editor Ugo Ojetti. that appeared was devoid of fully and Giuseppe Capogrossi 1922 room. The Sei di Torino human attributes. People with (as from 1923). oil on canvas, 43 x 33.5 cm (Six Painters of Turin) also take ► Filippo de Pisis, Il signor Luigi their feelings and things remained Iannaccone collection since 2016 part with Jessie Boswell, one B., Milan, 1920 (autobiographical indefinite in a sort of limbo — Show of work by Ottone Rosai of the Six, showing work in the novel). also in cultural terms — that we at the Casa d’Arte Bragaglia “It could seem a paradox that Italian section as a foreign artist. can describe as metaphysical in Rome and the Saletta Gonnelli the period of 1920–30, marked (emphasizing the semantically in Florence. by intemperance, disruption and Gigi Chessa takes part in the improper use of the word), as a violence, was the very period Esposizione di venti artisti italiani psychological screen or imperfect Ill and overburdened with debt, in which Rosai expressed an at the Galleria Pesaro in Milan. approach to reality, almost with Ottone Rosai’s father drowns almost transcendent serenity, a the desire to avoid it. In this Rosai himself in the Arno and the combination of things expressed as seeks to dilute something drawn artist is obliged to take over his a confession and as an aspiration, of from antiquity, from myth, timeless carpenter’s shop in Via Maggio, these very years: ‘The world should inflections as though to eliminate Florence, and reduce his artistic be inhabited by those who strive contingency.” activities for a number of years. to understand it, by those who endeavor to love it’, far removed [L. Cavallo, “Schede delle opere”, Inauguration in Florence of La from the hate, the divisions and in L. Cavallo (edited by), Cinquanta dipinti di Ottone Rosai a 50 anni dalla scomparsa, Fiorentina Primaverile. Prima the ongoing struggles of the time, exhibition catalogue (Florence, Palazzo esposizione nazionale dell’opera like a new Franciscan hermitage. Medici Riccardi, 27 January – 25 March 2008), Florence: Edizioni Pananti, 2008, e del lavoro d’arte nel Palazzo del a Leopardian detachment, which pp. 169–70] Parco di San Gallo a Firenze. The is far from the turbulent political participants include Roberto Melli. waves and clamor, deadly and ► (73) Ottone Rosai, Giocatori futile. It is the pure and illuminated di toppa [“Toppa” Players], 1920 Founding in Milan of the current, that of an authentic vision charcoal on cardboard mounted newspaper L’Ambrosiano. which is inviolably intangible.” on canvas, 490 × 690 mm Iannaccone collection since 1996 [C. L. Ragghianti, Introduzione, in C. Santini (edited by), Ottone Rosai. Works from 1911–1957, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, 20 July – 18 September 1983), Florence: Vallecchi, 1983, p. 15]

364 365 CRITICAL CHRONOLOGY 1920–1945 — EDITED BY ALESSANDRA ACOCELLA AND CATERINA TOSCHI 1925 – 1929

► (58) Fausto Pirandello, 1925 1926 1927 1928 ► (46) Mario Mafai, Strada con 1929 Ottone Rosai and Filippo de Pisis Composizione (Siesta rus- casa rossa [Street with Red take part in the second Novecento tica) [Composition (Rustic The restrictive enforcement of Mussolini introduces the death Antonietta Raphaël and Mario Mario Mafai takes part in the XCIV House], 1928 Inauguration of the Accademia Italiano exhibition at the Palazzo Siesta)],1924–26 decrees introduced during the penalty. Mafai move into an apartment Esposizione di Belle Arti della oil on canvas, 38 × 38.5 cm d’Italia with Enrico Fermi, Filippo della Permanente in Milan. oil on canvas, 100 x 126 cm previous two years puts an on Via Cavour in Rome, the home Società amatori e cultori. Iannaccone collection since 1993 Tommaso Marinetti and Guglielmo Iannaccone collection since 2016 end to the freedom of the press Publication of Lionello Venturi’s of what Roberto Longhi was to call Marconi among its members. Edoardo Persico and Bruno and the freedom of assembly book Il gusto dei primitivi, born the School of Via Cavour. Their Fausto Pirandello moves to Paris, “[...] The only centre of the work Cassinari move to Milan. “The paintings, entitled and association. out of a series of lectures first child, Miriam, is born the where he comes into contact with is on the axis of the tower, in the Signing of the Lateran Pacts and Composizioni, are focused above delivered in Turin and Milan, with same year. the painting of Chaïm Soutine, extreme, ‘real’ depth of the road reconciliation between the Italian Solo show of work by Fausto all on the female nude, using Publication in the major a drawing by Nicola Galante as its André Derain and the Italiens de sloping down to draw upwards the state and the Catholic Church after Pirandello — including slightly heavy materials, with periodicals of the Manifesto degli frontispiece. Venturi is in contact Official debut of Mario Mafai in the Paris (1928–33), a group including light, which turns the plants, walls the long conflict that began with La lettera (The Letter), now in illustrating strong perspective intellettuali Fascisti, drawn during this period with Carlo Levi, show Mostra di studi e bozzetti Giorgio de Chirico, Gino Severini, and cobbles red and prepares to the struggle for national unification the Iannaccone collection — at the angles that create linear tension up by Giovanni Gentile, in whose work is still bound up organized by the Associazione Massimo Campigli, Alberto scorch the sky and fill the opening.” and independence. Galerie Vildrac in Paris. Giorgio on the canvas, as if the bodies are response to which, Antonio with the Novecento group and its Artistica Nazionale di via Margutta Giacometti and Alberto Savinio. de Chirico, Alberto Savinio, forced into the image by their size, Gramsci writes the Manifesto degli support for the return to order. in Rome. [G. Appella, “Mafai, Giotto, e la piacevole Group show of work by Roman Fausto Pirandello and Carlo Carrà fatica della pittura”, in G. Appella, F. provoking a strongly expressive intellettuali Antifascisti, which is A stay in Paris (1928–29) plays D’Amico, C. Terenzi, N. Vespignani (edited artists including Mario Mafai, take part in Art Italien Moderne, disharmony. This composition is a published in Il Mondo. Benito Mussolini inaugurates the Renato Birolli moves from Verona a part, together with Venturi’s by), Mario Mafai 1902-1965. Una calma feb- Antonietta Raphaël and Scipione organized by Mario Tozzi, at the bre di colori, exhibition catalogue (Rome, precise feature of Pirandello’s work, exhibition Novecento Italiano at to Milan, where he joins the theories, in Carlo Levi’s move Palazzo Venezia, 6 December 2004 – 27 at the Casa d’Arte Anton Giulio Galerie Bonaparte. which can be found throughout Filippo de Pisis moves to Paris, the Palazzo della Permanente editorial staff of L’Ambrosiano and away from the Novecento group. February 2005), Milan: Skira, 2004, p. 22] Bragaglia. Raphaël also takes part his artistic career. Although such where he remains until 1939. He in Milan. Filippo de Pisis and comes into contact with the artistic in Otto pittrici e scultrici romane Birth in Florence of the magazine structural style has classical roots teaches at the Sorbonne and Francesco Menzio agree to take and intellectual scene, whose Gigi Chessa is appointed to ► (46v) Mario Mafai, Ritratto at the Camerata degli Artisti and Frontespizio with Ottone Rosai (from Mantegna to Paolo Uccello) holds a solo show at the Carmine part but Gigi Chessa declines the leading figures include Carlo teach scenography at the Scuola [Portrait], circa 1928 receives praise from the critics. among the contributors and Piero Pirandello’s interpretation was, gallery. invitation. Carrà, Edoardo Persico, Giacomo Superiore di Architettura in Turin. oil on canvas, 38.5 × 38 cm Bargellini subsequently appointed however, different. Manzù and Aligi Sassu. Iannaccone collection since 1993 Mario Mafai, Antonietta Raphaël as editor. It is said that he has an anti- Ottone Rosai meets Mino Maccari Publication of the first issue of Henri Matisse is granted a and Scipione take part in the classical nature which explains and begins to contribute to the the magazine L’Arte Fascista in Edoardo Persico, founder of the personal room at the XVI Venice “Mafai and Scipione were aware Prima Mostra del Sindacato laziale Umberto Lilloni holds his first solo the use of foreshortening, the journal Il Selvaggio (1926–29). Palermo. Milanese gallery Il Milione, moves Biennial. Gigi Chessa, Ottone of the unrest in Italian art during fascista at the Palazzo delle show at the Galleria Bardi in Milan. element of expressionistic tension to Turin, where he remains until Rosai and Umberto Lilloni are the 1920s but detached themselves Esposizioni in Rome. Roberto underlining the anguish of the Publication in Milan of the first Filippo de Pisis and Francesco 1929. among those taking part. Chessa from it immediately with the arrival Longhi coins the name “School of Aligi Sassu begins the Uomini modern world, rather than the issue of the weekly magazine Menzio are among the artists is responsible for the installation of Raphaël, who helped them to Via Cavour” in the second of two rossi [Red Men] series (1929–33), utterly unreal idyll of peace and La Fiera Letteraria, which then featured in the Italian room at the Scipione holds a show at the Casa design of the exhibition Mostra discover the deep connections articles on the exhibition in L’Italia comprising some 500 depictions suspended serenity, typical of a moves its headquarters to Rome XV Venice Biennial. d’Arte Anton Giulio Bragaglia. dell’Arte del Teatro, presented between art, literature and magic, Letteraria. of gamblers playing dice, great number of artists close to in 1928 under the direction of in the catalogue by Margherita eliminating any distance between musicians, the Argonauts, riders ‘Valori Plastici’ and magic realism”. Giovanni Battista Angioletti and Birth in Rome of 900. Cahiers By invitation of Mino Maccari, Sarfatti. the vision of reality and fantastic Mario Mafai and Scipione take part and Castor and Pollux. Curzio Malaparte, and becomes d’Italie et d’Europe, a quarterly Nicola Galante begins to interpretation, and opening up the in the show Giovani pittori romani [C. Gian Ferrari, “Fausto Pirandello: l’in- L’Italia Letteraria in 1929. Its journal of literature published contribute to Il Selvaggio, where Aligi Sassu meets Filippo reservoir of secrets that is painting at the Circolo di Roma in Palazzo Renato Guttuso frequents the local quietudine della forma”, in C. Gian Ferrari (edited by), Fausto Pirandello, catalogue contributors include Mario Mafai in French, edited by Massimo Ottone Rosai also works. Tommaso Marinetti and draws and that must be tapped little Doria. artists of Bagheria, friends of his of the exhibition (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 23 and Scipione, who produces Bontempelli with Ottone Rosai closer to the Futurist movement by little if every mystery is to be father Gioacchino, and begins to June – 1 October 1995), p. 12] the first cover of the renamed among the contributors. Gigi Chessa, Felice Casorati, without fully embracing its penetrated and dispelled.” Gigi Chessa, Carlo Levi and paint landscapes. He shows work periodical in 1929 (the drawing Nicola Galante, Carlo Levi, theoretical principles. He takes Francesco Menzio take part in for the first time in the 2. Mostra [G. Appella, “Mafai e Scipione: l’arte come of which, entitled Flagellazione di ► L. Venturi, Il gusto dei primitivi, Francesco Menzio, Enrico part in the Venice Biennial rivelazione”, in G. Appella, G. D’Amico, the Prima Esposizione sindacale del Sindacato siciliano. Cristo [The Flagellation of Christ], Bologna: Zanichelli, 1926. Paulucci, Emilio Sobrero and the same year at the age of F. Gualdoni (edited by), Mario Mafai fascista in Turin. now belongs to the Iannaccone Giacomo Debenedetti sign a letter just 16 and is co-author with (1902-1965), exhibition catalogue C. Pav. (C. Pavolini), “Mostre (Macerata, Palazzo Ricci and Pinacoteca ► collection). of protest against the purchase Bruno Munari of the manifesto Comunale, 6 July – 15 September 1986), Carlo Levi starts to produce work romane. Antonietta Raphaël”, of Giacomo Gandi’s painting Dinamismo e riforma muscolare. Rome: De Luca, 1986, p. 9] of a more markedly expressive in Il Tevere, y. VI, no. 142, Mario Mafai and Scipione show La preghiera [The Prayer] by the character with Modigliani and 14 June 1929. two small paintings at the third Museo Civico d’Arte in Turin. Paolo Menzio takes part in the ► (63) Antonietta Raphaël, Natura the Matisse of the twenties as his Rome Biennial in a room set up Salon de l’Escalier in Paris. morta con chitarra [Still Life with models. ► A. Moravia, Gli indifferenti, by Cipriano Efisio Oppo for works Umberto Lilloni and Virgilio Guitar], 1928 Milan: Alpes, 1929. rejected by the official jury. Ghiringhelli are joint winners ► R. Vailland, “Le fils de Pirandello oil on panel, 39 × 45 cm First show of the Sei di Torino (Six of the Principe Umberto Prize est peintre à Montparnasse”, Iannaccone collection since 2011 Painters of Turin: Jessie Boswell, Gigi Chessa designs the costumes at the Brera Biennial. in Paris-Midi, 8 October 1928. Gigi Chessa, Nicola Galante, and scenery for a production of “The still life of 1928 encapsulates Corrado Levi, Francesco Menzio Rossini’s opera L’Italiana in Algeri ► R. Longhi, Piero della ► G. Waldemar, Filippo de Pisis, all the elements of Raphaël’s poetic and Enrico Paulucci) at the Casa at the Teatro di Torino (Turin). Francesca, Rome: Valori Plastici, Paris: éd. Chroniques du jour, world in a condensed image: music, d’Arte Guglielmi with a poster 1927. 1928. her first great passion and one she by Menzio based on Manet’s ► F. Roh, Nach Expressionismus- cultivated also after her arrival in Olympia. Magischer Realismus: Probleme Rome […] the East, in the coloured der neuesten europäischen drapes and carpets, even in the Show of work by the Sei di Torino Malerei, Leipzig: Klinkhardt crescent moon peeping through the at Pier Maria Bardi’s gallery on Via & Biermann, 1925. window, and the mirror, because Brera, which acts as a showcase the small picture hanging on the until 1934 for the new generations wall is nothing other than one of the seeking to revolutionize painting, portraits of Mafai painting.” including the Roman School (Cagli, Capogrossi, Cavalli), the [V. Rivosecchi, “Catalogo - I tempi, i temi, le opere”, in V. Rivosecchi, M. Fagiolo Chiaristi, the Quattro di Palermo dell’Arco (edited by), Scuola romana. and the abstract painters of Milan. Artisti tra le due guerre, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 13 April – 19 June 1988), Milan: Mazzotta, 1988, p. 82]

366 367 CRITICAL CHRONOLOGY 1920–1945 — EDITED BY ALESSANDRA ACOCELLA AND CATERINA TOSCHI 1929

► (77) Scipione, Villa Corsini, 1929 ► (83) Scipione, La toeletta ► (78) Scipione, Angolo even though she painted the city painting and Boswell with English expressionistic hallucination, an impure white where the traces of “In the Six Painters of Turin, oil on panel, 36.5 × 29.5 cm [The Dressing Table], circa 1929 di Collepardo [A Corner as she saw it, enchanted by the neo-Impressionism […] Soffici cabala and magic is in fact the lime still linger. A pale blue in the Menzio was an introverted, fretful Iannaccone collection since 2015 India ink on paper, 220 × 275 mm of Collepardo], circa 1929 surfaces saturated with matter saw similarities between his cool, precise location of Mafai’s turbulent centre or margin of the composition experimenter and skilful engineer Iannaccone collection since 2005 oil on panel, 44 × 44 cm and palpable chromatic freshness, archaic painting with its deft villages of bacterial virulence, is the only brief note of dissonance of individual trajectories […] “It has often and rightly been said Iannaccone collection since 1997 giving it fantastic overtones that interweaving of chromatic timbres whose overheated temperature […] often inserted into the tonal concert ‘Recalcitrant, suspicious, prickly that Scipione’s world is essentially “Dramas of a ‘Catholic’ and hence aroused the critics’ curiosity. and the ‘simplicity or sincerity of could suggest the work of a home- of colour. The space occupied by a and ironic by nature, among the an idea and a vision of Rome. It universal nature, as Corrado “Scipione’s painting was an Veduta dalla terrazza di via Cavour Rosai’. Persico spoke of it as ‘an grown Raoul Dufy.” handful of objects is reduced to a painters of his generation and should be noted, however, that this Maltese recalls, became hallmarks apparition amongst us, a fantastic (1929) and Arco di Settimio Severo example of coherence […] with a narrow chasm and, nearly always the Novecento group, Menzio is in any case a Rome that — as in of the new moral demands that and tragic apparition with new and all’alba (1929) present a Rome deep ethical inspiration’ and Carlo [R. Longhi, in L’Italia Letteraria, 7 April seen from above, devoid of an ideal has always been and remains in 1929; now in F. D’Amico, “Antonietta the verses of Giuseppe Gioacchino took shape in the Italian artistic disconcerting overtones, something distorted by her foreign eyes into a Carrà described him as ‘one of the Raphaël. Vita, opere, fortuna critica”, in F. horizon to endow the image with opposition.’ [E. Zanzi, 1965] But Belli — takes on fantastic and culture of the thirties. The still terribly hurried and dense, like an sensual city of the east.” first Italian painters to embrace D’Amico (edited by), Antonietta Raphaël, stability and normality. It thus just a few months later [as from the exhibition catalogue (Modena, Galleria hyperbolic dimensions of ‘always lifes themselves become pagan attempt to halt the ending of a day and understand the teaching of Civica, 7 April – 16 June 1991), Bologna: looms over the foreground to take first group exhibition of the Six solemn remembrance’ even when representations, remnants of for an instant in the glow of sunset. [S. De Dominicis, “Antonietta Raphaël. Cézanne’ in L’Ambrosiano in 1937.” Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 1991, p. 53] concrete shape there in a sort of in January 1969] and in the same L’identità, il femminile, la maternità”, in M. prompted by the observation of a magical and esoteric rituals His friends had long realized the Bakos, O. Melasecchi, F. Pirani (edited by), anxious, anguished disarray.” rooms, he displayed what almost single fragment or hint of truth. where shellfish, feathers, severed reason for the feverish, breathless, Artiste del Novecento tra visione e identità [M. Bandini, foreword to M. Bandini ► (59) Fausto Pirandello, amounted to the desire to jettison (edited by), I Sei Pittori di Turin 1929-1931, ebraica, exhibition catalogue (Rome, [F. D’Amico, “Pittura di Fausto Pirandello”, The poet Leonardo Sinisgalli once heads of lambs, playing cards or painful, ironic intonation of his art, exhibition catalogue (Aosta, Museo La lettera [The Letter], 1929 ‘form in light’, as Galvano pointed Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Roma Capitale, in C. Gian Ferrari (edited by), Fausto Archeologico Regionale, 24 April – 4 recalled, nor is there any reason not figs obsessively opened out like his blood-like colour, his trembling, 12 June – 5 October 2014), Venice-Trieste: oil on cardboard, 70 × 53 cm Pirandello. Catalogo generale, Milan: out, with ‘his basic character, July 1999), Saint-Christophe: Musumeci Trart, 2014, p. 40] Electa, 2009, p. 10] to believe him, how during those vaginas, seen from above, spread jerky, acute and extraordinarily Editore, 1999, p. 13] Iannaccone collection since 2007 the role of leader, rising to the nights up on the Capitol [nights out and almost offered on red fine drawing; in short, for all his surface’.” spent with Scipione, recalling leather tablecloths emerging from form of expression, which still ► (65) Antonietta Raphaël, ► (47) Mario Mafai, Tramonto “In his first solo show in Paris, ► (20) Jessie Boswell, Marina [I. Mulatero, “Nuovi valori a certe parole”, the title of Alessandro Verri’s seventeenth-century shadow, are appeared undefined […] Though Veduta dalla terrazza di via Cavour sul Lungotevere [Sunset on the at the Galerie Vildrac on Rue [Seascape], 1929 in R. Bellini, I. Mulatero (edited by), Il grup- Roman Nights at the Tomb of the like the nightmares of a condemned there are not many of his works that [View from the Terrace in Lungotevere], 1929 de Seine, 9−23 March 1929 […] oil on cardboard, 33 × 34 cm po dei Sei e la pittura a Torino 1920–1940, Scipios, Ed.], ‘we would recite man.” remain, they suffice to mark the Via Cavour], 1929 oil on plywood, 41.3 × 50.8 cm among a large number of peintures Iannaccone collection since 2014 exhibition catalogue (Settimo Torinese, Casa per l’arte Giardiniera, 16 December aloud the verses of Gongora newly furrow of his passage down here. oil on panel, 21× 27.4 cm Iannaccone collection since 1998 et dessins of which we have – 26 March 2006), Turin: Edizioni translated by our friend De Blasi, [P. Baldacci, “Scipione spartiacque While I am adverse overstatement Iannaccone collection since 1996 unfortunately no complete list, “The Six Painters of Turin were Fondazione Torino Musei, 2005, p. 90] tra due mondi”’, in N. Vespignani, the hymns of Ungaretti or the C. Terenzi (edited by), Scipione, and do not believe I can say any “Colour has the naturalness of Fausto Pirandello presented an renowned figures with the possible Chants de Maldoror, but not one 1904–1933, exhibition catalogue (Rome, more about Scipione’s paintings “I used to get up early in the a happy blossoming in Mafai’s important group of still lifes. This exception of Boswell […] first of all ► (53) Francesco Menzio, Lo Musei di Villa Torlonia-Casino dei Principi, line of Gioachino Belli ever came 7 September 2007 – 6 January 2008), than I said on the occasion of his morning, at five, to go and paint work, like something belonging attests to the great and indeed because she was British (subjects scialle verde [The Green Shawl], to mind’.” Rome: Palombi & Partner, 2007, p. 20] show at the Galleria di Roma, I by the Colosseum, the Arch of to it from birth, suggested by the possibly predominant extent to of perfidious Albion being still 1929 do believe it possible to say that Septimius Severus, the Palatine, atmosphere and the place. And just which the genre had occupied his allowed, surprisingly enough, oil on canvas, 53 × 45 cm [A. Trombadori, “La pittura di Scipione”, ► (82) Scipione, Flagellazione di there was a great deal to be hoped and I often found Scipione painting as James Ensor’s painting seems to thoughts during the year spent to exhibit work in 1929) and a Iannaccone collection since 2003 in G. Appella et al. (edited by), Scipione, 1904-1933, exhibition catalogue Cristo [The Flagellation of Christ], for from this young painter. The too by the first light of dawn […] draw intimate sustenance from the thus far in the French capital, not woman. (Contrary to what might be (Macerata, Palazzo Ricci, 6 July – 15 1929 barely glimpsed spectre of the Scipione and Mafai had always pearly, dawn-like light of Ostend least perhaps because the large- expected, women obtained some “When the period of the Six September 1985), Rome: De Luca Editore, 1985, p. 24] ink wash on paper, 206 × 261 mm development of Scipione’s art lived in Rome or the provinces and and the grotesque masquerades that scale figure painting on which he emancipation during Fascism, Painters of Turin arrived — a Iannaccone collection since 1993 certainly cannot compensate for were fascinated by my stories and throng its beaches, so Mario Mafai’s had largely concentrated from simply becoming ‘young Italians’ primarily moral period in the sense ► (79) Scipione, Natura morta the lack of works but the brilliant artistic experiences, as I had been appears to feed spontaneously on the outset was hardly practicable between 1908 and 1918 or at least of aesthetic morality — the welding con piuma [Still Life with Feather], “Scipione’s drawings are nearly intuitions that appeared during his to Paris before coming to Rome and the gilded, vermilion dust of Rome, in the logistically precarious after a certain date, namely the of details was fully accomplished in 1929 always executed all at once, brief artistic trajectory will remain therefore seen what French painters the ancient, decadent air that drifts conditions in which he was living. birth of the consolidated Fascist Menzio. His horizon was defined, oil on panel, 45.5 × 50.7 cm immediate translations of images unforgettable.” were doing in that period. What I around the venerable palaces and The result was a formidable series youth movement. Compulsory and as was the way of imparting poetic Iannaccone collection since 2015 enclosed in a linear fabric of said served as stimuli for Scipione theatrical piazzas, wafting the of small works whose markedly detested by many, this was in any rhythm to the meeting between [C. E. Oppo, cit. in A. Trombadori, “La pit- modulated grace or pungent tura di Scipione”, in Scipione, 1904-1933, and Mafai.” ashes of bygone carnivals past the innovative character in terms of case an unquestionable step forward autobiographic pressure, with “Because if Giuseppe Marchiori is character. Scipione is one of the exhibition catalogue (Macerata, Palazzo massive walls of the Tiber all the artistic vocabulary — a marked from the retrograde, bigoted Italy of all its passions, provocations Ricci, 6 July – 15 September 1985), Rome: right to say that Scipione, being last children of a time that we saw [A. Raphaël, 1971, cit. in F. D’Amico, way to the pink buildings of the departure both from the icy before.) As Marzio Bernardi wrote, and inclinations, and the poetic De Luca Editore, 1985, p. 24] Antonietta Raphaël. Estasi e dramma, in F. ‘forced to look inside himself, ending and that admired stylistic D’Amico (edited by), Antonietta Raphaël. new districts. His first landscapes perfection of Braque and a fortiori ‘Jessie Boswell, let us remember, counterpart: an acknowledgment concentrated all his intellectual exquisiteness, allusive words, ► (64) Antonietta Raphaël, Arco Sculture in villa, exhibition catalogue of 1929 present the apparition of from the models he had left behind is a curious case. Self-taught [but of indivisibility, a measure of (Rome, Musei di Villa Torlonia - Casino dei faculties with almost maniacal hidden meanings and sage vices. di Settimio Severo all’alba [Arch of Principi, 29 March – 15 July 2007), Rome: a searing, congested city where him in Italy — was clearly not of undeniable talent] despite her the necessity of one in the other, attention on psychological analysis, Scipione is the mirror of that Septimius Severus at Dawn], 1929 Palombi & Partner, 2007. p. 13] every house is like a burning face, understood in the skimpy reviews various teachers, the last being thus allowing the physical sense which sometimes slackened in time with its unhealthy fatigue oil on canvas, 48 × 41 cm every façade a blazing mask. The of the time. They were described Micheletti, she has retained a of the objects, faces and nudes despair or anger’, then the limit of full of bitter ferment, discordant Iannaccone collection since 1994 ► (34) Nicola Galante, Paese colours pounce on one another in as ‘amusements’ and indeed as a singularly independent approach. to agglutinate and mature in the the fantastic reality that he sought outbursts, short-lived resentment per la Casetta (Vasto) [Little House a leap that is never purely tonal ‘trompe-l’œil à rebours. Chacun It is not possible to assign her to shadow shell of its own rhythm, to translate into painting can be and conflicted abandonment “On arriving in Italy, Raphaël was in the Country (Vasto)], 1929 and stereoscopic but in some way sa vérité’ (a misplaced reference any schools or masters or even to flow and development.” found precisely in this intellectual to pleasure and death. The sense deeply struck by the southern oil on canvas, 50 × 60 cm spectral and sudden, almost like an to the plays of Luigi Pirandello, predict how she will paint tomorrow and literary premise. In actual fact, of Scipione’s art becomes clearer light. As she later wrote, ‘I seemed Iannaccone collection since 1996 image imprinted on the retina by already well established in France on the basis of what she has already [P. Fossati, cit. in Francesco Menzio, exhibition catalogue (Turin, Galleria Narciso, nearly all his paintings possess through reference to the time to to feel the colours vibrate around a flame that the eye then goes on but having nothing whatsoever painted’.” 16 January – 2 February 1966), Turin: an illustrative quality, granting which it naturally belongs. […] me, perhaps even more than “Galante joined the Six Painters seeing wherever it looks.” to do with those still lifes). The Galleria Narciso, 1966, n.p.n.] an albeit sparing and subdued Scipione succeeded in reviving a someone who has always lived in of Turin because that was what reviewers then did not notice that [R. Bellini, “Scenari dei Sei pittori di Turin di prima e di dopo”, in R. Bellini, I. [T. Scialoja, “Mafai”, in Il Selvaggio, prominence to symbolic objects genre that appeared to have become the south.’ She observed Rome Venturi wanted. In the finely Pirandello had leapt beyond the Mulatero (edited by), Il gruppo dei Sei e y. XVIII, no. 1-2-3, 15 March 1942, pp. la pittura a Turin 1920-1940, exhibition and allusive gestures, which impair the preserve of humorous weeklies, from the high vantage point of calibrated initial balance of the Six 184–85] current academic gospel of Cubism catalogue (Settimo Torinese, Casa per the elevation that the work initially namely literary satire, but with new the terrace on Via Cavour and (it appeared at first that Giulio Da and returned to the irreconcilable l’arte Giardiniera, 16 December 2005 – 26 appeared to possess.” elements and a wealth of formal walked by the Colosseum, passing Milano was also going to join and ► (65v) Mario Mafai, Paesaggio malaise of Cézanne, torn between March 2006), Turin: Edizioni Fondazione inventions and motifs, so that these beneath the Arch of Constantine then Spazzapan), he constituted con figura [Landscape with the obligation to the surface and Torino Musei, 2005, p. 12] [U. Apollonio, introduction to Scipione, drawings transcend the contingent but giving the Arch of Titus a wide not only a figure already making Figure], 1929 the dogged resistance of the object exhibition catalogue (Venice, Galleria del Cavallino, March 1945), Venice: Edizioni circumstances that prompted them berth in memory of the atrocities a name for himself, like the other oil on panel, 27.4 × 21 cm — its body and volume — within the ► (52) Francesco Menzio, del Cavallino, 1945, n.p.] and remain as artistically valid perpetrated in the temple in five, but also a link with the Italian Iannaccone collection since 1996 painting. Barely altered colour, Ritratto di giovane [Portrait testimony of a clearly defined cycle Jerusalem in 70 AD. Ancient Rome painting of the Macchiaioli and always gathered closely around a of a Young Man], 1929 of civilization and culture.” was one of her first sources of Strapaesani groups, to which he “The most explosive mixtures dominant, is encamped in the bleak oil on canvas, 72 × 59 cm inspiration. The first challenge she accorded priority in that period. remain. The border of that dark, and rugged body of matter, often an Iannaccone collection since 2014 [G. Marchiori (edited by), Disegni di and her companions took up was Chessa, Levi, Menzio and Paulucci disrupted zone where decrepit ochre, inflamed or dull, or a grey, Scipione, Bergamo: Istituto Italiano d’Arti Grafiche, 1944, pp. 8–9] the reality of the Roman landscape, were instead links with French impressionism turns into soon veering towards a burnt red or

368 369 CRITICAL CHRONOLOGY 1920–1945 — EDITED BY ALESSANDRA ACOCELLA AND CATERINA TOSCHI 1930 – 1931

1930 ► M. Mafai, “Arte nuova a Parigi: ► (85) Scipione, Studio per ► (81) Scipione, Profeta in vista beside pronounced and still sensual 1931 Arti – Fondazione artistica Antonio ► (66) Antonietta Raphaël, Yom ‘I Surindépendants’”, in L’Italia “Gli uomini che si voltano” di Gerusalemme [Prophet in Sight lips, reproducing and emphasizing Tantardini. Kippur in the Sinagogue, 1931 Show of work by Scipione and Letteraria, 3 August 1930. [Study for “Men Who Turn of Jerusalem], 1930 authoritative and ‘heraldic’ wrinkles Start of the draining and reclama- oil on canvas, 48 × 64 cm Mario Mafai organized at the Around”], 1930 oil on panel, 42.3 × 46.5 cm like those of ancient Chinese tion of the Pontine Marshes. Scipione produces the cover for a Iannaccone collection since 2012 Galleria di Roma by Pier Maria ► M. Mafai, “Pittura parigina”, in ink wash on paper, 230 × 187 mm Iannaccone collection since 2008 parchment with deep incisions and new edition of Eugenio Montale’s Bardi and Cipriano Efisio Oppo. L’Italia Letteraria, 19 October 1930. Iannaccone collection since 2004 scratches.” Fausto Pirandello’s first solo Ossi di seppia (1st ed. 1925) “The Jewish roots are asserted “The Book of Revelation is not show is held at Pier Maria Bardi’s published by Giuseppe Carabba. more as an complex question of Antonietta Raphaël and Mario ► O. Rosai, Via Toscanella, “In Uomini che si voltano — probably exclusively fraught with death and [P. Baldacci, Scipione spartiacque tra due Galleria di Roma. identity than a matter of faith. In mondi, in N. Vespignani, C. Terenzi (edited Mafai move to Paris, where she Florence: Vallecchi, 1930. inspired by ‘some verses of Montale destruction. In it Scipione sees ‘a by), Scipione, 1904-1933, exhibition Touring exhibition of the the days of exile in Genoa, Friday takes up sculpture. and, figuratively, by the painful, message of comfort and love that catalogue (Rome, Musei di Villa Torlonia- Solo show of work by Francesco Novecento Italiano group in evening, the beginning of Shabbat, Casino dei Principi, 7 September 2007 – 6 terrified contortions of the apostles precedes and accompanies the January 2008), Rome: Palombi & Partner, De Rocchi at the Galleria del Stockholm, Helsinki and Oslo (the is transformed into a literary Second show of the Six Painters in the Byzantine mosaic of the history of humanity’. His attention 2007, p. 19] Milione. following year), curator Margherita soirée with Antonietta seated of Turin. Jessie Boswell leaves the Ascension in the Hagia Sophia in is concentrated on the prophetic Sarfatti. The participants include at the piano and the daughters group. Thessaloniki’ — Scipione reaches character of the book, on the ► (80) Scipione, Autoritratto The Six Painters of Turin break up. Mario Mafai. presenting their writings. It is, one of the highest peaks of modern foreseeing and foretelling of the [Self-Portrait], 1930 however, interesting to note that By invitation of Edoardo Persico, figurative painting. Giuseppe future. He seeks manifestations oil on panel, 54 x 37 cm Renato Guttuso, Scipione, Mario Scipione and Francesco Menzio among the Jewish artists active in Umberto Lilloni takes part in Marchiori provided an exemplary of the divine will, signs that he Iannaccone collection since 2015 Mafai, Alberto Ziveri, Filippo de take part in the Exhibition of Italy in that period, she expressed a group show at the Galleria Il reading of the work in 1939, interprets for himself in the hope Pisis, Carlo Levi and Francesco Contemporary Italian Paintings at more than others a ‘decided pride Milione, where Ottone Rosai holds pointing out both its compositional of deriving counsel and warnings. “Scipione’s Autoritratto recently Menzio take part in the first Rome the Baltimore Museum of Art. in difference’ (E. Braun, 1989) that a solo show the same year. and technical aspects (especially Everything becomes prophecy: appeared at the Zodiaco Gallery, Quadrennial. runs like an underground stream the way of scraping through the visions, symbolic events, allegories, where it was exhibited among the ► E. Persico, “Filippo de Pisis”, through all her work, dramatic in Formation of a group of young paint with the brush handle to parables and riddles; the four works of some well-known Roman First issue in Rome of Fronte, a in La Casa Bella, April 1931. the sculpture and dream-like in artists around Edoardo Persico in uncover the white of the canvas in horsemen, the seventh seal, artists and until then had remained magazine of art and literature paintings like Mia madre benedice le Milan comprising Renato Birolli, bold lines) and the contrast between the one hundred and forty-four unpublished. Having been painted with Marino Mazzacurati as editor ► F. de Pisis, “La pagina candele (1932), La lamentazione di Aligi Sassu, Giacomo Manzù, Luigi the anatomical and rhythmic grace thousand marked with the seal, the on the reverse side (from which and Giuseppe Ungaretti, Alberto dell’artista, confessioni”, in L’Arte, Giobbe (1967) and Yom Kippur nella Broggini, Fiorenzo Tomea, Lucio of the nudes and the primitive woman clothed with the sun, the it has since been removed) of his Savinio, Scipione, Mario Mafai, May 1931. Sinagoga. Antonietta described the Fontana and Domenico Cantatore. frontality of unexpected, bestial great whore, the dragon, the new recognized piece Principe cattolico, Carlo Carrà, Arturo Martini and development of the latter in a letter faces, as frightening as black Jerusalem. Everything regards the considered the superior of the two Alberto Moravia among the con- ► S. Solmi, Filippo de Pisis, Milan: to Mafai, expressing her intention The magazine Belvedere, widely masks, struck by an astral light in future, investigates the mystery and works by the artist himself, the tributors. Hoepli, 1931. to paint a difficult interior teeming read by the Milanese artists, which the whites of the eyes and the interprets the divine will to punish Autoritratto was, in other words with all the different heads. In order publishes two works by Scipione: fierce teeth gleam.” or save, to free from oppression disregarded by the painter. This is a Jessie Boswell holds a solo show ► S. Volta, Ottone Rosai, Milan: to convey the mystical atmosphere Il risveglio della bionda sirena after purification through testing. painting full of emphasis, in which at the Sala d’arte Guglielmi in Hoepli, 1931. of the place, she presents figures [The Awakening of the Blonde [P. Baldacci, Scipione spartiacque tra due The test is drawing, which Scipione the features of the physiognomy Turin. that seem to float in mid-air, as mondi, in N. Vespignani, C. Terenzi (edited Mermaid] and Il Cardinal Decano by), Scipione, 1904-1933, exhibition practices in order to encourage are precise and deformed, the though drawn from a childhood [The Dean of the College of catalogue (Rome, Musei di Villa Torlonia- himself, to illuminate and explain volume increases and the colour Giuseppe Migneco moves to memory or a hazy oneiric image. Casino dei Principi, 7 September 2007 – 6 Cardinals]. The latter is shown at January 2008), Rome: Palombi & Partner, the symbols as a proclamation of and intensifies in the shade. Here, Milan and enrols in the faculty Raphaël’s difference manifests itself the Venice Biennial that year. 2007, pp. 20–21] faith and testimony. As Jesus says we have a yearning and baroque of medicine. Through contact also in the pictorial construction of in the fourth Gospel: Examine the Scipione, in costume reminiscent with Beniamino Joppolo (a former a distorted, unnatural space, the Prima mostra di pittori italiani ► (74) Aligi Sassu, Concerto, 1930 Scriptures, since you think that in of a Goya soldier, and which was schoolmate) and his new friends result of cultural indifference to the residenti a Parigi. Campigli, De oil on canvas glued onto plywood, them you have eternal life. They also alluded to him by the traces of an Aligi Sassu, Renato Birolli and very concept of a realistic spatial Chirico, De Pisis, Paresce, Savinio, 65 × 57 cm testify about me.” underlying painting which remained Raffaele De Grada, he decides dimension.” Tozzi at the Galleria Milano. Iannaccone collection since 1995 visible until the last moment.” to stop studying and devote his [G. Appella, Scipione. 306 disegni, Rome: energies to painting. [S. De Dominicis, “Antonietta Raphaël. Edizioni della Cometa, 1984, p. XI] L’identità, il femminile, la maternità”, in M. [V. Guzzi, Corriere delle arti, in “Primato”, One of the last exhibitions of “The Concerto […] is an example of Bakos, O. Melasecchi, F. Pirani (edited by), 15 May 1943] the Novecento Italiano group, primitivism, as can be seen from Carlo Levi joins the anti-fascist Artiste del Novecento tra visione e identità ebraica, exhibition catalogue (Rome, including work by Gigi Chessa and the summary construction of space ► (84) Scipione, Il cardinale Giustizia e Libertà movement led Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Roma Capitale, Filippo de Pisis, is held in Buenos and the rapid outline of figures and Vannutelli sul letto di morte by Carlo Rosselli from his exile in 12 June – 5 October 2014), Venice-Trieste: Aires. things. The colour and warmth of [Cardinal Vannutelli on His Paris. His political activities lead to Trart, p. 41] the setting, the nakedness of the Deathbed], 1930 arrests in 1934 and 1935. Filippo de Pisis and Fausto musicians, the performance of the ink wash on paper, 210 × 320 mm ► (45) Umberto Lilloni, Uliveto Pirandello are among the artists concert amid the shabby tables Iannaccone collection since 2005 Antonio Banfi becomes a lecturer ad Arenzano [Olive Grove taking part in the Ausstellung of a café and the fact that the two on philosophy at Milan University at Arenzano], 1931 Moderner Italiener in Basel. violinists are improvising before an “Through deeply rooted and and develops an aesthetic of oil on canvas, 65 × 80 cm empty stand because the score is authentic Catholic faith, as deeply art as expression of the feeling Iannaccone collection since 1995 Scipione takes part in the Prima being blown away in the background rooted and authentic as the sensual and dramas of existence that is Mostra Nazionale dell’Animale all suggest that music is not an life he lived of lechery and sin, later to influence the artists of the “The landscape is now built up nell’Arte at the zoological gardens Apollonian art, a sign of universal almost an incarnation of the beast Corrente group. above all through colour, the in Rome. order, but an untidy moment of life, that fed the black humour of attenuation of volumes, the both serene and melancholy.” flagellant monks, Scipione restored Lionello Venturi loses his chair dissolution of light and a primitive Renato Birolli, Gigi Chessa, Carlo to art a moral imperative too long in art history at Turin University perspective, deliberately clumsy Levi and Francesco Menzio take [E. Pontiggia, “Anticipatori e compagni forgotten behind the screens of through his refusal to swear an and anti-academic. The fact is, di strada”, in E. Pontiggia (edited by), Il part in the XVII Venice Biennial. Chiarismo. Omaggio a De Rocchi. Luce e theoretical, philosophical and oath of loyalty to the Fascist however, that nature no longer colore a Milan negli anni Trenta, exhibition formal speculations […] In the very regime and goes into political exile lives in a condition of eternity. catalogue (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 16 June – 5 September 2010), Milan: Skira, 2010, face of the cardinal, scrutinized in Paris. The landscape now seems anxious p. 117] in numerous studies, Scipione and laden with omens, bringing to captures and emphasizes the Luigi Broggini wins the prize for mind the apparition of an instant physiognomy of the role in the sculpture in a competition held rather than a monumentum aere suspicious eyes beneath half-open by the Milan City Council for perennius. The quivering, uncertain lids, the bitter fall of the cheeks students of the Accademia di Belle lines, the vulnerability of the

370 371 CRITICAL CHRONOLOGY 1920–1945 — EDITED BY ALESSANDRA ACOCELLA AND CATERINA TOSCHI 1932 – 1933

forms, the liquid transparencies (1931). La sposa (1932), Giocatori 1932 ► (11) Renato Birolli, Tassì rosso the work lies in this mixture of the 1933 ► (12) Renato Birolli, La città degli Roman school and the introduction of colour and the very errors of di polo (1933) and Eva (1933) — in [Red Taxi], 1932 instant and eternity, adolescent studi [Città degli Studi, the Milan of the ‘baroque constant’ into anatomy and perspective combine the right perspective. There is the The Mostra della Rivoluzione oil on canvas, 58 × 60 cm freshness and age-old antiquity.” Antonietta Raphaël returns to University District], 1933 modern art, whether dreaded or to represent a fleeting event, liberating influence of Persico — Fascista is held at the Palazzo Iannaccone collection since 1997 Rome after stays in Paris and in oil on canvas, 67.5 × 84.5 cm joyfully encouraged we do not know. to express an absolute time […] already in Milan in 1929 after two delle Esposizioni in Rome to [E. Pontiggia, “Anticipatori e compagni London, where she had gone to Iannaccone collection since 2014 And the bold, unbridled line, now di strada”, in E. Pontiggia (edited by), Lilloni’s Paesaggio ad Arenzano years in the Turin of Casorati, the celebrate the tenth anniversary “Between 1931 and 1932, with the Il Chiarismo. Omaggio a De Rocchi. resume contact with old artistic inclined to curve, is nothing other thus returns precisely to the végétal Six and Gobetti — and his close of the March on Rome. suburbia and red taxi series, Birolli Luce e colore a Milano negli anni Trenta, acquaintances. “We perceive […] in the pleasure of than the ribbing beneath, amplified exhibition catalogue (Milan, Palazzo irrégulier, the irregular luxuriance attention to the young artists of created one of the manifestos of the Reale, 16 June – 5 September 2010), his pictorial creation, an inclination in broad accentuations of black and of green (patch of colour rather than Via Solferino and the Mokador New and prolonged stay of Milanese neo-romanticism of the Milan: Skira, 2010, p. 122] Solo show of Ottone Rosai at the that I would describe as determined red ink, diluted with water here and architectonic construction) that café; the confident faith in colour Carlo Levi in Paris, during which thirties. […] Here too, as in Taxi Galleria delle Tre Arti in Milan, by deep melancholy without there in shadows and half-shadows Sarfatti had always criticized.” and his inner resources; and the he comes into contact with the rosso sulla neve [Red Taxi in the organized by Edoardo Persico resignation, the melancholy of one to become light, movement and indirect influence of the painters Montparnasse group of Jewish Snow], the artist paints a garden- ► (43) Carlo Levi, Ritratto di with an inaugural presentation who observes and contemplates the expression.” [E. Pontiggia, “Dal paesaggio classico later called Chiaristi by Piovene, artists. His painting attains full like city where the pavement is donna [Female Portrait], 1932–33 by Alberto Savinio and a closing pitiless fate of mankind. The urban al paesaggio esistenziale. L’idea del [R. Modesti, “Broggini: la vitalità è tutto”, paesaggio nell’arte a Milan 1919-1959”, Del Bon above all, engaged in maturity in the expressionistic tinged with pink, the street is paved oil on canvas, 60 × 50 cm address by Persico. Rosai moves landscapes painted in the years up in R. Modesti (edited by), Luigi Broggini, in E. Pontiggia (edited by), Sognare la mediating an encounter between style that will characterize all the with white gold, the lampposts Iannaccone collection since 2014 to a new studio at number 49 Via to 1936, the deserted suburbia that exhibition catalogue (Milan, Palazzo della natura. Il paesaggio nell’arte a Milan Permanente, 13 September – 27 October dal Novecento all’Informale, exhibition the Lombard tradition of Gola and rest of his career. becomes as blue as Murano San Leonardo in Florence. only the light of a faraway Eldorado, 1991), Milan: Vangelista, 1991, p. 26] catalogue (Mantua, Casa del Mantegna Ranzoni and French Impressionism. glassware, the houses have the “[...] This undated and unexhibited streaming down from open skies, - Medole, Torre Civica, 4 September These early works by Birolli The Galleria Il Milione holds colour of stars and the taxi with the portrait belongs to the work of the Luigi Broggini, Renato Birolli was able to redeem in visionary – 31 October 1999), Mantua: Casa del Mantegna, 1999, pp. 15–17] bear witness, however, to other a show of work by six Sicilian open door is about to set off for the early thirties, when Levi’s painting and Aligi Sassu take part in the delirium, were the themes of his ► (32) Francesco De Rocchi, fundamental choices: the pursuit of painters (6 pittori siciliani) heavens of the imagination.” had undergone a metamorphosis IV Mostra d’arte del Sindacato intuition of malaise beneath the Popolana [Young Peasant ► (75) Aligi Sassu, I Dioscuri a ‘Venetian’ tension of colour even including Renato Guttuso, who and jettisoned the intimate, regionale fascista delle Belle Arti hush of an apparition that would Woman], 1933 [Castor and Pollux], 1931 in its most fragile pulsations […] the is soon closely involved with the [E. Pontiggia, “Anticipatori e compagni lyrical accents characterizing di Lombardia at the Palazzo della still appear ‘metaphysical’ in the oil on panel, 93 × 65 cm di strada”, in E. Pontiggia (edited by), Il oil on canvas, 70 × 58 cm emphasis on an anti-heroic world Roman School. Chiarismo. Omaggio a De Rocchi. Luce e his production as one of the Six Permanente in Milan. Edoardo pictorial sense.” Iannaccone collection since 2005 Iannaccone collection since 2004 of everyday fairytale through the colore a Milan negli anni Trenta, exhibition Painters of Turin. The exploration Persico organizes a show of work catalogue (Milan, Palazzo Reale (Milan, vibrations of an imagination halted Ten young artists from Rome of the expressive power of colour by Broggini at the Galleria delle [M. Valsecchi, presentation of room “To the gallery of hieratic figures Palazzo Reale, 16 June – 5 September V dedicated to Renato Birolli, in XXX “The essential question for the in the distance as in a fresco, in a (including Cagli and Pirandello) 2010), Milan: Skira, 2010, p. 112] undertaken here is evident in the Tre Arti in Milan. Biennale Internazionale d’Arte di Venezia, De Rocchi adds figures of workers young Sassu was to decide between movement as fully declared as on a and Lombardy (like Birolli and detail of the red hands.” Venice: Stamperia di Venezia, 1960, p. 35] captured in the setting of the myth and truth […]. The entire Bembo tarot card.” Sassu) are featured in Dieci pittori ► (10) Renato Birolli, Periferia Fausto Pirandello holds a solo everyday life, albeit now far away period is dominated in Sassu’s work at the Galleria di Roma. The owner (Grottammare) [Outskirts [A. Lavorgna, description of the work, in show at the Galleria Milano in ► (49) Mario Mafai, Autoritratto from the realism of the twenties. [V. Fagone, “L’opera e il tempo di Renato Fondazione Carlo Levi (edited by), Carlo by this oscillation, between the Birolli”, in G. C. Argan et al. (edited by), Pier Maria Bardi, who moved from (Grottammare)], 1932 Levi. La realtà e lo specchio, exhibition Milan. [Self-Portrait], circa 1933 Here […] he portrays Cesarina, drive for timeless generalization Renato Birolli, exhibition catalogue Milan to Rome in 1930, plays an oil on canvas, 54 × 53 cm catalogue (Rome, Galleria Russo, 20 oil on unprimed canvas, the family servant, leaning against (Parma, Università degli Studi di Parma, November – 12 December 2014), Rome: and the need to speak clearly 1976), Quaderni/Centro Studi e Archivio important role as a link between Iannaccone collection since 1997 Palombi, 2014, p. 84] Filippo de Pisis makes his first trip 56.5 × 44 cm the railing with her large hand, about life and reality (to which his della Comunicazione, Parma, 1976, p. 17] the two art scenes. to London, followed by others in Iannaccone collection since 2013 accustomed to toil, in her apron socialist convictions were by no “We perceive […] in the pleasure of 1935 and 1938. pocket. He endows her, however, means extraneous) […] We talked ► (35) Tullio Garbari, La famiglia Mario Mafai returns definitively his pictorial creation, an inclination ► (24) Luigi Broggini, Paesaggio “PORTRAIT ‘This little man with with the regal monumentality at the time in Rome and Milan of [The Family], 1931 to Rome while Raphaël moves that I would describe as determined romano con figura sdraiata Publication of the first issues short, tousled hair (two deep and of an ancient Madonna. It is no things in time and outside time, oil on canvas, 65 x 80 cm instead to London. Mafai shows by deep melancholy without [Roman Landscape with Reclining of Quadrante, mensile di arte, unforgettable little eyes, laughter coincidence that she is placed in of symbols and blood, of men and Iannaccone collection since 2016 work in the XVIII Venice Biennial. resignation, the melancholy of one Figure], 1932 lettere e vita, edited by Massimo that prompts pity and bursts out front of a light-coloured pillar, demigods. The echo of De Chirico’s who observes and contemplates ink wash on paper, 330 × 240 mm Bontempelli and Pier Maria Bardi, every now and then, at the wrong which recalls the drapes hung ‘sounding sea’ still lingered in “While others confined themselves Ottone Rosai shows over a the relentless destiny of mankind. Iannaccone collection since 1997 and of Quadrivio, Grande setti- moment, and the slouching gait behind fifteenth-century Virgins the air. Those were the years of to aspects of ‘savage’ and hundred drawings and paintings The urban landscapes painted in manale letterario illustrato of a tramp).’ From an article by in the paintings of Giorgione and Persico, Pagano, Bontempelli, provocative reduction (Gino Rossi, at the Galleria di Palazzo Ferroni the years up to 1936, the deserted “Previously clean and di Roma. Renato Guttuso (L’Ora, Palermo, 11 Bellini as well as the fresco in the Ciliberti and Giolli, of Quasimodo’s Lorenzo Viani), he went further and in Florence. suburbia that only the light of sharply defined, Broggini’s February 1933).” church of Santa Maria della Neve in ‘dead heron’ and Vittorini’s ‘red sketched out a more complex and a faraway Eldorado, streaming draughtsmanship exploded in Rome. The 5th Milan Triennial takes Cislago.” carnation’. The years of our first harmonious system. The variant Luigi Broggini makes a trip to down from open skies, was able I think of it as a fervent vacation, place. Mario Sironi decorates the [M. Fagiolo dell’Arco, foreword to M. Fagiolo dell’Arco (edited by), I Mafai. [E. Pontiggia, “Francesco De Rocchi”, libertarian socialism, our first of a primitivism tinged also with a Rome and comes into contact to redeem in visionary delirium, interrupted by quick trips back to Palazzo dell’Arte with frescoes and Vite parallele, exhibition catalogue in E. Pontiggia (edited by), Il Chiarismo. (Rome, Galleria Netta Vespignani, romantic conspiracies. We did not sacral aura was practically his alone. with the School of Via Cavour. were the themes of his intuition Milan, entirely devoted to drawing. Corrado Cagli presents the large Omaggio a De Rocchi. Luce e colore February–March 1994), Rome: Edizioni a Milan negli anni Trenta, exhibition distinguish between science and In a certain sense, he did not limit He and Roberto Melli take part in of malaise beneath the hush of an As he wrote, ‘[...] I rambled from fresco Preludi alla guerra [Prelude Netta Vespignani, 1994, p. 12] catalogue (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 16 June utopia or Christ and Marx. Sassu’s himself to challenging, disrupting the III Mostra d’arte del Sindacato apparition that would still appear one part of the city to another but to War]. Mario Mafai takes part in – 5 September 2010), Milan: Skira, 2010, works, more indicative than any and destroying, albeit with elements regionale fascista Belle Arti ‘metaphysical’ in the pictorial sense.” my days were spent not so much the Mostra dell’Abitazione. p. 57] others of our passion and perhaps of highly effective synthesis imbued di Lombardia (Biennale di Brera) in town as outside on the hills, ► (25) Luigi Broggini, Paesaggio also our confusion, were born in with appreciable fury (the very gifts at the Palazzo della Permanente [M. Valsecchi, presentation of room V, along the Tiber. Above all, I loved Scipione dies at the age of 29 romano con statua di Nettuno in XXX Biennale Internazionale d’Arte this context.” we must recognize Rossi and Viani in Milan. di Venezia, catalogue, Venice: Stamperia the Roman countryside. Rome in the San Pancrazio sanatorium [Roman Landscape with Statue as possessing). He worked rather di Venezia, 1960, p. 35] was renewed for me in a vision of at Arco Trento. of Neptune], 1933 [R. Guttuso, “Il prezzo della libertà”, in positive terms, reconstituting Scipione and Filippo de Pisis enchantment. I drew everything that ink wash on paper, 320 × 220 mm in Sassu, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Galleria delle Ore, May 1969), a coherent and organic system of take part in 22 Artistes Italiens ► (21) Luigi Broggini, Testa di my imagination filtered, seeking the Gigi Chessa produces the cover Iannaccone collection since 1997 Milan: Galleria Delle Ore, 1959] ‘primitive’ figuration by drawing Modernes at the Galerie Georges ragazzo [Boy’s Head], 1932–35 most natural of transpositions for for an Italian edition of Kafka’s inspiration from the world of Bernheim in Paris. bronze sculpture, 28 × 17 × 20 cm that wonderful scene. Monuments, The Trial, published by Frassinelli “A playful, whimsical game of ► (9) Renato Birolli, L’Arlecchino children’s art: an autonomous Iannaccone collection since 2005 churches and buildings were the in its Biblioteca Europea series. displacement that transposes the [Harlequin], 1931 system, as it were, not erected in ► C. Brandi, “Il pittore Filippo de figures of these illustrations. But splendours of pontifical baroque oil on canvas, 84 × 56 cm opposition through any spirit of Pisis”, in Dedalo, May 1932. “The Ritratto di ragazzo […] above all it was the sky of Rome that Roberto Melli, Giuseppe into the countryside and the sky: Iannaccone collection since 2015 protest but endowed with a serene combines archaic, Egyptian aroused in me the heady desire for Capogrossi and Emanuele columns, obelisks, bridges, Castel legality and diverse normality of its solemnity with contemporary fabulous drawings. That sky always Cavalli are the signatories of the Sant’Angelo, huge volutes, flying “The beginnings of Birolli’s work own.” ‘primitivism’. The motionless face, seemed red to me.” Manifesto del primordialismo angels and statues. Signs and proceed from opposite directions. in which echoes of republican plastico. signals of intense meditation that Non-homogenous elements must be [R. Barilli, “Presentazione”, in Tullio Roman statuary and the Louvre [R. Modesti, “Broggini: la vitalità è tutto”, say a lot about that period 1932−33 Garbari. Opere grafiche 1912-1931, exhi- in R. Modesti (edited by), Luigi Broggini, taken into account if we are to view bition catalogue (Trento, Galleria d’arte Scribe can be perceived, is exhibition catalogue (Milan, Palazzo della Alberto Ziveri holds his first as regards the artist’s development, his first fully defined works of the Il Castello, December 1986 − January humanized in the primitive detail Permanente, 13 September – 27 October solo show at the Galleria Sabatello the exchange of ideas between 1987), Trento: Edizioni d’arte Il Castello, 1991), Milan: Vangelista, 1991, p. 26] early thirties — such as Arlecchino 1986, n.p.n.] of the big ears. All the poetry of in Rome. Broggini and the members of the

372 373 CRITICAL CHRONOLOGY 1920–1945 — EDITED BY ALESSANDRA ACOCELLA AND CATERINA TOSCHI 1934 – 1936

[C. L. Ragghianti, introduction to P. C. 1934 ► (93) Alberto Ziveri, Giocatori Santini (edited by), Ottone Rosai. Opere 1935 Luigi Broggini takes part in ► (33) Angelo Del Bon, Rocca guilt in the Babylonian exile but 1936 di birilli [Ninepin Players], 1934 dal 1911 al 1957, exhibition catalogue the VI Mostra del Sindacato delle Caminate n. 2, 1935 also the energy of rebirth, he who (Florence, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte The first meeting between Hitler oil on canvas, 75 × 100 cm Moderna, 20 July – 18 September 1983), Start of the African campaign and interprovinciale fascista di Belle oil on canvas, 127 × 148 cm unleashed destruction on Jerusalem Mussolini supports Franco by and Mussolini takes place in Iannaccone collection since 2005 Florence: Vallecchi, 1983, p. 25] the imposition of sanctions on Italy. Arti di Lombardia at the Palazzo Iannaccone collection since 1999 and then forged the image of the sending Fascist volunteers to fight Venice. della Permanente in Milan temple to come, a lover of justice on his side in the Spanish Civil “In Ziveri there is invention, the ► (44) Carlo Levi, Nudo sdraiato Italian troops cross the Ethiopian and the Mostra di bianco e nero “Together with Lilloni, De Rocchi, and light. With his dramatic, War. Ottone Rosai, Mario Mafai, Filippo witty or indeed caustic power to [Reclining Nude], 1934 border and the League of Nations at the Galleria Il Milione. Padova and others, Del Bon radiant idea of light (‘a torturing de Pisis, Fausto Pirandello and discover elements forming a very oil on canvas, 92 × 73.5 cm votes to impose sanctions on introduced into the sphere of the phenomenon that disorients the Signing of the agreement between Francesco De Rocchi take part in particular expressive whole; there Iannaccone collection since 2004 Italy for an attack on one of its Death of Gigi Chessa. prize the character of the Lombard senses’), Birolli recalled him in a key Italy and Germany known as the the XIX Venice Biennial. is the energy, still latent but highly member countries. Victor Emanuel Chiarismo at which he had arrived section of his theory of colour: ‘The Rome-Berlin Axis. transparent, of determination to “This work is painted by Levi in III assumes the title of emperor of Italo Valenti’s passport is after his Fauvist period. The work, fire of the wheels revealed to Ezekiel The dialogue between Renato say in complete freedom what he quick, concise strokes so that the Ethiopia the following year. confiscated by the Fascist other versions of which were also in the second vision transcends Ottone Rosai holds a solo Guttuso (in Milan in 1934 and feels and how he feels it, which is back of the figure is completely authorities on his return from a painted by the artist, was numbered sensory illusion by so much that it show and delivers a lecture at 1935) and the Roman School something simultaneously ‘natural’ embedded in a landscape brimming Fausto Pirandello takes part in trip to Brussels and Paris, and not 150 and shown in room XVIII on can be expressed with any colour the Lyceum in Florence that is continues with a show at the and inventive. This energy is fed with mythic silence.” the editions of the International returned until 1946. the upper floor. It is a landscape and best of all with absolute white.’ subsequently published under Galleria Il Milione including work by a satirical turn of mind that Exhibition of Paintings held at the with a castle then of great renown It is precisely fire, the smouldering the title Difesa in the magazine by Corrado Cagli and Mario Mafai could even be a third sense in the [M. Vescovo (edited by), Luci del Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh Filippo de Pisis, Francesco in Fascist ‘hagiography’, namely the red of sunset, that links the two Frontespizio. Mediterraneo, exhibition catalogue as well as the Sicilian Gruppo dei artist, but fits in so well with the (Turin, Palazzo Bricherasio, 27 March from 1935 to 1939. De Rocchi, Carlo Levi, Francesco Rocca delle Caminate in the hills paintings, the second of which Quattro (Group of Four). ‘natural’ sense of nature and stems – 29 June 1997), Milan: Electa, 1997, Menzio and Fausto Pirandello take not far from Predappio, Mussolini’s should be, and indeed certainly The artists participating in the p. 169] from the same. The jocund, the Fausto Pirandello, Mario Mafai part in L’Art Italien des XIXe place of birth. There is, however, no is La nuova Ecumenica.” Mostra di pittura moderna italiana Aligi Sassu spends three months biting rustic, the Virgilian sense of and Ottone Rosai are among the et XXe siècles at the Jeu de Paume trace of celebration in the pale and at Villa Olmo in Como include in Paris in contact with Filippo de nature as quality and sonority of ► (28) Gigi Chessa, Nudo [Nude], artists taking part in the Exhibition in Paris. wholly emotive landscape.” [F. Lanza Pietromarchi (edited by), Renato Francesco Del Bon, Filippo de Birolli 1935, exhibition catalogue (Verona, Pisis, Alberto Magnelli, Massimo the environment, diffuse poetics, 1934 of Contemporary Italian Painting at Galleria dello Scudo, 18 October 1996 – 23 Pisis and Ottone Rosai (with Campigli and Fernand Léger. amatory, all abound […] An ancient, oil on canvas, 65.7 × 50.5 cm the Museum of the Legion of Honor ► B. Joppolo, “Renato Birolli”, [Description of the work in F. Rossi, November 1996), Verona: Edizioni Galleria L’intagliatore). C. Solza (edited by), Gli anni del Premio dello Scudo, 1996, pp. 31–32] rustic spirit thus dwells in Ziveri’s Iannaccone collection since 2014 in San Francisco (followed by other in Corriere padano, 22 June 1935. Bergamo. Arte in Italia intorno agli anni Luigi Broggini takes part in painting of which he seeks to venues in the United States). Trenta, exhibition catalogue (Bergamo, Mario Mafai, Roberto Melli and Galleria d’arte moderna e contemporanea the V Mostra del Sindacato rediscover the original ‘natural’ and “Chessa sought to obtain this ► C. Belli, Kn, Milan: Edizioni e Accademia Carrara, 25 September 1993 ► (14) Renato Birolli, I poeti Fausto Pirandello take part in the interprovinciale fascista delle Belle ‘primal’ senses, the original colour, greater consistency of image by Carlo Levi is interned in the town del Milione, 1935. – 9 January 1994, Milan: Electa, 1993] [The Poets], 1935 VI Mostra del Sindacato fascista Arti di Lombardia at the Palazzo the original motions, through the simplifying the use of sign and of Aliano in the province of Matera. oil on canvas, 90 × 108 cm del Lazio. della Permanente in Milan. conquests of contemporary pictorial outline to the utmost, a reduction This experience, which ends the ► (13) Renato Birolli, La nuova Iannaccone collection since 2001 originality. The atmosphere of that bewildered the few critics that following year, is followed by the Ecumene [The New Ecumene], The participants in the XX Venice Bruno Cassinari and Italo Valenti Sundays and games of bowls that noticed it, and through greater introduction of a vein of realism 1935 “His interrelated exploration of Biennial include Ottone Rosai, are admitted to the Accademia di reaches all the way to the mystical chromatic intensity and contrast with marked humanistic overtones oil on canvas, 136 × 155.5 cm Cézanne and Van Gogh, based Francesco De Rocchi, Filippo Belle Arti di Brera. flavour of the Ragazza con velo in the application of colour. Not into his painting. Iannaccone collection since 1994 on reproductions, began in 1933, de Pisis, Renato Guttuso, Mario [Girl with a Veil], a female saint for the intimacy of the scene but the possibly prompted by the exhibition Mafai, Francesco Menzio and Mario Mafai shows work at the a small church in the country, the minimal indication of its reality Wedding of Antonietta Raphaël “While 1935 opened with some of the Roman School at the Milione Fausto Pirandello, whose father Wertheim Gallery in London and fragrance of wild flowers, the truth that painting is capable of offering and Mario Mafai. oil paintings rich in consequences in February and March 1933 (but Luigi Pirandello dies after visiting decides not to take part in the of wild flowers.” in its firmest intonations. With (La nuova Ecumene, I poeti and already filtered in Milan by the the event. IV Mostra del Sindacato fascista some hesitation in the case of the Ottone Rosai takes part in an Eldorado), nearly all of the following Roman experience of Broggini), Belle Arti del Lazio due to the [R. Melli, cit. in the description of the work nudes between large, obtrusive exhibition of contemporary Italian months were spent with pastels which should also have brought to Works related to Carlo Levi’s by V. Rivosecchi in N. Vespignani (edited absence of many leading Roman by), Fazzini e Ziveri, exhibition catalogue figures with almost mythological art in Warsaw and produces two investigating the motif from which mind other expressionistic points internment in the region of Lucania artists. (Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, overtones (maternal figures with mural panels for the new railway those canvases partially derived, of reference, German or otherwise. are featured in his show at the 19 December 1984 – 3 February 1985), Milan: Electa, 1984, p. 28] a certain sculptural quality; while station in Florence. the theme that took shape in the In this expressionism, which Galleria Il Milione and in the one ► O. Rosai, Dentro la guerra, the approaches of Derain and iconography of the gynaecea and continued in any case until 1937−38 held the following year at the Rome: Quaderni di Novissima, Picasso are not too distant, the The second Rome Quadrennial, expanded at the same time to and in which the heat of the crisis Galleria della Cometa. 1934. ► (71) Ottone Rosai, I fidanzati dialogue with the sculptor Martini held at the Palazzo delle encompass the whole of nature: spurred the endeavour to bring [The Betrothed], 1934 shows no interruption) and small Esposizioni, marks the triumph of forests, sky and water, man and man and painting together through Renato Birolli and Aligi Sassu oil on panel, 70 × 49.7 cm figures of greater intimacy shown the Roman School. The exhibition the landscape. As he wrote in a the emotive magma of colour, the take part in the VII Sindacale Iannaccone collection since 2007 almost nostalgically on the point of is normally limited to living artists letter to Giuseppe Marchiori on titles Gynaeceum, Poets, Eldorado interprovinciale lombarda at making their departure. The game but an exception is made to hold 22 January 1935, ‘I have painted a and Chaos seem to emphasize the Palazzo della Permanente “This series can be seen as is played out, however, not so much a retrospective of work by composition of young men in suits the aspect of allegory more than in Milan, which displays a more pervaded by a new sense of nature in this iconographic development, Scipione. Personal rooms are (I poeti) in a landscape at sunset and the ‘emblem’ of the everyday expressionist character and and common humanity in which crucial though it certainly is, as assigned to Mario Mafai, Fausto a vision of Ezekiel in a suburban experience of disintegration. In looks forward to the Corrente the artist is unreservedly immersed between the presence of the figure Pirandello and Corrado Cagli. The setting.’ What vision is this? And short, the intentional and voluntary movement. with an organic symbiosis. It is an (nude or still life) and the setting, other participants include Ottone why Ezekiel? The fact that the nature of the project undermines obvious and indisputable fact that between the suspended visibility Rosai, Lugi Broggini, Roberto two works are mentioned in the the already undermined reading The Principe Umberto prize is this authentic proletariat (side by of the image and place, with a shift Melli, Alberto Ziveri, Filippo de same breath suggests a very close of the two terms of reference and awarded jointly to Manzù and side with the boys and pubescent in plane marked by the outline of Pisis, Francesco De Rocchi and relationship, the presence of internal especially the second, carried out to Francesco De Rocchi for his youths that constitute an amorous an armchair, a trace of drapery, an Renato Guttuso (in Rome for the cross-references shedding reciprocal — as previously stated — not first- painting La popolana lombarda. or erotic fugue) rises and sets up isolated note of colour.” occasion). Francesco Menzio is light. Another striking aspect of the hand but through reproductions: De Rocchi opens a studio in Milan camp, mute and imperious, in a member of the selection panel. letter is the bitter judgement passed beautiful but unfaithful. Birolli the following year and lives there the landscapes and the streets of [P. Fossati, “Il ruolo di Gigi Chessa pit- on the Milanese world, a personal must indeed have sensed this on a permanent basis as from tore”, in Gigi Chessa 1898-1935, exhibition country and town, which have in catalogue (Turin, Mole Antonelliana, Filippo de Pisis holds a solo show and collective life characterized himself, as he felt the need in 1936 1940 in contact with Gio Ponti, their solitude and silence, like the 14 November 1987 – 14 February 1988), at the Zwemmer gallery in London. by pain and solitude, ending with for first-hand knowledge in Paris.” Alfonso Gatto and Sergio Solmi. Milan: Fabbri Editori, 1987, pp. 31–32] figures, a premonitory quality of a reference to Ungaretti’s poem [“Renato Birolli”, in R. Margonari, the calm before the storm.” Opening of the Galleria della Allegria di naufraghi, the joy of the R. Modesti (edited by), Il Chiarismo Death of Edoardo Persico. Cometa, directed by Libero shipwrecked. Consider the moral Lombardo, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Palazzo Bagatti-Valsecchi de Libero, in Rome. reverberation of the prophetic – Mantua, Casa del Mantegna, 1986), Renato Birolli makes his first trip figure. Ezekiel is the awareness of Milan: Vangelista, 1986, p. 109] to Paris, where he meets Lionello

374 375 CRITICAL CHRONOLOGY 1920–1945 — EDITED BY ALESSANDRA ACOCELLA AND CATERINA TOSCHI 1937

Venturi. During his military service ► (15) Renato Birolli, Il caos ► (50) Mario Mafai, Garofani 1937 ► S. Bini, Metamorfosi ► (94) Alberto Ziveri, Autoritratto bring those new discoveries into and meditated impression, and in Milan, he meets Beniamino [Chaos], 1936 bianchi con mammole [White - 46 disegni di Renato Birolli, [Self-Portrait], 1937 play all together, this impetus found elevated by gesture, sensitive to Joppolo and Renato Guttuso, who oil on canvas, 110 × 90 cm Carnations and Sweets Violets], Hitler receives Mussolini in Berlin’s Milan: Campo Grafico, 1937. oil on panel, 18 × 13.2 cm at first, sometimes confusedly the quality of thought. Almost as has a studio in the city. Iannaccone collection since 2001 circa 1936 Olympic Stadium. Iannaccone collection since 1994 and as though laboriously, a fully though the image always required Mario Mafai starts work on the oil on canvas, 51 × 39 cm ► P. Fierens, De Pisis, Paris: resolved outcome in image […] Even justification in depth, a reason for reading room of the Casa del “The first photographic Iannaccone collection since 2008 Introduction of the racial laws Chroniques du jour, 1937. “Ziveri’s painting was both timid a classic, age-old subject like the liberation from indeterminacy, to Balilla (Fascist Youth centre) in reproduction of the painting in Italy. and daring then and so was his model in the studio could thus turn win the right to appear. Drawing the Trastevere district of Rome, appeared in Valori primordiali (pl. “From 1931, when Scipione seemed mental attitude, prudent and rash, into threatening, sneering drift also partakes of this ‘timelessness, designed by the architect Luigi XIX) in February 1938 together to abandon his Roman friends, to Planning begins for the Expo wise, aware of what was growing all of senses. La rissa [The Brawl], a sort of nobility enclosed in a Moretti. Alberto Ziveri, Renato with works by Carrà, De Chirico, 1935. the year of the partial success scheduled to be held in Rome around and stubbornly determined a painting of great size and great measure of perfection’, to quote the Marino Mazzacurati and Antonietta Ghiringhelli, Radice, Rho and at the Rome Quadrennial, all of in 1942. Mussolini inaugurates at the same time to carve out his commitment that in some ways painter Ruggero Savinio. Broggini Raphaël are also involved in the Fontana, examples of the modern Mafai’s work shows us a painter the Cinecittà film studio complex. own place, his own individual recapitulates Ziveri’s very first indeed lays claim to timelessness decorations, which are completed trends of contemporary Italian endeavouring to rediscover a self consistency. A great deal naturally step towards a new approach in himself by seldom dating his in 1937. art. They were then reprinted, cut in half […] The sense of a Show of work by Ottone Rosai came in the years that followed painting and that strives to restate drawings. On leaving his studio, with a shocking reversal of intent, mythology to be constructed always and his pupils (Rosai Ottone to make that juvenile vocation everything about a gory scene they can speak of today as of a Aligi Sassu is arrested and serves by Telesio Interlandi in Il Tevere, remains implicit, however, in these e i suoi Allievi) at the Galleria more ramified and complex, but of plebeian violence, stops just recent but already mythical past an 18-month sentence for political 24–25 November, as evidence of the five years of immersion in himself, Genova, then directed by Stefano for some reason — or many — that one step short of the conscious, […] All or nearly all of Broggini’s conspiracy. degenerate character of a ‘foreign, face-to-face with the easel, and Cairola (who subsequently shows mental and pictorial predisposition exhibition of vulgarity in its effort drawings represent a closed, Bolshevik, Jewish art. While refuge in the studio of a Roman works by the Corrente group). remained exactly the same apart to capture the form, the stupidity intimate place, a room where quick, Luigi Broggini takes part in the VII Interlandi chose Caos because of who has lived in Saint-Germain. Francesco De Rocchi also holds from the accentuation of its initial and the brutality of fighting pale nudes are apparitions, flashes Mostra del Sindacato interpro- its title and openly expressionistic Withered flowers and demolitions, a show there. characteristics. Once timid, he everywhere.” of light in the enveloping shadow. vinciale fascista Belle Arti di nature, the possibility cannot be figures in the sunshine and studio became still more introverted, surly The intimate tone is, however, Lombardia at the Palazzo della ruled out of an allusion in the article interiors, posed objects and chaste The series of events leading up to and doggedly wrapped up in his [F. D’Amico, “Alberto Ziveri”, in F. D’Amico always turned into the sharpness (edited by), Alberto Ziveri, exhibition cata- Permanente in Milan. to the appearance of some artists landscapes remain a legend in the Corrente group’s opposition thoughts. Once daring, he became logue (Modena, Galleria Civica-Palazzina and almost pitilessness of an from Milan and Turin before the the Roman painting that was, to the Fascist regime includes the a savage and unyielding foe of all dei Giardini, 27 September – 29 November incisive, piercing line that appears 1992), Bologna: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, The Galleria della Cometa holds Fascist special tribunal and the trial after the sulphurous, surrealistic- arrests of Aligi Sassu (sentenced convention, the silent adversary 1992, pp. 8–10] to caress the forms while it imposes solo shows of work by Roberto of Birolli, who was imprisoned in expressionistic detonation, well to ten years but pardoned in of all facile deference and reluctant motion on the features of a face and Melli (presented by Libero de 1937. The work’s scandalous first on the way (precisely with Mafai) 1938), Luigi Grosso, Renato Birolli even to engage in any dialogue with the folds of a body that brings them Libero) and Alberto Ziveri (with an appearance in 1938 was followed to becoming exquisitely tonal with (who spends six weeks in prison), whatever was happening around ► (4v) Arnaldo Badodi, Il suicidio to the most immediate actuality of introduction in the catalogue by by its publication in Sandro Bini’s sophisticated nonchalance and the Italo Valenti, Beniamino Joppolo him, near or far. Thus he became a del pittore [The Painter’s Suicide], lived experience.” Roberto Melli). monograph of 1941 for Edizioni di most harmonious dissonance.” and Giuseppe Migneco, who are solitary and distant presence in the 1937 Corrente. The painting’s reception released after a few days. panorama of Italian painting.” oil on plywood, 58 × 48 cm [L. Cavallo, “Luigi Broggini, itinerario critico”, in Luigi Broggini opere 1929-1945, [M. Fagiolo dell’Arco, foreword to M. ► C. Carrà, “La VII Mostra was in any case problematic and Iannaccone collection since 1994 Milan: Edizioni Galleria Il Mappamondo, Fagiolo dell’Arco (edited by), I fiori di [F. D’Amico, “Alberto Ziveri”, in F. D’Amico 1990, pp. 15–17] Sindacale Lombarda alla even the most up-to-date critics Mafai, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Ennio Morlotti makes his first trip (edited by), Alberto Ziveri, exhibition cata- Galleria Netta Vespignani, October– Permanente”, in L’Ambrosiano, were confused in their reading to Paris and visits the Expo, where logue (Modena, Galleria Civica-Palazzina “Badodi’s painting is informed by November 1989; Verona, Galleria dello dei Giardini, 27 September – 29 November anno XIV, no. 40, 15 February of such a complex and enigmatic Scudo, 9 December 1989 – 20 January Picasso presents Guernica. a predisposition to consider reality 1992), Bologna: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 1990), Turin: Allemandi, 1990, p. 15] 1936. work.” 1992, p. 7] in the light of ‘everyday tragedy’, as Renato Guttuso moves to Rome can be seen not only in the choice of ► L. Vitali, Vincent van Gogh, [P. Rusconi, description of the work in A. and stays in the house of the certain subjects, like Il suicidio del Negri, S. Bignami, P. Rusconi, G. Zanchetti Milan: Hoepli, 1936. (edited by), Anni Trenta. Arti in Italia oltre il Marchesa Maria de Seta, owner ► (95) Alberto Ziveri, Studio per pittore, but also in the crepuscular fascismo, exhibition catalogue (Florence, of the Galleria Mediterranea in “La rissa” [Study for “The Brawl”], gloom of the colours with their Palazzo Strozzi, 22 September 2012 – 27 January 2013), Florence: Giunti, 2012, Palermo. It is there that he meets 1937 dull, muted shades. Curious and p. 153] Maria Luisa Dotti, known as oil on canvas, 65 × 70 cm not devoid of a certain relish is the Mimise, who becomes his wife Iannaccone collection since 1995 contrast between the sombre spirit ► (42) Renato Guttuso, in 1950. of this painting and the intentional Autoritratto [Self-Portrait], 1936 “On returning to his studio in or involuntary humour introduced India ink on paper, 450 × 320 mm Ottone Rosai begins to frequent Rome, he thought again of what into the artist’s figuration by his Iannaccone collection since 1995 the large group of writers, he had seen in Paris, Belgium and penchant for distortion, sometimes including Eugenio Montale and the Netherlands during the trip going over the top into caricature.” “Every morning when I shave, I Mario Luzi, who gather at the made in 1937 in search of ancient see a slightly different man in the Giubbe Rosse café in Florence. things so different from those [V. Bucci, “Artisti che espongono. Due giovani”, in Corriere della Sera, 28 January mirror; a touch, just enough to (Piero della Francesca above all, 1937] sense that nothing happens inside Afro, Corrado Cagli, Mario Mafai, Giotto and Masaccio) that he and me without leaving trace. The face Fausto Pirandello and Alberto so many other young ‘restorers’ is everything. The story that we are Ziveri take part in the VII Mostra of Italian greatness had loved: living through and the trials of all del Sindacato Fascista Belle Arti Titian and Rembrandt, Delacroix ► (26) Luigi Broggini, Donna the days are there on people’s faces. del Lazio in Rome. and Courbet, but also the smeared che allaccia la calza [Woman We wear it inscribed with the events light of El Greco, the sumptuous Fastening her Stocking], 1937 that happen to us directly and those Luigi Broggini takes part in chromatic substance of Rubens, pencil and wash, 350 × 250 mm that take place far away. We are the the VIII Mostra del Sindacato and everything able in one way or Iannaccone collection since 2005 real film of reality, and this is what interprovinciale fascista Belle Arti another — in the Louvre, Les Halles I paint.” di Lombardia at the Palazzo della or the seventeenth-century Dutch “To return to drawing, this displays Permanente in Milan. interiors of the Rijksmuseum — to the constant operation of a filter [Renato Guttuso cit. in M. Farinella, “I speak to him of ‘penetrating and for correspondence between the 70 anni del giovane Guttuso”, in L’Ora, Palermo, 10 December 1981] Alberto Ziveri goes on a trip sensual reality’ and ‘strong, swift, intimate needs and emotions and around Europa and experiences realistic life’. Transcribed in the the outer manifestation of the the painting of Rembrandt, Goya heat of the moment, immediately image, always bashfully reluctant and the Flemish masters first after his return to Italy and to reveal itself, made graceful by hand. certainly in an anxious rush to instinct, by the inflected, reflected

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1938 Roberto Melli, Fausto Pirandello ► (37) Renato Guttuso, Ritratto di well as a foolish and empty turncoat ► (2) Arnaldo Badodi, Ballerine that he clothes and endows — but sense […] If Broggini appears 1939 and Antonietta Raphaël take part Mimise [Portrait of Mimise], 1938 who was willing to be transported by [Ballerinas], 1938 does not counterfeit — with human to share the basic attitude, if he Prohibition of marriage in the Terza Mostra del Sindacato oil on cardboard mounted on the political winds of the moment.” oil on canvas, 65.5 × 49.5 cm characteristics, so as to express at first declared his inclination Galeazzo Ciano and Joachim von between Jews and “Arians” regionale fascista Belle Arti del canvas, 70.6 × 50 cm Iannaccone collection since 2000 with it and for it the deep varieties towards a return to the impression, Ribbentrop sign the Pact of Steel and introduction of anti-Semitic Lazio. Iannaccone collection since 2008 [G. di Genova, Storia dell’arte Italiana del of his incorruptible love. But here there appear to be no secure military alliance between Italy and ‘900 per generazioni. Generazione primo measures to eliminate Jews decennio, 2nd ed., Bologna: Edizioni Bora, “Painted in 1938 and first exhibited are the people too, who instead grounds for the identification of Germany in Berlin. from the education system, art ► G. Marchiori, “Filippo de Pisis”, “[Guttuso] was to paint Mimise 1997, pp. 175–76] in the artist’s solo show of appear so often counterfeited and ancestry as regards the specific exhibitions, state institutes of in Emporium, January 1938. in intense portraits such as the February−March 1941 at the Bottega distorted in his works, not through aspect of movement […] It Creation of the Bergamo Prize culture and public offices. Birth Ritratto di Mimise con cappello rosso ► (16) Renato Birolli, Le signorine di Corrente, Ballerine presents any game of mentally formal seems to me, however, that at (1939–42) by Giuseppe Bottai, of the magazine La difesa della ► N. Savarese, “Pittura di Renato [Portrait of Mimise in a Red Hat] Rossi [The Misses Rossi], 1938 a melancholy gynaeceum. The falsification, however, but in a present, at best, sculpture tends Minister of Education, in op- razza. Guttuso”, in Corrente, y. I, no. 7, and Nudo sdraiato [Reclining Nude] oil on canvas, 100 × 120 cm dancers in tutus and red slippers human and revelatory meeting with to accord priority to the tension position to the Cremona Prize 30 April 1938. and emphasize her love of animals Iannaccone collection since 2016 (an unlikely colour for ballet and them, as with nature; creatures of forms rather than movement (1939–41), founded by Roberto Adolf Hitler visits Italy and is in Mano di Mimise con la rondine used by Badodi to accentuate of his dismay, his distortions and in itself; that, in particular, the Farinacci. greeted with military parades ► F. de Pisis, “La cosiddetta arte [Mimise’s Hand with a Swallow]. The “Shown in March 1939 at the first the chromatic values of the his delights, reflections in a heart history of movement in action, in Rome, Naples and Florence. metafisica”, in Emporium, XLIV, 11, perfect German profile of the woman Corrente exhibition, Le signorine composition) are portrayed in what and a love that were anything but a of instantaneity, has been eluded Ottone Rosai, Alberto Ziveri, November 1938. who became his wife in 1950 was Rossi felicitously combines an appears to be a tense moment. The smooth mirror.” or is present at worst but as Filippo de Pisis, Renato Guttuso, Munich Conference between to be ruined by a series of terrible everyday scene and a fantastic seated girl in the centre has a bitter though frozen by monumentality, Mario Mafai, Francesco Menzio Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain and ► G. Marchiori, Scipione, Milan: accidents. Guttuso painted her apparition. The subjects are Rosa expression and another puts an arm [C. Betocchi, preface to 100 opere established by rhetoric and and Fausto Pirandello take part di Ottone Rosai, exhibition catalogue Daladier. Hoepli, 1938. again in Ritratto di Mimise (1947), Rossi, then aged 21, whom he was to protectively around her shoulders in (Prato, Galleria d’Arte Falsetti, 1965), mannerism.” in the third Rome Quadrennial. reassembling her beautiful features marry in November 1938, with her a vain attempt to comfort her. The Prato: Edizioni Galleria d’Arte Falsetti, 1965, p. 8] In Milan Ernesto Treccani founds in a post-Cubist perspective.” sisters Gianna and Rinalda (on the artist also introduces some touches [R. Modesti, “Luigi Broggini”, in R. Modesti The first two exhibitions organized (edited by), Luigi Broggini, exhibition the journal Vita Giovanile, right) and their cousin Carla Rossi, of irony into the group portrait, catalogue (Varese, Musei Civici di Villa by the journal Corrente di Vita subsequently renamed Corrente di [F. Carapezza Guttuso, “La Roma who later married Joppolo. Wearing however, such as the figure on the ► (23) Luigi Broggini, Figura al Mirabello, 23 March – 28 April 1991), Milan: Giovanile take place in Milan at di Guttuso”, in F. Carapezza Guttuso, Vangelista, 1991, p. 28] Vita Giovanile and then Corrente E. Crispolti (edited by), Guttuso a dress of cobalt blue with a scarlet left with her arms dangling like a sole [Figure in the Sun], 1938–39 the Palazzo della Permanente and (around which figures like Renato 1912-2012, exhibition catalogue (Rome, pattern that set off her copper- puppet.” bronze sculpture, the Galleria P. Grande. The artists Complesso del Vittoriano, 12 October Birolli, Renato Guttuso and Aligi 2012 – 10 February 2013), Milan: Skira, coloured hair, Rosa, affectionately 43.5 × 29 × 13 cm taking part include Renato Birolli, Sassu gather) until its closure by 2012, p. 30] known as Ro, is the fulcrum of the [E. Pontiggia, description of the work in E. Iannaccone collection since 2010 Renato Guttuso, Mario Mafai and Pontiggia, N. Colombo (edited by), Milano order of Mussolini in 1940. Vita composition by virtue of her almost Anni Trenta. L’arte e la città, exhibition Fausto Pirandello. Giovanile publishes the article ► (36) Renato Guttuso, Natura central position and the fact that catalogue (Milan, Spazio Oberdan, 2 “Light. I would describe it as full- December 2004 – 27 February 2005), ‘Pittura e pubblico’ by Arnaldo morta con garofani e frutta [Still she is portrayed frontally looking Milan: Mazzotta, 2004, p. 228] bodied, like the sensuality. With Antonietta Raphaël is forced by Badodi defending the intellectual Life with Carnations and Fruit], 1938 towards the viewer. The presence of strong contrasts, piercing, but also anti-Semitic discrimination to and moral dignity of the artist oil on pasteboard mounted on a huge orange hat (perhaps Rosa’s, attentive to the shadowiest shadow, move with her daughters to the and rebelling against the Fascist canvas, 47 × 54 cm as she is the only one bareheaded), ► (1v) Arnaldo Badodi, the lightest light, the most hidden region of Liguria, where she can imposition of order. Iannaccone collection since 2008 the intrusive curtain encroaching Abbozzo di una sartoria and intimate darkness. For light count on the support of Emilio on the foreground and above all the [Sketch of a Tailor’s Shop], 1938 too, Broggini’s work was born to Jesi and Alberto Della Ragione. Work by Filippo de Pisis, Renato “An acute and unconcealed sense group of colourful tumblers in the oil on canvas, 43.5 × 54.5 cm move, in need of a self-propelling Mario Mafai frequently visits them Guttuso, Mario Mafai, Fausto of colour, as revealed with greater distant background turn what could Iannaccone collection since 1995 base. It and not the light must move there and meets Giacomo Manzù, Pirandello, Ottone Rosai and sureness for example in the Natura have been an innocuous family round her. Light caressed over Renato Guttuso and Renato Scipione is shown in the second morta di garofani e frutta, with a portrait into a visionary scene “This painting reveals Badodi’s broad expanses but also slapped Birolli through relations with the Rome Quadrennial. white that is a voice awakening the midway between a dream and an interest in the world of labour, down in streaks, gleams, flares, two collectors and shows at the other things from their somnolent apparition.” where acute observation discovers patches, cutting sneers. Deep and Galleria Genova. He also holds a Renato Guttuso’s first solo show state.” the presence of a sort of minor epic dramatic but also tender, darting, show at the Galleria Arcobaleno is held in Rome at the Galleria [E. Pontiggia, “Gli artisti di Corrente. in every action, object and activity sad and astonished. The world, it in Venice with a catalogue edited Tavole”, in E. Pontiggia, A. Paglione [N. Savarese (1938), cit. in F. Carapezza della Cometa, which is then closed (edited by), Sassu e Corrente 1930/1943. of the working day. This was the seems, began with light. And the by Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti. Guttuso, E. Crispolti (edited by), Guttuso La rivoluzione del colore, exhibition down for showing the work of two 1912-2012, exhibition catalogue (Rome, approach of the Hermetic artists, use of the expression to see the Called up as a reservist, Mafai is catalogue (Palazzo de’ Mayo / S.E.T. Complesso del Vittoriano, 12 October Jewish artists, Corrado Cagli and Spazio Esposizioni Temporanee, 25 July who accepted the painful reality of light in the sense of to be born is not stationed in Macerata, where he 2012 – 10 February 2013), Milan: Skira, – 7 October 2012), Turin-London-Venice- Cecil Blunt, the husband of the 2012, pp. 28–29] city life and the urban outskirts and rhetoric, or at least not intended as remains until 1942 (with periodical Contessa Anna Letizia Pecci-Blunt. New York: Umberto Allemandi recognized in that downtrodden such. Yes, every work by Broggini trips to Rome and Genoa). & C., 2012, p. 74] world elements of melancholy comes from light, from its own Renato Birolli holds a show at the ► (17) Renato Birolli, Maschere and unassuming pride inherent in light, with which it lives and moves, Ottone Rosai shows work at the Galleria Arcobaleno in Venice. [Masks], 1938–39 ► (1) Arnaldo Badodi, L’armadio everyone and part of the human enumerating its hypotheses in Galleria Barbaroux in Milan. oil on canvas, 63 × 77.5 cm [The Wardrobe], 1938 condition.” space, hypotheses that come true, The IX Mostra di Pittura del Iannaccone collection since 1993 oil on canvas, 54.5 × 43.5 cm that become projected, mobile A celebration of Sicilian painting Sindacato interprovinciale fascista Iannaccone collection since 1995 [M. Falciano, Arnaldo Badodi e “Corrente”, reality.” at the Teatro Massimo Vittorio Rome: El Ma, 1995, p. 305] Belle Arti di Milano at the Palazzo “Although Birolli showed himself Emanuele in Palermo with five della Permanente in Milan prompts to be strong even during the most “Shown in the Corrente exhibition [R. Modesti, “Luigi Broggini”, in R. Modesti shows including the IX Mostra (edited by), Luigi Broggini, exhibition an article by Giuseppe Marchiori difficult of times, as demonstrated of March 1939, the Armadio only ► (72) Ottone Rosai, All’osteria catalogue (Varese, Musei Civici di Villa Sindacale d’Arte, in which Renato in the Corriere padano on young in his letters from prison, his suggests a female presence through [In the Tavern], 1938 Mirabello, 23 March – 28 April 1991), Guttuso takes part. Milan: Vangelista, 1991, pp. 27–28] Milanese artists including Renato painting is always embedded the violated intimacy of an open oil on canvas, 75.5 × 65.5 cm Birolli, Fiorenzo Tomea, Gabriele with elements of his religious or wardrobe. The clothes are stage Iannaccone collection since 2012 Filippo de Pisis returns to Milan Mucchi, Aligi Sassu, Giacomo tortorous emotional state. Other costumes worn by an unseen ► (22) Luigi Broggini, Ballerina, and remains there until 1943. Manzù, Italo Valenti, Renato than references to James Ensor figure. Art is a key used in an “The story of his real relations 1938 Guttuso, Giuseppe Migneco and and expressionist influences, attempt to enter a strictly private with nature, people and the world bronze sculpture, 32 × 19 × 17 cm Luigi Broggini is awarded the Arnaldo Badodi. already fully roused by Corrente, and incomprehensible universe.” lies here in his paintings. It is here Iannaccone collection since 2005 Fumagalli Prize by the Accademia it is for this reason that Le that it is expressed and endures. di Brera, where Italo Valenti Ottone Rosai, Francesco maschere fluttuanti (1938) should [M. Pizziolo, “Dobbiamo parlare agli uomini First of all, his relations with “Movement. I believe I can rule out begins to teach a course on the le parole della vita”, in M. Pizziolo (edited De Rocchi, Mario Mafai and be interpreted as an existentialist by), Corrente. Le parole della vita. Opere nature, understood as inhabited any possibility of Broggini having nude. Alberto Ziveri take part in the metphor of the difficult period of 1930-1945, exhibition catalogue (Milan, nature, the respect and love for been touched even slightly by Palazzo Reale, 18 June – 7 September XXI Venice Biennial. fascism, observed by an opposer, as 2008), Milan: Skira, 2008, p. 22] its innocence that endures but dynamism in the specific Futurist

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A solo show of Umberto Lilloni ► (67) Antonietta Raphaël, ► (89) Italo Valenti, Gabbiani 1940 Artisti di Corrente in Via della ► (38) Renato Guttuso, Ritratto completely new things. I would like “The ‘distance’ in which Badodi at the Galleria Grande in Milan La strada al mare [Seagulls], 1939 Spiga 9, Milan, directed by Duilio di Mario Alicata [Portrait of Mario to attain complete freedom in art, loved to paint the little people coincides with a monograph on [The Road to the Sea], 1939 oil on canvas, 40 × 50 cm Italy declares war on France and Morosini. Alberto della Ragione, a Alicata], 1940 a freedom that, as in life, lies in of his billiard halls and crowded the artist by Emilio Radius. Guido oil on canvas, 44 × 55.5 cm Iannaccone collection since 2004 Great Britain. Hitler and Mussolini naval engineer from Sorrento but oil on canvas, 55 × 45 cm truth.’” interiors […] proved critical Piovene uses the term chiarismo Iannaccone collection since 1993 meet in Munich to agree on the Genoese by adoption, becomes Iannaccone collection since 1994 of the anonymous monumentality in his review of the show. “It was now 1939, however, a conditions of an armistice for the primary supporter of Corrente. [A. M. Ruta, “Percorsi culturali e strutture of the art of the Fascist regime, linguistiche negli scritti del giovane “Having abandoned painting year that saw a series of works France. “Mario Alicata’s Sicilian parents Guttuso”, in A. M. Ruta, E. Crispolti (edited of post-romantic affability. The After a trip to Paris, Ennio Morlotti almost completely during the evocatively associated with ► A. Capasso, “La condizione moved in 1933 to Rome, where he by), Renato Guttuso. Gli anni della for- fragmented, acid colour expanded mazione 1925-1940, exhibition catalogue moves to Milan and studies under 1930s, Antonietta took it up again a utopian ideal of happiness, Italian troops occupy Sollum and dell’arte”, in Quadrivio, y. VIII, no. attended the Tasso high school and (Catania, Galleria d’Arte Moderna de in closely woven patterns became Aldo Carpi and Achille Funi at the in Genoa, far away from Mario. lightness and freedom: I giovani Sidi el-Barrani in Egypt. 44, August 1940. embarked on political activities “Le Ciminiere”, 6 April – 27 May 2001), a stage for heated encounters with Accademia di Brera. He soon joins La strada al mare is one of the Greci, Gli amanti, I gabbiani and with companions like Zevi and Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, objects and people. The very irony 2001, p. 31] the Corrente group. first paintings produced in her the two versions of the Sogno. The Tripartite pact between Germany, ► A. Galvano, “Francesco Alatri. After various experiences, with which the warm atmospheres improvised studio […] The landscape Giovani Greci is an Edenic vision, Italy and Japan to establish a “new Menzio”, in Le Arti, May 1940. he joined the group of anti-fascist of these paintings are explored Work by Filippo de Pisis, Mario is built up in thick, streaky the dream of an earthly paradise, order” in Europe and Central Asia students and set off on the path ► (40) Renato Guttuso, Gabbia is the living boundary of an Mafai, Fausto Pirandello and brushwork where it is easy to trace of a golden age of life in complete directed against the Soviet Union. ► R. Guttuso, ‘Nota a Mafai’, in that led him to communism in 1940 bianca e foglie [White Cage imagination that knew few pauses.” Scipione is featured in the Italian the action of the hand. Her sculpture harmony with nature. Valenti draws Primato, y. I, no. 13, September […] The first portrait of Alicata and Leaves], 1940–41 pavilion at the New York World’s is also like this in that every moment here on the gynaecea and Eldorados Mario Mafai wins the Bergamo 1940. by Renato Guttuso was painted in oil on canvas, 45 × 55 cm [V. Fagone, “Fede nella pittura (Badodi all’Eunomia)”, in NAC-Notiziario Arte Fair. of its gestation can be followed, all of Birolli but adds a flying figure Prize with Renato Guttuso in third 1940, the year he joined the party. Iannaccone collection since 2005 Contemporanea, no. 28, 1 January 1970, the slaps and caresses.” that glides down towards the youths place. ► T. Interlandi, “La condizione The realism of the features leaves pp. 6–7] Work by Filippo de Pisis, Renato in the foreground: a surrealistic dell’arte”, in Quadrivio, 1940. room for an intimate interpretation “Thus finally freeing him from Guttuso, Mario Mafai and Scipione [L. Mattarella, “Mario Mafai e Antonietta element vaguely reminiscent of Carlo Levi is forced to return of the character of Alicata, who is Primordialism (in the later thirties) ► (5) Arnaldo Badodi, Donna Raphaël”, in L. Mattarella, E. Pontiggia, T. is shown in San Francisco at Sparagni (edited by), Arte in due. Coppie Chagall that has few parallels in to Italy after the German ► E. Mastrolonardo, “Arnaldo presented in this painting with a and pushing him (in the early al caffè [Woman at the Café], 1940 the Golden Gate International di artisti in Europa 1900-1945, exhibition the Italian painting of the time occupation of Paris. Badodi”, in Augustea, y. XV, no. gruff and determined expression. forties) towards a concreteness of oil on panel, 40 × 30 cm catalogue (Turin, Palazzo Cavour, 14 Exhibition of Contemporary Art. March – 8 June 2003), Milan: Mazzotta, […] In the Gabbiani three gigantic 23-24, October 1940. The red flag behind him, a clear existential interests and ultimately Iannaccone collection since 1996 p. 177] birds circle over a row of bare Ottone Rosai, Filippo de Pisis, reference to their shared political even a physicality of impressive ► S. Bini, “Arnaldo Badodi”, in trees, symbolizing the ability (as Renato Guttuso, Mario Mafai, ► A. Gatto, Luigi Broggini, Milan: aims, forms part of the study of this sensory perception (above all “At first sight, the painting [Donna Corrente, y. II, no. 6, 31 March ► (90) Italo Valenti, I giovani Greci in the Amanti) to soar above the Umberto Lilloni and Francesco Edizioni del Milione, 1940. specific object developed over the in his renowned still lifes of the al caffè] recalls the portraits Birolli 1939. [The Young Greeks], 1939 surrounding wretchedness and Menzio take part in an exhibition period in various works, especially period). This concreteness also painted around 1940, where the oil on canvas, 40 × 50 cm set off for other horizons. The of contemporary Italian painters still lifes.” characterized his presence as anti- influence of the Vienna and Munich ► F. de Pisis, Poesie, Rome: Iannaccone collection since 2015 lyrical motif of the work consists, and sculptors at the Kunsthaus in intimist at the time in the Milanese Secession movements was filtered Modernissima, 1939. however, in the reversal of natural Zurich. [G. Lotti, description of the work in F. group gathered around Corrente. through painters of the Veneto area Carapezza Guttuso, D. Favatella Lo Cascio “He was always fascinated by proportions. Rather than appearing (edited by), Guttuso ritratti e autoritratti, The realistic impact of Guttuso’s like Gino Rossi and Maggioli as ► G. Raimondi, “Dodici dipinti the pre-Socratics and their small against a background of sky The journal Corrente is closed exhibition catalogue (Bagheria, Museo work unquestionably looked well as Trentini and Zamponi from Guttuso, 18 April – 21 June 2015), Cava de’ regalati da Filippo de Pisis alla enlightened, enlightening, visionary or sea, as they usually do (and as down for its critical stance towards Tirreni: Ediguida, 2015, pp. 142, 144] forward to a new sensitivity with Verona. [...] Birolli, Sassu and the R. Galleria d’Arte Moderna”, thought, simultaneously simple Valenti himself painted them in the the Fascist regime. respect to reality and destiny, and others of the Corrente generation in Le Arti, II, fasc. II, December and complicated […] Mythology Lovers and the first version of the gradually came to predominate in strove for greater clarity in that 1939 – January 1940. offered him the archetypes of our Sogno), the gulls here have wings First issue of Primato, edited ► (39) Renato Guttuso La finestra Rome as against a hypothetical line period, taking the Secession as imagination and psyche translated larger than some of the trees.” by Giuseppe Bottai and Giorgio blu [The Blue Window], 1940–41 of expressionist morphology, the a demonstration of the possibility ► O. Rosai, “Le mie esperienze”, into glowing poetry as well as Vecchietti. The contributors oil on canvas, 45 × 50 cm expressionist relapses of Scipione’s of rational control of the work that in Il Tempo, 2 November 1939. allusive, evocative titles for his [E. Pontiggia, “Tra Brera e Corrente. include Mario Mafai, Ottone Rosai, Iannaccone collection since 2005 neo-baroque visionary dimension did not preclude the emotional La prima stagione milanese di Valenti canvases, where he conjured up 1933-1943”, in M. Bianchi (edited by), Italo Renato Guttuso and Filippo de or the ‘primordial’ imaginative value of colour; almost a return ► R. Guttuso, “Appunti”, Helen’s striking dance or the Valenti 1912-1995 il suo lirico candore, Pisis. “The artist sees the world through projection of Cagli.” to order understood as the dream exhibition catalogue (Milan, Museo in Il Selvaggio, y. VIII, no. 9–10, 30 adventurous vessel of Ulysses. della Permanente, 25 May – 8 July 2012), the filter of his strong individuality of a happy art and life. In direct November 1939. But alongside Homeric luminosity Tesserete: Pagine d’Arte, 2012, p. 38] Luigi Broggini holds a solo show so as to attain a representation of [E. Crispolti, “Attraverso e oltre il contact with a changing reality, centenario”, in F. Carapezza Guttuso, E. lay the depths of awareness at the Galleria del Milione in Milan. the object that seeks to be first and Crispolti (edited by), Guttuso 1912-2012, Badodi’s vision instead splintered and intuition. Italo was no less foremost an assertion of his ‘lyrical exhibition catalogue (Rome, Complesso and took on a more openly del Vittoriano, 12 October 2012 – 10 impressed by the tombs of Mycenae Renato Guttuso, Virgilio Guzzi, personality’, a tool that turns February 2013), Milan: Skira, 2012, p. 69] expressionistic character that than by the Parthenon, by the Luigi Montanarini, Orfeo Tamburi, reality into the basis of poetry. closely recalls some portraits by Eleusinian mysteries than by Pericle Fazzini and Alberto Ziveri There is no incompatibility between Kokoschka, the other indivisible Epidaurus. He sought inspiration hold a group show at the Galleria reality and fantasy in the poetics of ► (4) Arnaldo Badodi, Caffè face of that culture. His need for also from the oracles, at Knossos; di Roma. realism, as fantasy does not in fact [Café], 1940 psychological penetration and he observed the dolmen and felt exist outside things. Halted at the oil on plywood, 48 × 58 cm thematic accentuation found an the Celtic spirit of the woods and Renato Guttuso, Mario Mafai evocation of dream and memory, Iannaccone collection since 1994 outlet here. Faced with the agitation the druids. To placate his own and Fausto Pirandello take part abstract art is instead reduced of the female figure, the dramatic understanding and find certain in the IX Mostra del Sindacato to an ‘intelligent amusement’, “In the Caffè the violent reds of the tension that initially struggled for impossible answers, he travelled all interprovinciale fascista Belle Arti whereas the act of painting, for chairs animate the entire scene with expression explodes in free, open the paths along which the human del Lazio. Guttuso as for the realists, admits shrill notes and gleams, creating forms emphasized by harmonies mind has arrived at deep insights no amusement whatsoever. Like a great bustle among the figures and contrasts of colour bathed in and created fertile symbols to Mario Mafai shows work in Milan every crucial choice, it ‘must be inhabiting a lyrical atmosphere full artificial light.” give a sense to objects and events at the Galleria Barbaroux. taken seriously’. The continuity of sounds and echoes.” or express the same, to trace the of intent found between the work [Description of the work, M. Falciano (edited by), Arnaldo Badodi e “Corrente”, [E. Mastrolonardo, “Nota su Arnaldo archetypes of our imagination and Renato Guttuso holds a solo show of the 1930s and his subsequent Rome: El Ma, 1995, pp. 327–28] Badodi”, in Meridiano di Roma, no. 4, 26 the figures of our thought, to take at the Galleria Genova with a production is demonstrated by the January 1941, p. IV] refuge in the apparent simplicity presentation by Alberto Moravia. unchanged sense of realism as the of Chinese quatrains.” Ottone Rosai also shows work bearing of true witness that Guttuso ► (3) Arnaldo Badodi, ► (60) Fausto Pirandello, there. maintained also in his maturity: ‘I Il biliardo [Billiards], 1940 Spiaggia [Beach], circa 1940 [C. Carena, “Italo e i suoi quadri”, would like to speak clearly and to oil on canvas, 69 × 49.5 cm oil on panel, 74 × 106 cm in C. Carena, S. Pult (edited by), Italo Valenti. Catalogo ragionato A show of work by Renato Birolli appear obvious without actually Iannaccone collection since Iannaccone collection since dei dipinti, Milan: Skira, 1998, p. 10] inaugurates the Bottega degli being obvious and indeed saying 1995 1997

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“Opposed to psychologism, like that “L’uomo dal dito fasciato and Gli grey predominated and faces of 1941 ► (6) Arnaldo Badodi, Il circo ► (19) Renato Birolli, Signora “In addition to these works — of his friends, Pirandello’s work amanti sulla panchina are among the wretched invaded the studio, ► Renato Birolli. Trenta tavole [The Circus], 1941 col cappello [Lady in a Hat], 1941 characterized by the substantially aimed not to create a dream world, the most significant examples of one sadder than the other in their Germany and Italy declare in nero, una a colori, cinque oil on canvas, 55 × 70 cm oil on canvas, 84 × 57 cm lyrical-expressionist tendency but clearly to expose a condition how Migneco observes and distorts desperate solitude.” war on Yugoslavia. Joint German disegni, with texts by Sandro Bini, Iannaccone collection since 2010 Iannaccone collection since 2011 peculiar to the first phase of suspended midway between pure reality […] In the Amanti, once and Italian offensive also in R. Rirolli, Milan: Edizioni Corrente and that can also be form and naked reality: a paradox owned by Birolli, […] the narrative [P. Campiglio, “Le voyage de De Pisis”, Greece. di Corrente, 1941. “The Circo thus presents the “The portrait of Enrica Cavallo seen in the unbridled lyricism to in P. Campiglio (edited by), De Pisis en that lays bare the insoluble dialectic is made more dramatic by the voyage. Rome, Parigi, Londra, Milan, spectacle of bullying arrogance. was shown for the first time in the which Vittorini yielded — Cassinari between suffering matter and cramped space. The photographic Venezia, exhibition catalogue (Parma- Ottone Rosai serves on the jury ► G. Scheiwiller (edited by), A melancholy Pierrot in white and third Bergamo Prize in September presented a series of portraits at Mamiano di Traversetolo, Fondazione sublimating spirit, held in check by approach of the composition Magnani Rocca, 13 September – 8 of the Bergamo Prize and shows Ottone Rosai, Milan: Hoepli, 1941. his adolescent companion stand 1941. Radius expressed some the Bottega di Corrente including the inevitability of existence. [...] focuses on the anguish of the December 2013), Cinisello Balsamo: work in Turin at the Società Amici before a screaming mass of faces reservations, claiming that the the well-known Rosetta (cat. 1941 2) Carnality is expressed with an anti- bodies and faces, while the gate Silvana Editoriale, 2013, p. 37] dell’Arte. united by ambiguous relations of ‘courageous beauty’ of the work and Treccani (cat. 1941 1). The more hedonistic objectivity, highlighting behind the bench looks more love and bullying. His bitter lucidity ‘is ruined by the sudden stiffening compact structuring of colour that the defects and imperfections of like the bars of a prison. Though ► (30) Filippo de Pisis, Pesce Posthumous exhibition Scipione. contrasts with the vulgarity of the of the figure precisely in the neck takes shape in them marks a move the body, making no concessions to accentuated, the subject would e coltello [Fish and Knife], 1940 Cinque tricromie raccolte dal crowd and the whiteness of his and head’. It is in actual fact a beyond the quivering arabesque formal piety and starkly rendering not reach such a degree of tension oil on cardboard, 30 × 50.5 cm Centro di azione per le arti at clothing, which stands out against superb portrait that draws on Van forms toward a vocabulary that is the effects of time and nature.” without the artifice of style, a Iannaccone collection since 2014 the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan the earthen hues of the background, Gogh’s Berceuse (as seen in the more solid and unadorned; in short, style that takes up the twisted, with a critical study by Antonino takes on almost symbolic oblique position of the figure and the authentically constructive [F. Benzi, “Fausto Pirandello: From undulating line of Van Gogh but “Swollen with colour, this still life is Santangelo. significance as a mark of useless the elevated viewpoint) but reworks vocabulary that characterizes the the Early Years to the Second World War”, in F. Benzi (edited by), Fausto Pirandello contaminates his golden light, characterized by great physicality. innocence, useless awareness.” it with different austerity and second phase of the Corrente group 1899-1975, exhibition catalogue soiling it with black and turning it Even though the paint is applied in The Bottega di Corrente exhibits indeed almost with the rarefied as from about 1942.” (London, Estorick Collection, 8 July into a rotten, bituminous green. dots and patches, it gives an overall numerous works from Aligi [E. Pontiggia (edited by), Artisti di mental cadence of which the artist – 6 September 2015), London: Estorick Corrente 1930/1990, exhibition catalogue [G. Anzani, “La prima attività di Bruno Foundation, 2015, p. 11] The neurotic line and distasteful sense of visual compactness and the Sassu’s Uomini rossi series and (Busto Arsizio, Museo delle Arti di Palazzo spoke. The dark, solemn figure of Cassinari (1930-1950). Da Milan ad Bandera, 16 November 1991 – 12 January colour bring the pathos of the large fish is as though newly caught, hosts a solo show of Giuseppe the woman stands out against a Antibes via Parigi”, in M. Crisci (edited by), 1992), Milan: Vangelista, 1991, p. 8] ► (86) Ernesto Treccani, painting to a peak. The same just out of the water. The drawing Migneco. yellow background where volume Cassinari. Catalogo generale dei dipinti, vol. I, Milan: Electa, 1998, p. 14] Autoritratto [Self-Portrait], 1940–41 thing happens in the Uomo col dito is precise and morphologically is annihilated and space severely oil on canvas, 40 × 35 cm fasciato, where a small wound takes correct. The depiction from life Arnaldo Badodi shows work at ► (76) Aligi Sassu, Nu au divan contracted, reduced to no more Iannaccone collection since 1995 on elusive, threatening overtones suggests ancient parallels in the the Galleria della Spiga in Milan. vert [Nude on a Green Couch], than the semblance of a table and ► (48) Mario Mafai, Tramonto su […] Above all, the wound arouses art of Ferrara and a taste for A larger solo show is held the 1941 a series of crooked lines.” Roma [Sunset over Rome], 1941 “This self-portrait, one of an existential feeling. This is efficiency realistically obtained, same year at the Galleria Genova, oil on canvas, 97 × 65 cm oil on panel, 24 × 34 cm Treccani’s first paintings, retains not a self-portrait of a man but a i.e. with respect for the model as where Mario Mafai and Aligi Sassu Iannaccone collection since 1992 [E. Pontiggia, “Gli artisti di Corrente. Iannaccone collection since 2005 Tavole”, in E. Pontiggia, A. Paglione (ed- a note of adolescent freshness, a portrait of the irrational impulses a whole. A vein of anxiety cracks also exhibit work. ited by), Sassu e Corrente 1930-1943. La psychological rather than physical — the principles of eros (the red the realistic perspective, however, “The emphasis in the depiction rivoluzione del colore, exhibition catalogue “Mafai’s is the vision of a trembling, (Chieti, Palazzo de’ Mayo / SET Spazio feeling underscored also by the flowers) and thanatos (the black and introduces a metaphysical Arrest of Luigi Broggini for of the nude — of conspicuous and Esposizioni Temporanee, 25 July – 7 vulnerable Rome. The Eternal City use of the first name alone as a fingerstall) — that drive him. Echoes dimension.” anti-fascist activities during a almost ostentatious voluptuousness October 2012), Turin-London-Venice-New is like a fragile Nativity crib, the signature (a tribute to Van Gogh, of Van Gogh, filtered through Carlo visit to his mother in Ligurno near — is an element of poetic licence York: Umberto Allemandi & C., 2012, p. 74] array of monuments like papier- who signed some works simply Levi, are evident here too in the [Luigi Cavallo (edited by), Filippo de Pisis. Varese. A show of his ceramics with respect to the Maupassant mâché scenery and the narrow, Natura e contaminazione, exhibition cata- Vincent) […] The work was first whirl of lines that destabilize the logue (San Giovanni in Valdarno, Galleria Il is held at the Galleria Il Milione in story, an interpretation whereby ► (8) Arnaldo Badodi, Soprabito crooked bridge over the Tiber as shown in the group exhibition composition.” Ponte, 10 November – 29 December 2001), Milan (Mostra di ceramiche dello Sassu may have wished to highlight su divano [Overcoat on a Sofa], though about to collapse into the Florence: Il Ponte, 2001] Badodi, Birolli, Broggini, Cassinari, scultore Luigi Broggini). the value of the exhibition of the 1941 river, taking a whole family of Cherchi, Fontana, Gauli, Lanaro, [E. Pontiggia, “Gli artisti di Corrente. female body in terms of offering oil on canvas, 60 × 70 cm evanescent hovels along with it.” Tavole”, in E. Pontiggia, A. Paglione (ed- Migneco, Paganin, Sassu, Valenti at ited by), Sassu e Corrente 1930-1943. La Italo Valenti holds his first shows and solitary presence. An invitation Iannaccone collection since 2003 the Bottega di Corrente, June-July rivoluzione del colore, exhibition catalogue at the Galleria Genova with Luigi to the viewer to look into the [E. Pontiggia, “Aria e cieli nel paesaggio (Chieti, Palazzo de’ Mayo / SET Spazio italiano della prima metà del Novecento”, 1941. Even though Treccani took Esposizioni Temporanee, 25 July – 7 Broggini and the Bottega di mirror of imposing forms, a nude “[Badodi] was a wholly in V. Dehò (edited by), Aria. Premio part without being included in the October 2012), Turin-London-Venice-New Corrente in Milan, presented by steeped in melancholy that seems unostentatious man of natural Internazionale d’Arte decima edizione, York: Umberto Allemandi & C., 2012, p. 86] exhibition catalogue (Fabriano – Serra San title, Costantini mentioned him in Luciano Anceschi. to shatter the limits of the pictorial courtesy and delicacy. One evening Quirico, Ancona, Fondazione Ermanno his review in Emporium: ‘Now it is support […] The compositional he looked in at the Bottega di Casoli, 7 July – 16 September 2007), Bologna: Grafis, p. 22] the turn of Treccani, whose only ► (29) Filippo de Pisis, ► M. De Micheli, “Commento register characterizing the works Corrente and exchanged a few portrait (exhibited here) is very Il suonatore di flauto a Birolli”, in Architrave, y. I, no. 8, of this series is multifaceted. Some words with friends. He then pulled promising.’” [The Flute Player], 1940 1941. present blazing colour verging on out his pocket watch, looked at it ► (87) Ernesto Treccani, Colombi oil on canvas, 65 × 60 cm expressionism, e.g. Maison Tellier and said, ‘I’ll be leaving for military assassinati [Murdered Doves], [E. Pontiggia, “Il ritratto a Milan 1929-1942. Iannaccone collection since 2005 ► R. Guttuso, “Una mostra di (1948) while in others, such as La service in a couple of hours.’ He left 1941 Opere”, in E. Pontiggia (edited by), Carla Maria Maggi e il ritratto a Milano negli Pirandello”, in Primato, II, no. 6, mezzana (Maison Tellier) (1947) and and ended up on the Russian front, oil on canvas, 70 × 55 cm anni trenta, exhibition catalogue (Milan, “The return to Milan in 1939 March 1941. Nu au divan vert (1941), a return never to return.” Iannaccone collection since 1996 Palazzo Reale, 15 June – 5 September 2010), Milan: Skira, 2010, p. 60] marked a pause in the accentuated, to the diagonal cutting through dramatic tension of the urban ► E. Mastrolonardo, “Nota su the painting recalls classic models [M. De Micheli, “Gli anni di Corrente”, “When the journal Corrente ceased in M. De Micheli (edited by), Corrente: landscapes and still lifes of the Arnaldo Badodi”, in Meridiano di like Manet’s Olympia if not indeed il movimento di arte e cultura di oppo- publication, the role of politics and ► (55) Giuseppe Migneco, last period in Paris. London Roma, y. VI, no. 4, January 1941. Michelangelo’s Leda and the Swan sizione 1930–1945, exhibition catalogue the party was crucial. I was now (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 25 January L’uomo dal dito fasciato [The Man had galvanized him again the or the odalisques of Delacroix, an – 28 April 1985), Milan: Vangelista, 1985, in the front line. I could not even with a Bandaged Finger], 1940 year before, in 1938, with its ► Podestà, “Luigi Broggini e Italo artist Sassu loved.” p. 104] conceive of painting as other than a oil on canvas, 60 × 46 cm skies apparently incapable of Valenti”, in Emporium, y. XLVII, no. specific way of asserting a political Iannaccone collection since 2003 communication but actually a void 9, Istituto Italiano d’Arti Grafiche, [A. Giglio Zanetti, “Specchi di casa and revolutionary anti-fascist Tellier”, in Fondazione Aligi Sassu e pregnant with pictorial energy, Bergamo, September. Helenita Olivares (edited by), Sassu. ► (27) Bruno Cassinari, Ritratto stance. For me, 1943 and 1944 were ► (54) Giuseppe Migneco, Amanti charged with light. Everything Maison Tellier, exhibition catalogue di Ernesto Treccani [Portrait of to be the years of paintings like (Lugano, Villa Ciani, 17 October 2008 – 1 al parco [Lovers in the Park], 1940 seemed to be in a lower key in March 2009), Lugano: Edizioni Fondazione Ernesto Treccani], 1941 Fucilazione, Colombi assassinati oil on canvas, 50 × 40 cm Milan, the light more muted, the Sassu, 2009, pp. 22–23] oil on panel, 60 × 45 cm and Violette e coltello, above all in Iannaccone collection since 1997 accents and faces more melancholy. Iannaccone collection since 1994 the months after my arrest and then There was evidently no light in my escape to Macugnaga. Painting this city, where he initially stayed then was my specific way of being at the Vittoria hotel. Shades of a revolutionary. There was in any

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case still great unity amongst us of expressionism and Van Gogh, 1942 Ottone Rosai takes part in the first ► (51) Roberto Melli, La lettura in the first is still partially fluid, identifiable in a condition of the still lifes painted as from 1942 as members of the Corrente group. the Ritratto di Joppolo, a work of show at the Galleria del Cavallino [The Reading], 1942 as can be seen in the irregular bewilderment. At the same […] grim objects that have lost The rift between Birolli and Guttuso more sculptural character built up Exhibition of the Rino Valdameri in Venice and obtains the chair oil on canvas, 80 × 90 cm streaks in the background, the time, without falling into facile the clarity of Morandi to display came later. Suffice it to consider of compact chromatic masses, is collection at the Galleria di Roma in painting at the Accademia Iannaccone collection since 2004 wavy line of the hair and the jacket psychologism, we should not their agitated presence as earthy the Birolli of the Italia ’44 drawings decidedly similar to the approach with works by Filippo de Pisis, di Belle Arti in Florence. of Cézanne-like form and colour, underestimate how much the mental concretions. But the influence of to understand that the split came of Cassinari. A canvas like Mario Mafai, Fausto Pirandello, “The wholly modern close the second displays a Picassan illness of the artist’s mother Maria Picasso asserts itself forcibly to afterwards, at the time of the Group La collina, produced during a stay Ottone Rosai and Scipione. ► M. Rosi, “Prefazione a Renato relationship between painting and density of volume and accentuation Antonietta Portolano must have distort the pattern of reality into of Eight. There has, unfortunately, at Mendrisio, is instead comparable Guttuso”, in Il Campano, architecture […] makes every work of certain details […] The writer’s affected his vision of the world, a painful grid, which rises in the always been a tendency to read to some works painted by Morlotti Renato Guttuso’s Crocifissione no. 1-2, January-February, 1942. ‘a block of atmosphere solidified, enormous, primordial hands are perhaps still more deeply than Natura morta con bucranio of 1943 the history of Corrente backwards in the same decade in terms of the [Crucifixion] is placed second in condensed and subjected to an also reminiscent of Picasso. Above the obvious and unquestionable over the alarming red of a flag [...] in the light of the events of the composition and the use of thickly the fourth and last edition of the ► “Badodi”, in Sette Giorni, y. VIII, incessant dynamism of light and and beyond the stylistic elements, influence of his father’s work […] A prelude to the transformation of post-war period. What surprises laden brushstrokes.” Bergamo Prize, which is awarded no. 21, May 1942. space’. Just as painting dispenses however, the picture the Sicilian The melancholy things crowded Cubism into open linguistic revolt me in any case is the shortness to Francesco Menzio. with the laws of the atmosphere critic looking up from the book as into his paintings are placed at that Morlotti was to complete after of the period in which Corrente [L. Capano, “Gli inizi”, in A. Negri (edited ► G. C. Argan, “Pitture di De in order to find expression, he follows the bitter thread of his random like fragile remnants that the war.” by), Ernesto Treccani. Mostra antologica, ran its course and the speed with exhibition catalogue (Milan, Palazzo Mario Mafai is transferred from Pisis”, in Primato, January 1942. ‘architecture also opens up to thoughts remains the unforgettable have survived the storm of life. which views changed, not only their Reale, 18 May – 25 June 1989), Milan: Macerata to the Celio barracks the suasion of light and space, image of a man immersed in It is even hard to identify them [M. Pizziolo,“Dobbiamo parlare agli Fabbri Editori, 1989, p. 49] uomini le parole della vita”, in M. Pizziolo evolution but also their overlapping in Rome. An article by him entitled ► V. Costantini, “Corrente”, no longer a feeling of enclosure meditation that harbours no sometimes because they appear (edited by), Corrente. Le parole della vita. and interweaving in an intense “La mia pittura” appears in Tempo. in Emporium, y. XLVIII, no. 1, but openness, space in space and illusions and is born out of the hard somehow blurred, sinking into the Opere 1930-1945, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 18 June internal dialectic.” ► (31) Filippo de Pisis, Il Foro He also publishes some letters January 1942. light in light. The levels unravel, reality of facts rather than books.” background and almost fighting so – 7 September 2008), Milan: Skira, Bonaparte a Milano [The Foro received from Scipione in 1932 the orders are decomposed and as not to be sucked under. There 2008, p. 30] [Ernesto Treccani, cit. in M. Pizziolo Bonaparte in Milan], 1941 in Prospettive (no. 25-27). ► R. Franchi, Disegni di Ottone recomposed. Everything shifts [E. Pontiggia, “Gli artisti di Corrente. is also the predominance of a (edited by), Ernesto Treccani e il Tavole”, in E. Pontiggia, A. Paglione movimento di Corrente, exhibition oil on canvas, 70 × 50 cm Rosai, Milan: Hoepli, 1942. and readjusts, rejoins and melds, (edited by), Sassu e Corrente 1930/1943. downward viewpoint that tends to catalogue (Busto Arsizio, Fondazione Iannaccone collection since 2012 Renato Birolli holds a solo show restored to the human scale, geared La rivoluzione del colore, exhibition cat- flatten the objects on the plane, Bandera per l’Arte, 25 October 2003 alogue (Palazzo de’ Mayo / S.E.T. Spazio – 29 February 2004), Milan: Skira, 2003, at the Galleria della Spiga in Milan. ► A. Galvano, Enrico Paulucci, to human requirements, the return Esposizioni Temporanee, 25 July – 7 which is, however, apparently p. 127] “The artist’s wanderings en plein Rome: Edizioni di Documento, to an ideal garden, the primal October 2012), Turin-London-Venice-New tilted and therefore incapable of air and early détournement in the Arnaldo Badodi is called up and 1942. Eden so sadly violated by human York: Umberto Allemandi & C., 2012, p. 94] supporting them in their precarious ► (56) Giuseppe Migneco, city streets often led him into sent to the Russian front, where covetousness.’ The religiosity balance, often poised on the very Natura morta con maschere urban parks (Il Foro Bonaparte a he is taken prisoner and dies the ► F. de Pisis, Poesie, Florence: of the human feeling begun and ► (61) Fausto Pirandello, edge.” [Still Life with Masks], 1941 Milano, 1941), towards the nature following year in a POW camp Vallecchi, 1942. completed in a fruitful parabola by La famiglia dell’artista oil on canvas, 49 × 39 cm juxtaposed in town to the orderly near Moscow. the painting of family attachments, [The Artist’s Family], circa 1942 [F. Matitti, “Tra poetica e iconologia. Donne con salamandra e altre storie”, Iannaccone collection since 1993 streets and rows of houses, by the quiet rooms, the neighbourhood oil on panel, 100 × 67.5 cm in C. Gian Ferrari (edited by), Fausto waterside, on the canals (Il vecchio Antonietta Raphaël obtains a and the constant relationship Iannaccone collection since 2007 Pirandello. Catalogo generale, Milan: Electa, 2009, p. 22] “The Natura morta con maschere Naviglio a Milano, 1942), on the space at the Accademia di Belle between nature and creation also belongs to a later period when […] outskirts or by monuments in the Arti in Rome with the help of Mino returns at regular intervals to “If my father painted so did my the linear undulation of Migneco’s old town centre, seldom in the Maccari but moves back to Genoa clarify the emotions that give birth brother, and this infuriated me, ► (92) Emilio Vedova, Il caffeuccio works tended to diminish and cathedral square but in front of due to financial difficulties. to artistic impulses and thoughts, as I was not allowed to practice veneziano [Venetian Café], 1942 lessen the degree of compositional the eccentric Casa degli Omenoni the identity of the image in terms those fine arts on the grounds oil on canvas, 43 × 55 cm vibration. The set of objects has a (1942), in new and silvery views.” Luigi Broggini is awarded the of form and colour, the freedom of of age. If I turned to my mother Iannaccone collection since 2013 symbolic value. The masks, a motif Ministry of Education’s first prize colour now able to create form in in anger and despair, I found her borrowed from Ensor but frequent [P. Campiglio (edited by), De Pisis for his artistic activity but is unable light.” intent on embroidering flowers and “Caffeuccio veneziano [presented en voyage. Roma, Parigi, Londra, also in the painting of Birolli and Milano, Venezia, exhibition catalogue to receive it because he is still arabesques with various skeins of at the fourth Bergamo Prize in Tomea, allude to camouflage, (Parma-Mamiano di Traversetolo, in prison. [G. Appella, “Ferrara, Genova, Roma: silk in incredible colours, works 1942 together with a still life] Fondazione Magnani Rocca, 13 Percorsi formativi di Melli”, in G. Appella, dissimulation, an appearance September – 8 December 2013), M. Calvesi, Roberto Melli 1885-1958, of inspiration too but disciplined already looks forward to the artist’s differing from reality. The lamp, Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, Bruno Cassinari and Ennio Morlotti exhibition catalogue (Macerata, Palazzo by the lines of obligatory patterns subsequent work in the fields of 2013, p. 38] Ricci, 13 June – 15 October 1992), Rome: whose cord describes a long take refuge from Fascist roundups Leonardo De Luca, 1992, pp. 14–15] carefully mark on the black cloth abstraction and Art Informel in arabesque before coming to rest on at Mondonico in Lombardy and in chalk or large stitches of white the immediate post-war period. the table with the plug left visible in embark on a period of joint work thread. They were slippers but with Here the segmented sign combines the foreground, seems to suggest a that continues until 1946. ► (41) Renato Guttuso, Ritratto a funereal air.” the almost caricatural distortion desire to cast light, to discover what di Antonino Santangelo [Portrait of figures drawn from German lies hidden behind the deceptive The collector Alberto della of Antonino Santangelo], 1942 [Fausto Pirandello, cit. in B. Marconi, expressionism with the satire of “Luigi Pirandello pittore. ‘Spontaneità’ e appearance of things.” Ragione come to the financial aid oil on canvas, 100 × 70 cm ‘sincerità’”, in M. Fagiolo dell’Arco (edited Daumier’s paintings and drawings.” of the Bottega degli Artisti Iannaccone collection since 1998 by), Fausto Pirandello “La vita attuale e la favola eterna”, exhibition catalogue [E. Pontiggia, “Gli artisti di Corrente. di Corrente, which is renamed the [M. Lorandi, description of the work in F. Tavole”, in E. Pontiggia, A. Paglione (Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, 20 Rossi, C. Solza (edited by), Gli anni del (edited by), Sassu e Corrente 1930/1943. Galleria della Spiga e Corrente “The paintings of Mario Alicata October 1999 – 10 January 2000), Milan: Premio Bergamo. Arte in Italia intorno La rivoluzione del colore, exhibition and holds shows of work by and Antonio Santangelo are Edizioni Charta, 1999, p. 31] agli anni Trenta, exhibition catalogue catalogue (Palazzo de’ Mayo / S.E.T. (Bergamo, Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Spazio Esposizioni Temporanee, 25 July Scipione and Emilio Vedova. equally emblematic examples of Contemporanea e Accademia Carrara, 25 – 7 October 2012), Turin-London-Venice- expressionist portraiture. Here too, ► (62) Fausto Pirandello, Natura September 1993 – 9 January 1994), Milan: New York: Umberto Allemandi & C., 2012, Filippo de Pisis and Fausto the close-up focus restricts the field morta con strumenti musicali Electa, 1993, p. 233] p. 86] Pirandello take part in the XXIII of vision and the setting is reduced [Still Life with Musical Venice Biennial. to a cramped space with the figure Instruments], circa 1942 ► (57) Ennio Morlotti, Natura ► (88) Ernesto Treccani, Ritratto squeezed into the background. oil on panel, 50.5 × 60 cm morta con bucranio di Beniamino Joppolo [Portrait of Renato Guttuso, Mario Mafai, The oblique rather than frontal Iannaccone collection since 2015 [Still Life with Bull Skull], 1942 Beniamino Joppolo], 1941 Fausto Pirandello and Alberto pose gives a sense of mobility and oil on canvas, 46 × 60 cm oil on canvas, 45 × 35 cm Ziveri are among the artists taking immediacy, like the spontaneous “The relationship that Pirandello Iannaccone collection since 1997 Iannaccone collection since 2003 part in the X Mostra del Sindacato gesture of the figures, who stick established with objects, which Interprovinciale fascista Belle Arti their fingers into the nooks and play the leading part in his “There is no scream in his canvases “If the self-portrait painted in del Lazio in Rome. crannies of the objects. There are, compositions, therefore appears but rather the harrowing silence the parental home at Vanzaghello however, two years between the to reflect an attitude of often of afterwards. This is the key to appears to display discreet echoes two portraits. While the drawing dazed sharing, a common destiny penetrate the intent mystery of

384 385 CRITICAL CHRONOLOGY 1920–1945 — EDITED BY ALESSANDRA ACOCELLA AND CATERINA TOSCHI 1943 – 1945

1943 Renato Guttuso leaves Rome 1944 ► (91) Italo Valenti, Nudo 1945 ► (96) Alberto Ziveri, Il postribolo to play an active part in the in un interno [Nude in an Interior], [The Bawdy House], 1945 American, British and Canadian Resistance for two years. The Allies enter Rome. circa 1944 Mussolini is caught by partisans oil on canvas, 100 × 125 cm allied forces land in Sicily. oil on canvas, 40 × 50 cm after fleeing to Como and Iannaccone collection since 2005 Filippo de Pisis moves to Venice Antonietta Raphaël returns Iannaccone collection since 2001 executed in Piazzale Loreto, Milan. Victor Emanuel III informs after the bombing of Milan and to Genoa. “It is the same light that almost Mussolini of his destitution at the remains there until 1948. “Painting expressed what was Work by Renato Birolli, Filippo de makes visible the blood in the flesh Villa Savoia. The Duce is arrested Mario Mafai leaves for Naples, joyous in his mind and exorcised Pisis, Renato Guttuso, Roberto — Chardin again — of the women and the country is placed under Italo Valenti refuses to continue where he is elected vicepresident what was disturbed, first in figures, Melli, Fausto Pirandello and who undress with the sweetness the military government of Marshal teaching after the institution of the of the organizing committee of then in their forms and finally in Ottone Rosai is shown in the and violence of bygone times, Pietro Badoglio. Fascist Republic of Salò and takes the Libera Associazione delle Arti their annihilation. Such was in exhibition Artisti Moderni alla a bit like the women of Baudelaire refuge at Porcia in the Veneto Figurative. The president of the fact the man himself. Unobtrusive Galleria del Secolo in Rome. (the ‘servante au grand coeur’), Badoglio announces the armistice region. association is Gino Severini and and intermittent but sudden and Goya, Courbet and Manet. Female and abandons Rome together with the members include Giuseppe brilliant in conversation, engaging Emilio Vedova shows work at the figures that — in the widespread the royal family. Mario Mafai and Antonietta Capogrossi, Renato Guttuso, in healthy, intelligent enjoyment Galleria Venezia and later at the wild and mortuary eroticism that Raphaël leave Genoa with their Mirko, Toti Scialoja and Alberto but scathing and even furious in Galleria del Pioppo in Mantua. makes up the erotic climate of German parachutists free daughters and return to Rome. Ziveri. discussions of justice and mercy today — are almost disturbing Mussolini from imprisonment on […] On observing Italo’s painting Mario Mafai holds personal shows in their plebeian and sometimes the Gran Sasso mountain. Birth ► Mafai (in the series Quaderni Work by Mario Mafai, Fausto (in Corrente, issue no. 7, 1940), at the Galleria dell’Arco in Venice proletarian sensuality. Ziveri is of the Fascist Republic of Salò, del Disegno Contemporaneo), Pirandello, Ottone Rosai and Beniamino Joppolo discovered as well as the Secolo and the of course engaged in a type of recognized and protected by Milan: Edizioni della Galleria della Scipione is shown in 25 Artisti the ‘obsessive reappearance’ Zodiaco in Rome. realistic painting that began when Germany. Spiga e Corrente, 1943, with a del Secolo alla Galleria del Secolo of humiliated figures, people in the young Caravaggio took to preface by Antonino Santangelo. in Rome. distress seeking help or attempting Publication of the book Cristo si producing paintings that ‘were not Show of work by Renato Guttuso to detach themselves physically è fermato a Eboli, written by Carlo even capable of giving themselves at the Galleria dello Zodiaco in Work by Filippo de Pisis, from the ground and soar into the Levi during his wartime period of a title’, thus inaugurating a Rome in collaboration with the Mario Mafai, Renato Guttuso, air without wings. As he points clandestine activities in Florence. ‘workaday realism’ that was to have Galleria della Spiga. Work by Fausto Pirandello, Ottone out, however, this is an escape only followers everywhere in Europe Renato Guttuso, Mario Mafai, Rosai and Scipione is shown attempted of necessity in dreams Umbro Apollonio presents work (Rembrandt, Velázquez, Vermeer, Fausto Pirandello, Emilio Vedova in the Esposizione d’Arte and prompted by the ‘constant, by Scipione at the Galleria del the Le Nain brothers and Zurbaran and Scipione is also shown at the Contemporanea. Exhibition of incessant anguish with which all Cavallino in Venice. are all substantially indebted to Zodiaco in the exhibition Undici Contemporary Italian Art at the this fantastic world is conjured him) and to resurface as alleged pittori romani. The same year sees Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna up. Someone accused the painter Roberto Melli starts teaching at the subject matter in the ‘slices of life’ a show of Mafai and Manzù with in Rome. at first of being overly delicate, Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome. of modern painting.” a presentation by Alberto Moravia. suggesting that his intelligence Renato Guttuso starts work on his led to impotence, that his taste Bruno Cassinari and Ennio [D. Micacchi, “Alberto Ziveri: lo sguardo e le cose”, in Alberto Ziveri, Florence: Ennio Morlotti and Ernesto anti-Fascist and anti-Nazi painting for small, attractive compositions Morlotti design a poster for the Galleria d’Arte Moderna Sangallo, 1964, Treccani write a manifesto Gott mit uns (1944–45). was an insuperable limitation and International Workers’ Day. n.p.n.] of painters and writers (Primo an ultimately sterile approach. Manifesto di Pittori e scultori). A reading of Carlo Levi’s text Here too, however, anxiety ► M. Mafai, “Possibilità per un’arte Paura della pittura (written in soon manifested itself with the nuova”, in Rinascita, no. 3, Ottone Rosai shows work at the July 1942) is broadcast by Radio expressive need to make that March 1945. Galleria Cairola in Milan. He is Firenze. painting necessary, exploding into attacked and insulted by a group intense and even violent colour.” ► L. Anceschi (edited by), of anti-fascists during the same Ottone Rosai explains his activities Migneco. Dodici tavole in nero year. during the Fascist regime and [C. Carena, “Italo e i suoi quadri”, a otto colori, Milan: Galleria Santa in C. Carena, S. Pult (edited by), Italo gradual detachment to the Valenti. Catalogo ragionato dei dipinti, Radegonda, 1945. Filippo de Pisis, Renato Guttuso, president of the national liberation Milan: Skira, 1998, pp. 10–11] Mario Mafai, Francesco Menzio, committee. He is suspended from Fausto Pirandello, Ottone Rosai, his teaching post at the academy. Emilio Vedova and Alberto Ziveri take part in the IV Rome Luigi Broggini takes part in the Quadrennial. Esposizione d’arte contemporanea at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Show of work by Mario Mafai and Moderna. Scipione at the Galleria Il Ponte in Florence. G. Montanari, “Le sculture di Broggini”, in Cronaca Prealpina, Show of work by Bruno Cassinari, 5 November 1944. Ernesto Treccani and Ennio Morlotti at the Nuova Galleria della A. Gatto, Luigi Broggini, II ed., Spiga e Corrente in Milan. Milan: Edizioni del Milione, 1944.

Gio Ponti invites artists including G. Marchiori, Disegni di Scipione, Giorgio de Chirico, Achille Funi, Bergamo: Istituto Italiano d’Arti Filippo de Pisis, Pompeo Borra, Grafiche, 1944. Aligi Sassu and Francesco De Rocchi to work on the decoration A. Parronchi, Nomi della pittura of a newly built villa at Cervignano italiana contemporanea, Florence: d’Adda (Lodi). Edizioni Arnaud, 1944.

386 387 EXHIBITIONS 1920 – 1945

1920–29 Milano, 1932 Roma, 1938 Milano, Genova, 1941 Birolli, Cortese, Grosso, Manzù, Renato Guttuso Arnaldo Badodi Firenze, 1920 Sassu, Tomea first solo show, Galleria della Milano, Bottega di Corrente, Ottone Rosai Galleria del Milione, 5–15 Cometa, 28 March – 8 April, 22 February – 5 March Palazzo Capponi, 27 November – February. curated by Nino Savarese. Genova, Galleria Genova, 17 December. 29 March – 9 April, curated Vienna, 1933 Venezia, 1938 by Raffaele De Grada. Firenze, 1922 Italienische Kunstausstellung Birolli, Mucchi, Pittino, Tomea Mostra personale di Ottone Rosai Künstlerhaus, 1 April – 4 June. Galleria Arcobaleno, July 1938. Milano, Scipione, 1941 Saletta Gonnelli, 3–28 March. Scipione, Mostra postuma a cura Venezia, 1934 Venezia, Rosai, 1938 del centro di azione per le arti Milano, 1929 XIX Biennale di Venezia, sala XXI Biennale di Venezia, sala 32. retrospective 6 pittori di Torino XXXVIII. Sale della Regia Pinacoteca Galleria Bardi, 16–26 November, Bergamo, 1939 di Brera, 8–23 March. curated by Pier Maria Bardi. Londra, 1935 Primo Premio Bergamo. Franco-Italian Exhibition Mostra Nazionale del paesaggio Milano, Sassu, 1941 Roma, Sindacato, 1929 Werthein Gallery, July. Italiano Aligi Sassu Prima Mostra del Sindacato Palazzo della Ragione, Bottega di Corrente, 19–31 March, Laziale Fascista degli Artisti Roma, 1935 room 18, upper floor curated by Luciano Anceschi. Palazzo delle Esposizioni, II Quadriennale curated by Orfeo Sellani, April–June. Palazzo delle Esposizioni per September–October. Milano, Broggini, 1941 la II Quadriennale di Roma, Mostra collettiva (Badodi, Roma, 1929 February–July. Milano, Corrente, 1939 Birolli, Broggini, Cassinari, Mostra di otto pittrici e scultrici Mostra d’Arte Contemporanea Cherchi, Fontana, Gauli, Lanaro, romane San Francisco, 1935 (Prima mostra di “Corrente”) Migneco, Paganin, Sassu, Valenti) Camerata degli Artisti di piazza Exhibition of Contemporary Italian Palazzo della Permanente, Bottega di Corrente, 18 June di Spagna, 9–24 June, curated Painting dal 18 March. – 6 July. by R. Strinati. then Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and New York, Milano, Rosai, 1939 Bergamo, 1942 Parigi, 1929 curated by Dario Sabatello. Ottone Rosai IV Premio Bergamo. Mostra Peintures et Dessins de Fausto Galleria Barbaroux, from nazionale di Pittura Pirandello Genova, 1936 4 November. Palazzo della Ragione, Galerie Vildrac, 9–23 March. Carlo Levi September–October, XX. Galleria Genova, 1–16 December, Vienna, 1929 curated by di Giansiro Ferrata. 1940–49 Milano, 1943 Fausto Pirandello, personale Cassinari – Morlotti – Treccani Galleria Bakum, November. Milano, 1936 Genova, 1940 Galleria della Spiga e Corrente, VII Mostra del Sindacato Giuseppe Migneco from 6 February, curated by Interprovinciale Fascista Belle Galleria Genova, 10–28 April. Raffaele De Grada. 1930–39 Arti di Milano Palazzo della Permanente, Bergamo, 1941 Milano, Broggini, 1943 Roma, 1930 16 February – 15 March. III Premio Bergamo. Mostra Luigi Broggini Scipione e Mafai Nazionale di Pittura Galleria Cairola, from 9 March. Galleria di Roma, 8–27 November, Milano, Mostra postuma, 1936 Palazzo della Ragione, curated by Pier Maria Bardi. Mostra postuma di Tullio Garbari September–October. Roma, 1943 Galleria del Milione, 25 January – Collettiva di artisti romani Torino, 1930 12 February. Genova, Sassu, 1941 Galleria dello Zodiaco. I sei pittori Aligi Sassu Sala Guglielmi, piazza Castello Roma, 1936 Galleria Genova, 1–15 February. Roma, Quadriennale, 1943 n. 25, 4–12 January. Un’esposizione di Alberto Ziveri IV Quadriennale d’Arte Nazionale Note. The inscription on the Galleria della Cometa, 26 February Milano, 1941 Palazzo delle Esposizioni, invitation reads as follows: "Free – 15 March, curated by Roberto Giuseppe Migneco May–July. admission. Complete freedom Melli. Bottega di Corrente, with a of discussion and courteous presentation by Umberto Silva, Varese, 1944 disagreement." Venezia, 1936 6–18 January, curated by Umberto Mostra personale dello scultore XX Biennale Internazionale d’Arte, Silva. Luigi Broggini e dei pittori Milano, 1931 sala XXII, n. 22, June–September. Fiorenzo Tomea e Domenico Tullio Garbari Milano, Cassinari, 1941 Cantatore Galleria del Milione, 18–31 Milano, 1937 Bruno Cassinari Galleria Varese [home of the January. Sede del Gruppo Universitario Bottega di Corrente, Galleria Annunciata after the Fascista “Ugo Pepe”, Salone degli 8–20 February, curated by Elio evacuation from Milan, Ed.], Firenze, 1932 Osii, 28 January – 5 February. Vittorini. 28 October – 19 November. Rosai Galleria di Palazzo Ferrari, 6–24 Genova, 1938 Milano, 1945 October. Renato Birolli Aligi Sassu Genova, Galleria Genova. Galleria Ciliberti, June.

391 EXHIBITIONS — EDITED BY RISCHA PATERLINI 1945 – 1971

Milano, Migneco, 1945 Milano, 1951 Venezia, 1956 Milano, 50 anni, 1959 Venezia, 1960 Parma, 1963–64 Darmstadt, Recklinghausen, 1967 1970–79 Migneco Renato Birolli XXVIII Biennale Internazionale 50 anni d’arte a Milano. XXX Biennale Internazionale d’Arte Renato Guttuso. Mostra antologica Renato Guttuso solo exhibition, Galleria Santa Galleria La Colonna di Milano, d’Arte di Venezia Dal divisionismo ad oggi di Venezia dal 1931 ad oggi Darmstadt, Kunstverein; Ferrara, Mantova, 1970 Radegonda, from 22 November, November. 16 June – 21 October. Palazzo della Permanente, sala personale. Palazzo della Pilotta – Galleria Recklinghausen, Städtische Renato Birolli curated by Luciano Anceschi. 31 January – 15 March. Nazionale, 15 December 1963 Kunsthalle. Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna, Roma, 1951 Ivrea, 1957 Torino, 1961 – 31 January 1964, curated by Ferrara, Palazzo dei Diamanti, Milano, Sassu, 1945 Fausto Pirandello O. Rosai Milano, Del Bon, 1959 La figura nell’arte italiana Roberto Longhi, Franco Russoli, Firenze, 1967 17 May – 30 July; Mantova, Aligi Sassu Palazzo Barberini per la Centro Culturale Olivetti, May, Del Bon contemporanea Giovanni Testori. Arte moderna in Italia 1915–1935 Palazzo Te. Galleria Santa Radegonda, Fondazione Premi Roma curated by Pier Carlo Santini. Galleria Annunciata. Galleria La Bussola, 3–29 June, Palazzo Strozzi, 26 February 4–23 October, curated by per le Arti, February–March, curated by Guido Ballo. Roma, 1964 – 28 May, curated by Carlo Firenze, 1970 E. Emanuelli, A. Sassu, curated by Fortunato Bellonzi. Milano, 1957 Milano, Rosai, 1959 La Scuola romana Ludovico Ragghianti. Seconda biennale internazionale N. Tullier. Luigi Broggini Ottone Rosai Torino, Narciso, 1961 Galleria La Barcaccia, della grafica. La grafica tra le due Milano, 1952 Galleria L’Annunciata, 8–21 June. Galleria Barbaroux. Il paesaggio nella pittura italiana 11–25 April, curated by Romeo Roma, 1967 guerre 1918/1939 Roma, 1945–46 Ernesto Treccani contemporanea Lucchese. Omaggio a Mafai Palazzo Strozzi, 30 April – 29 June. Mario Mafai Galleria Il Naviglio, January. Monaco di Baviera, 1957 Milano, Sassu, 1959 Galleria Narciso, 24 September Galleria La Nuova Pesa, Galleria del Secolo, Arte italiana dal 1910 ad oggi Sassu – 15 October, curated by Pistoia, 1964–65 24 November – 13 December, Grosseto, 1970 23 December 1945 Roma, 1952 Haus der Kunst, 6 June Galleria delle Ore, 11 April – 3 L. Carluccio. Dipinti e disegni di O. Rosai curated by Dario Micacchi. Antonietta Raphaël antologica – 23 January 1946. Raphaël Mafai – 15 September, with the May, curated by Renato Guttuso. Galleria d’Arte Vannucci, 13 di pittura e scultura Galleria Lo Zodiaco, 15–30 March, patronage of Ente Quadriennale Milano, 1962 December 1964 – 8 January 1965. Torino, 1967 Galleria Barbini, November. Roma, 1946 curated by Virgilio Guzzi. di Roma. Verona, 1959 Mostra Nazionale Arte Figurativa Capolavori di Natale Alberto Ziveri Note. The presence of the works LIV Biennale nazionale d’arte “Città di Milano” Prato, 1965 Galleria La Bussola, Milano, 1970 Galleria di Roma. Roma, 1a Mostra di PIttura, 1952 belonging to the collection in sala personale, Palazzo della Palazzo della Permanente, 100 Opere di Ottone Rosai from 2 December. Luigi Broggini 1a Mostra di Pittura. Il volto the exhibition at the Haus der Gran Guardia, May–June. June–September, curated by Galleria Falsetti, December. Casa dell’antiquario Luzzetti, Roma, 1947 di Roma Kunst in Munich (6 June − 15 Carlo Carrà. Cortina d’Ampezzo, 1967–68 via Bigli. Mostra personale di Mario Mafai Circolo Artistico di via Margutta, September 1957, organized Torino, 1965 Omaggio a Filippo de Pisis Galleria Athena, 12–30 April. May–June. by the Quadriennale di Roma 1960–69 Torino, 1962 I Sei di Torino 1929–1932 Galleria Dolomiti, 25 December Milano, Cassinari, 1970 and curated by Gino Bacchetti, Ernesto Treccani Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna, 1967 – 10 January 1968, Bruno Cassinari Macerata, 1948 Firenze, 1953 Fortunato Bellonzi, Giorgio Ferrara, 1960 Galleria Gissi, 25 October September–October. cat. plate XVII, illustrated. Galleria dell’Annunciata, Scipione con opere provenienti Omaggio a Rosai Castelfranco, Franco Montanari Mostra del rinnovamento dell’arte – 8 November. 7–24 November. dalle Biennale di Venezia Galleria La Strozzina, April–May. and Marco Valsecchi) is deduced in Italia dal 1930 al 1945 Trieste, 1965 Milano, 1968 e da gallerie private from the labels on the back of the Casa Romei, June–September, Biella, 1963 La collezione Mancini Del Bon San Gimignano, 1970 Pinacoteca Comunale, La Spezia, 1953 paintings because the catalogue curated by Eugenio Riccomini, Mostra di Scipione Galleria Torbandena, June–July. with award of Cornice d’oro Guttuso, 12–26 December. Mostra del V Premio Nazionale (Arte italiana dal 1910 ad oggi, Raffaele De Grada. Centro Internazionale di Arti Galleria Annunciata prize. for the “Premio Raffaele De Grada di Pittura Golfo della Spezia, Rome: Istituto Grafico Tiberino, figurative, 27 November Città del Messico, 1966 per il paesaggio”. Venezia, 1948 Mostra monografica dell’opera 1957) provides no list. Firenze, 1960 – 20 December. Arte italiana dal 1910 ad oggi Palermo, 1968 XXIV Biennale Internazionale di Ottone Rosai Mostra dell’opera di Ottone Museo de Arte Moderna, Ernesto Treccani. Opere Udine, 1970 d’Arte di Venezia Ente Provinciale per il Turismo, Pontedera, 1957 Rosai 1911–1957 Firenze, 1963 24 March – 10 May. dal 1940 al 1967 Renato Guttuso sala XXXIII, retrospective of 19 July – 13 September. IX Mostra Nazionale di pittura Palazzo Strozzi, May–June, Mostra mercato nazionale d’arte Galleria La Robinia, February– Galleria del Girasole, Scipione curated by Carlo “Premio Pontedera” curated by Pier Carlo Santini. contemporanea Genova, 1966 March. January–February. Cardazzo, Mario Mafai, Corrado Torino, 1953 exhibition in memory of Ottone Palazzo Strozzi, 23 March – 28 April. Pittura di Birolli e Mostra della Maltese, Giuseppe Marchiori, Pittori d’oggi. Francia–Italia. Rosai. Ivrea, 1960 Giovane Arte in Italia intorno Roma, 1968 Milano, 1970–71 Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, Terza Mostra Raphaël Ivrea, Verona, Milano, 1963 al 1930 Scipione Mafai Stradone Morandi – Morlotti Lionello Venturi. Palazzo Belle Arti, Parco del Roma, 1957 Centro Culturale Olivetti, July, Gli artisti di “Corrente” Palazzo Reale – Sala del Falcone. Galleria Senior, from 18 May, (for the forty years of the Milione) Valentino, September–October. Roberto Melli curated by Alfredo Mezio. Centro Culturale Olivetti, curated by Palma Bucarelli, Giulio Galleria del Milione, 12 December Venezia, 1949 Palazzo Barberini, organized June; Verona, Palazzo Torino, 1966 Carlo Argan, Nello Ponente. 1970 – 12 January 1971, Mostra collettiva Roma, 1954 by Ente Premi Roma. Milano, 1960 della Gran Guardia, Francesco Menzio curated by Roberto Tassi. Galleria Sandri, February. Scipione Mostra Commemorativa Pittori July–August; Milano, Civica Galleria Narciso, 16 January Roma, 1968–69 Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Torino, 1957 Soci Galleria d’Arte Moderna di – 2 February. Cento opere d’arte italiana Firenze, 1971 April, curated by Palma Bucarelli. Figure e Paesaggio di Ottone Palazzo della Permanente, Palazzo Reale, 25 September – dal futurismo ad oggi Antonietta Raphaël personale 1950–59 Rosai a Torino. 9 April – 10 May, curated by 20 October, curated by Marco Venezia, 1966 Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, di scultura e pittura L’Aquila, 1955 Remo Taccani. Valsecchi. Exhibition in Venice. 20 December 1968 – 20 January Galleria Menghelli, October. Firenze, 1950 Mostra panoramica Nazionale Livorno, 1958 1969, curated by Palma Bucarelli. Roberto Melli di Pittura Contemporanea Mostra antologica di Ernesto Milano, Corrente, 1960 Lecco, 1963 Firenze, 1966–67 Milano, 1971 solo exhibition, Galleria Circolo “Incontri Culturali”, Treccani Mostra storica di “Corrente” Mostra antologica di Ennio Arte Moderna in Italia, 1915–1935 Bochum, 1969 Milano 70/70. Un secolo d’arte. La Strozzina, March. 26 June – 26 July. Casa Municipale della Cultura. Galleria Gian Ferrari, 21 January Morlotti Palazzo Strozzi, November 1966 Italienische Kunst des XX Dal 1915 al 1945 – 21 February, curated by Claudia Centro Cultura, 18 May – 16 June, – February 1967. Jahrhunderts. Museo Poldi Pezzoli, 28 April Milano, 1950 Roma, 1955 Biella 1959 Gian Ferrari curated by Carlo Volpe. – 10 June. L’opera di Roberto Melli A. Raphaël Mafai Maestri Italiani Contemporanei Arezzo, Roma, 1967 Milano, 1969 (dal 1908 al 1948) Galleria La Tartaruga, from 12 May, Galleria Colongo, 8–29 March. Roma, 1960 Torino, 1963 Burri – Cagli – Fontana Arnaldo Badodi Milano, Ravenna, Napoli, 1971 Galleria Gian Ferrari, 1–10 April, curated by A. Mezio. Alberto Ziveri Motivi d’arte contemporanea – Guttuso – Moreni – Morlotti. Galleria Eunomìa, November– Omaggio a “Corrente” trent’anni curated by Carlo Ludovico Ivrea, 1959 Galleria La Nuova Pesa, March– Galleria Narciso, 20 May – 14 Sei pittori italiani dagli anni December. dopo Ragghianti. Firenze, Torino, 1956–57 Francesco Menzio April, curated by Virgilio Guzzi. June, curated by Marzio Pinottini. Quaranta ad oggi Milano, Diarcon, 13–31 May Antonietta Raphaël Mafai. Centro Culturale Olivetti. Arezzo, Galleria Comunale Roma, Mafai, 1969 Ravenna, Galleria dell’Accademia Milano, Scipione, 1950 Il ritorno dalla Cina Torino, 1960 Verona, 1963 d’Arte Contemporanea, Sala di Mafai – Loggetta Lombardesca, 4–30 Scipione Firenze, Galleria La Strozzina, Milano, 1959 Raphaël Renato Birolli 1931–1959 Sant’Ignazio, 6 May – 11 June Palazzo Barberini, January–March, June Galleria dell’Annunciata. from 1 December 1956, curated Mostra storica di “Corrente” Galleria Narciso, 15–30 Palazzo della Gran Guardia, Roma, Istituto Italo Latino- curated by Valentino Martinelli, Napoli, Galleria Mediterranea, by C. Brandi, A. Mezio, A. Galleria Gian Ferrari, September. July–August, curated by Giuseppe Americano, 28 June – 26 July. organized by Ente Premi Roma. November, curated by Raffaele Moravia; Torino, Unione Culturale, 21 January – 21 February. Marchiori, Zeno Birolli, Franco De Grada. December 1956 – January 1957. Bruno.

392 393 EXHIBITIONS — EDITED BY RISCHA PATERLINI 1971 – 1988

Torino, 1971 Milano, 1975 Napoli, 1978 Busto Arsizio, 1981 Caserta, 1983 Reggio Emilia, Como, Salerno, Genova, 1985 Lacchiarella, 1987 Mostra di Arnaldo Badodi Verifica di ‘Corrente” Corrente. Cultura e società Cassinari. Mostra antologica Treccani. Cento dipinti, disegni, Milano, 1983–85 Guttuso a Genova nel nome Dieci artisti di Corrente Galleria Gissi. Galleria Gian Ferrari, from 13 May, 1938–1942 Galleria Italiana Arte, 15 October incisioni 1940–1981 Guttuso nel disegno. Anni Venti/ Della Ragione Il Girasole – Centro per il curated by Raffaele De Grada. Palazzo Reale, 20 July – 10 – 6 December. Palazzo Reale, 15 May – 12 June, Ottanta Villa Croce, October–November. commercio internazionale – Marco Palermo, 1971 September, curated by Enrico curated by Mario De Micheli. Reggio Emilia, Festa Nazionale Polo Fashion House, 1–22 March, Mostra antologica dell’opera Milano, Premio, 1975 Crispolti, Vittorio Fagone, Milano, 1981 de “l’Unità”, 1–18 September 1983 Macerata, 1985 curated by Rossana Bossaglia, di Renato Guttuso Premio città di Marsala, Il premio Cristiano Ruju. Renato Guttuso. Mostra antologica Piacenza, 1983 Como, San Francesco, Scipione (1904–1933) Mostra Mario De Micheli, Elena Pontiggia. Palazzo dei Normanni, di Pittura Città di Marsala, Palazzo Galleria Bergamini, June–July. Cassinari. Mostra antologica 6 November – 18 December 1983 antologica – Dipinti / Disegni 13 February – 14 March 1971, della Permanente. Roma, 1978 Palazzo Farnese, 21 May Salerno, Museo Provinciale Galleria d’Arte Contemporanea, Mesola, 1987 curated by Leonardo Sciascia, Ernesto Treccani Milano, Del Bon, 1981 – 24 July, curated by Gian Alberto di San Benedetto, December 6 July – 15 September, curated La natura morta italiana Franco Russoli, Franco Grasso. Parma, 1975 Galleria La Gradiva, 4–22 Mostra retrospettiva Angelo Dell’Acqua, Giovanni Anzani. 1984 – January 1985 by Giuseppe Appella, Claudio del Novecento Morlotti. Figure 1942/1975 February. Del Bon Milano, Arte Polivalente Mazzenga, Antonello Trombadori. Castello Estense, 2 August Parigi, 1971 Palazzo della Pilotta, 8 March Palazzo della Permanente, Ravenna, Ivano Fracena, 1983 Bonaparte, February–March, – 15 October, curated by Vittorio Renato Guttuso – 13 April, curated by Roberto Tassi. Torino, 1978 November–December, curated Ennio Morlotti curated by Enrico Crispolti. Milano, 1985 Sgarbi. Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville Torino tra le due guerre by Luigi Carluccio. Ravenna, Pinacoteca Comunale Corrente: il Movimento di Arte e de Paris et Section A.R.C., Urbino, 1975 Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna – Loggetta Lombardesca, 23 April Milano, 1984 Cultura di Opposizione 1930–1945 Milano, 1987 30 September – 1 November. Antologica di Ernesto Treccani e Contemporanea, March, curated Ferrara, 1982 – 5 June, curated by Pier Giovanni Anthological exhibition, Migneco Palazzo Reale, 25 January – 28 Ennio Morlotti. Mostra antologica Collegio Raffaello, October– by Anna Serena Fava, Rosanna Fausto Pirandello Castagnoli Rotonda della Besana, September, April, curated by Mario De Micheli. Palazzo Reale, 9 October Berlino, 1972 November, curated by F. de Santi. Maggio Serra, Silvana Pettenati. Galleria Civica di Arte Moderna, Ivano Fracena, Castel Ivano curated by Raffaele De Grada, – 29 November, curated Guttuso Palazzo dei Diamanti, 3 July – Incontri, July–August. Mario De Micheli, Vittorio Fagone, Sondrio, 1985 by Gianfranco Bruno. Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Focette, 1976 Genova, 1979 1 October, curated by Giorgio L. Barbera. Ernesto Treccani. Dipinti, acquarelli, Kunst, February–March. Filippo de Pisis, venti opere Immagine e paesaggio Liguria Mascherpa, Fabrizio D’Amico. Roma, 1983 disegni, incisioni, litografie Monaco di Baviera, 1987 vent’anni dopo 1850–1970 Scuola Romana. Pittori tra le due Milano, Sassu, 1984 Villa Quadrio, October–November. Sassu. Sein schaffen von 1927 Milano, Annunciata, 1972 Galleria d’Arte Moderna Falsetti. Galleria Rubinacci, 4 May – 4 Lodi, 1982 guerre Sassu. Opere dal 1927 al 1984 bis 1985 Group exhibition June, curated by Lia Perissinotti. Renato Birolli Galleria Cembalo Borghese, July, Palazzo Reale, 10 October – 25 Torino, 1985 Munich, Staatsgalerie Moderner Galleria Annunciata, March. Parma, 1976 Museo Civico, Salone dei Notai, curated by Netta Vespignani, November, curated by Giuseppe Mafai e Raphaël. Una vita per l’arte Kunst, 28 January Renato Birolli Todi, 1979 17 April – 9 May, curated Claudio Gasparrini. Bonini. Galleria privata Narciso, – 15 March. Milano, Del Bon, 1972 organized by Università di Parma Scipione, Mafai, Raphaël nella by Contardo Passamonti. 19 October – 30 November, Del Bon. Venti anni dalla morte Centro Studi e Archivio della collezione A. Della Ragione del Roma, Raphaël, 1983 Roma, 1984 curated by M. Pinottini. New York, 1987 Galleria Annunciata. Comunicazione, Dipartimento Comune di Firenze e in collezioni Milano, 1982 La Scuola romana dal ’29 al Alberto Ziveri Scuola Romana. Romantic Arte Contemporanea, curated by private Renato Birolli. Dipinti dal 1928 al ’33 (Mafai, Raphaël, Scipione, Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Macerata, 1986 Expressionism in Rome Roma, 1972 Sandro Bini, Giulio Carlo Argan, Palazzo del Popolo, 29 April – 27 1942 Mazzacurati, Lazzaro, Cagli, curated by Dario Durbé. Mario Mafai 1902–1965 1930–1945 Antonietta Raphaël Giuseppe Marchiori, Mario May, curated by Maurizio Fagiolo Palazzo Serbelloni, Circolo della Capogrossi, Cavalli, Fazzini, Palazzo Ricci e Pinacoteca New York, Philippe Daverio Galleria Querinas, December. De Micheli, Giovanni Testori. dell’Arco. Stampa, 3–27 November, curated Ziveri, Di Cocco, Ianni) Torino, 1984 Comunale, 6 July – 15 September, Gallery. by Franco Passoni. Galleria privata Marino – La Chessa Da Milano Levi Menzio curated by Giuseppe Appella, Praga, Budapest, Bucarest, 1973 Torino, 1976 Tartaruga, April, curated by Dario Piemonte Artistico e Culturale, Fabrizio D’Amico, Flaminio Ravenna, 1987 Renato Guttuso: Obrazy z let Renato Birolli 1980–89 Milano, Anni Trenta, 1982 Durbé. February, promoted by Regione Gualdoni. Guttuso 1937–1974 1931–1971 Galleria d’arte Narciso, 3–30 April. Gli Anni Trenta. Arte e Cultura Piemonte – Assessorato alla Galleria Il Patio, 20 June Praga, Národní galerie v Praze, Todi, 1980 in Italia Torino, 1983 Cultura, curated by Renzo Milano, 1986 – 30 September, curated January–February Roma, 1976–77 “Ernesto Treccani – Mostra Galleria del Sagrato, Palazzo I Sei di Torino. Boswell, Chessa, Guasco, Angelo Mistrangelo Cassinari by Duccio Trombadori. Budapest, Mücsarnok, 20 March Fausto Pirandello (1899–1975) antologica” Reale ed ex Arengario, 27 January Galante, Levi, Menzio, Paulucci Palazzo Reale, September– – 15 April Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Palazzo del Popolo, 19 April – 18 – 30 April, curated by Vittorio Galleria Narciso, 19 February – 31 Venezia, 1984 November, curated by Enrico Rivoli, 1987 Bucarest, Muzeul de Artaˇ al 21 December 1976 – 27 February May. Fagone, Renato Barilli, Flavio March. Exhibition Crispolti. Sassu. Dipinti 1929–1987 Republicii Socialiste România, 1977. Caroli. Ala Napoleonica e Magazzino Castello di Rivoli, 20 October May–June. Torino, 1980 Torino, Roma, Firenze, 1983 del sale 266 alle Zattere, Milano, Mantova, 1986 – 29 November, curated by Guido Colonia, 1977 Carlo Levi Milano, Raphaël, 1982 Ottone Rosai. Opere dal 1911 12 May – 30 September, curated Il Chiarismo Lombardo Ballo. Prato, 1973 Renato Guttuso. Gemälde und Galleria d’Arte Accademia, La rivolta antinovecento dei primi al 1957 by Germano Celant. Milano, Palazzo Bagatti–Valsecchi 100 opere di Filippo de Pisis Handzeichnungen 20 September – 12 October. anni trenta Torino, Circolo degli Artisti – Mantova, Casa del Mantegna, Torino, 1987 Galleria d’Arte Moderna Falsetti, Kunsthalle Köln und des Museums 27 January – 30 April, curated Palazzo Graneri, April–May Milano, 1984–85 6 October – 16 November, curated Il corpo 19 May – 19 June 1973, cat. Ludwig, 4 June – 24 July. Trezzano sul Naviglio, 1980–81 by Alessandra Borgogelli, Dario Roma, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Roma tra espressionismo barocco by Renzo Margonari, Renzo Studio Scuola Romana, December, plate LXXXII, illustrated in colour, Da Corrente ad oggi. Rassegna Micacchi. Moderna, July–September e pittura tonale 1929–1943 Modesti. curated by Giovanni Audoli. curated by G. Marchiori, Milano, 1977 Nazionale di Pittura Firenze, Palazzo Strozzi, Galleria privata Daverio, December S. Zanotto, E. Natali. Mostra a Milano 20 December 1980 – 15 January Roma, 1982 13 November – 18 December, 1984 – January 1985. Montichiari, 1986 Verona, 1987 Edizione delle Ore, May, 1981. Alberto Ziveri curated by Pier Carlo Santini. Ernesto Treccani. Realtà Guttuso, 50 anni di pittura Borgomanero, 1974 curated by Alfonso Gatto. Galleria Il Fante di Spade. Roma, 1984–85 e coscienza Palazzo Forti – Galleria d’Arte Broggini disegni e acquarelli Berlino, 1981 Messina, 1983–84 Mario Mafai Teatro Sociale, chiesa del Moderna, 29 July – 15 October, Galleria L’Incontro. Milano, Bologna, 1977 Ernesto Treccani. Malerei, Grafik, Venezia, 1982 Migneco – Mostra antologica Studio Sotis, December 1984 – Suffragio and Biblioteca curated by Giorgio Cortenova, Fausto Pirandello. Opere Plastik Guttuso: opere dal 1931 al 1981 Palazzo Zanca, December February 1985, curated by Duccio comunale, 20 September – 26 Enrico Mascelloni. Ferrara, 1974 dal 1923 al 1935 Neue Berliner Galerie im Alten Palazzo Grassi, 4 April – 20 June. 1983 – February 1984, curated Trombadori. October, curated by Floriano De Ernesto Treccani Milano, Galleria Gian Ferrari, Museum, May–June. by Salvatore Quasimodo, Vittorio Santi. Bagheria, Milano, 1987–88 Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna, from 27 October Palermo, 1982–83 Fagone. Roma, Fazzini e Ziveri, 1984–85 Renato Guttuso dagli esordi al Palazzo dei Diamanti, March– Bologna, Galleria Forni, Brugherio, 1981 Fausto Pirandello Fazzini e Ziveri Genzano, Verona, 1987 Gott mit Uns 1924–1944 April, curated by Raffaele from 10 December. Treccani. Cento dipinti, sculture, Civica Galleria d’arte moderna Roma, 1983–84 Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Giuseppe Migneco Bagheria, Galleria d’Arte Moderna De Grada, Vittorio Fagone, disegni, incisioni 1940–1980 Empedocle Restivo, 22 December Alberto Ziveri, le incisioni 19 December 1984 Genzano, Galleria privata Poggiali e Contemporanea Villa Cattolica, Franco Loi. Torino, 1977 Villa Fiorita, 14 March – 12 April, 1982 – 22 January 1983, curated Accademia Nazionale di San Luca, – 3 February 1985, curated e Forconi, April–May; L’Infiorata, 27 June – 30 September 1987 Nicola Galante 1883–1969 curated by Mario De Micheli. by Giorgio Mascherpa, Fabrizio December 1983 – January 1984, by Dario Durbé. June, curated by E. Fabiani Milano, Palazzo Isimbardi, 29 Foyer del teatro Piccolo Regio, D’Amico. curated by Dario Durbé. Verona, Galleria privata Ghelfi, October 1987 – 10 January 1988, 18 October – 20 November, November–December, curated curated by Dora Favatella curated by Lorenzo Guasco. by F. Butturini. Lo Cascio.

394 395 EXHIBITIONS — EDITED BY RISCHA PATERLINI 1988 – 2000

Milano, 1988 Venezia, 1989 Roma, 1990–91 Verona, Roma, 1992 Roma, I Mafai, 1994 Genova, 1995–96 Roma, 1997 Roma, 1998 Scuola Romana. Artisti Arte Italiana. Presenze 1900–1945 Alberto Ziveri. “Elogio dell’ombra” Da Cézanne all’Arte Astratta. I Mafai. Vite parallele Arte della libertà. Antifascismo, Arte a Roma tra le due guerre: Roma 1918–43 tra le due guerre Palazzo Grassi, curated by Pontus Galleria privata Netta Vespignani, Omaggio a Lionello Venturi Galleria d’arte Netta Vespignani, guerra e liberazione in Europa dal ritorno all’ordine alla Scuola Chiostro del Bramante, 29 April Palazzo Reale, 13 April – 19 June, Hulten, Germano Celant. December 1990 – January 1991, Verona, Palazzo Forti, February–March, curated 1925–1945 Romana –12 July, curated by Fabio Benzi, curated by Maurizio Fagiolo curated by Valerio Rivosecchi. March–April 1992 by M. Fagiolo dell’Arco. Palazzo Ducale, 16 November Galleria Arco Farnese. Gianni Mercurio, Luigi Prisco. dell’Arco, Giovanni Audoli. Viareggio, 1989 Roma, Galleria Nazionale 1995 – 18 February 1996, curated 60° Premio letterario Premio Bellinzona, 1991 d’Arte Moderna, 23 June – Viggiù, 1994 by Franco Sborgi. Roma, Birolli, 1997 Torino, 1998 Oslo, Helsinki 1988 Viareggio – Rèpaci 1989 Italo Valenti. Mostra antologica 24 October 1992, curated by Francesco De Rocchi – Dipinti Renato Birolli Corrente Tilbakevending til orden og Villa Borbone, 30 June – 31 Civica Galleria d’Arte, 1 May – 1 Giorgio Cortenova, Roberto Museo Butti, June–September, Modena, 1995–96 Archivio di Scuola Romana, Spazio SDA, 10 July gjennopptagelsen av malerkunsten. August, curated by Maurizio June, curated by Elena Pontiggia. Lambarelli, Enrico Mascelloni, curated by Giovanni Anzani. L’invenzione del paesaggio. Pittura October–November, curated by – 6 September, curated by Den figurative kontinuitet i italiensk Fagiolo dell’Arco. Maurizio Calvesi, Bruno Zevi, italiana da Morandi a Schifano Zeno Birolli, Gianfranco Bruno, Raffaele De Grada. malerkunst 1920–1987 [From Bologna, 1991 M. Abbruzzese. Oderzo, 1994–95 Galleria Civica – Palazzina dei Paolo Rusconi. the Return to Order to the Call of New York, 1989–90 Il cuore della Scuola Romana Aligi Sassu. Opere 1930–1992 Giardini, 1 October 1995 – 7 Aosta, 1999 Painting. Figurative Continuity in Gardens and Ghettos. Forni Tendenze, 28 September Ferrara, 1993 Palazzo Foscolo, 11 December January 1996, curated by Fabrizio Torino, 1997 I Sei Pittori di Torino 1929–1931 Italian Painting from 1920 to 1987] The Art of Jewish Life in Italy – 16 November, curated by Pittura e realtà 1994 – 15 January 1995, curated D’Amico, Walter Guadagnini. Luci del Mediterraneo Museo Archeologico Regionale Oslo, Kunstnernes Hus, The Jewish Museum, 17 Fabrizio D’Amico. Palazzo dei Diamanti, 28 February by Enzo De Martino. Palazzo Bricherasio, 27 March di Aosta, 24 April – 4 July, curated 6–23 February September 1989 – 1 February 1990. – 30 May, curated by Andrea Prato, Milano 1995–96 – 29 June, curated by M. Vescovo. by Mirella Bandini. Helsinki, Ateneumin taidemuseo, Milano, 1991 Buzzoni, Fabrizio D’Amico, Firenze, 1995 Ottone Rosai, 200 opere dal 1913 9 March – 24 April. Milano, Roma, Verona, 1989–1990 Luigi Broggini Flaminio Gualdoni Ottone Rosai nel centenario della al 1957 Parigi, 1997–98 Bra, 1999 Renato Birolli Palazzo della Permanente, nascita. Opere dal 1919 al 1957 Prato, Farsettiarte, 23 September École romaine 1925–1945 Boswell, Chessa, Galante, Levi, Riva del Garda, 1988 Milano, Palazzo Reale, 13 September – 27 October, Roma, 1993 Galleria Pananti, 18 March – – 22 October 1995 Pavillon des Arts, 24 October 1997 Menzio, Paulucci. Opere dal 1924 Immagini e figure. Momenti della September–November 1989 curated by Renzo Modesti. Tutte le strade portano a Roma? 15 June, curated by A. Parronchi, Milano, Palazzo Reale, 26 October – 25 January 1998. al 1973 pittura in Italia 1928–1942 Roma, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Palazzo delle Esposizioni, R. Monti, G. dalla Chiesa, V. Corti. 1995 – 6 January 1996, curated by Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio, Museo Civico, 23 July – 9 October, Moderna, December 1989 – Modena, 1991 11 March – 26 April, curated Luigi Cavallo Torino, Scipione, 1997–98 April–July, curated by Mirella curated by Paolo Fossati. January 1990 Antonietta Raphaël by Achille Bonito Oliva. Milano, Le ragioni, 1995 Le Capitali d’Italia. Torino–Roma Bandini, Laura Riccio. Verona, Palazzo Forti e Galleria Galleria Civica – Palazzina Le ragioni della Libertà. Verona, 1996 1911–1946. Arti, produzione, Roma, 1988 dello Scudo, February–March dei Giardini, 7 April – 16 June, Torino, 1993 A cinquant’anni dalla Resistenza Renato Birolli 1935 spettacolo Firenze, 1999 Nella scia della “Cometa”. 1990, curated by Pia Vivarelli. curated by Fabrizio D’Amico. I Sei Pittori di Torino 1929–1931 Palazzo della Triennale, Galleria dello Scudo, 18 October – Palazzo Bricherasio, 4 December Sassu. Antologica 1927–1999 Antologia del disegno a Roma – Mole Antonelliana, 6 May – 4 July, April–May, curated by Mario 23 November, curated by Fabrizia 1997 – 22 March 1998, curated by Palazzo Strozzi, 17 July – 30 1937 Roma, Verona, 1989–1990 Varese, 1991 curated by Mirella Bandini. De Micheli. Lanza Pietromarchi. Marisa Vescovo, Netta Vespignani. September, curated by Marina Galleria privata Carlo Virgilio, I fiori di Mafai Luigi Broggini Pizziolo. curated by Mario Quesada. Roma, Galleria privata Netta Musei Civici di Villa Mirabello, Torino, Menzio, 1993 Milano, Migneco, 1995 Volta Mantovana, 1996 Civitanova Marche, 1998 Vespignani, October–November 23 March – 28 April, curated I Sei Pittori di Torino 1928–1971 Migneco I chiaristi. Milano e l’Alto Luigi Broggini e il suo tempo. Uno Medole, 1999 Torino, 1988 1989 by Renzo Modesti. Galleria Biasutti. Galleria Bonaparte, 15 November Mantovano negli anni Trenta scultore nell’Italia degli anni ’30 tra Sognare la natura. Il paesaggio Z Verona, Galleria dello Scudo, – 12 December, curated by (Oltre il Novecento. Precursori e chiarismo e Corrente nell’arte a Milano dal Novecento Scuola Romana Studio d’Arte, 9 December 1989 – 20 January Busto Arsizio, Ferrara, 1991–92 Bergamo, 1993–94 Ermanno Krumm. compagni di strada del chiarismo) Chiesa di Sant’Agostino, 5 July – all’informale (1919–1959) from 7 October, curated by 1990, curated by Maurizio Fagiolo Artisti di Corrente. 1930–1990 Gli anni del Premio Bergamo Torre Civica, 14 April – 2 June, 27 September, curated by Elena Torre Civica, 4 September Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco. dell’Arco. Busto Arsizio, Museo delle Arti di Galleria d’arte moderna e Milano, Pirandello, 1995 curated by Elena Pontiggia Pontiggia. – 31 October, curated by Elena Palazzo Bandera, November 1991 contemporanea e Accademia Fausto Pirandello Pontiggia. Verona, 1988 – January 1992 Carrara, 25 September 1993 Palazzo Reale, 23 June – Conegliano, 1996–97 Marsala, 1998 Le scuole romane. Sviluppi 1990–99 Ferrara, Gallerie Civiche d’Arte – 9 January 1994. 1 October, curated by Claudia Morlotti. Opere 1936–1991 Fausto Pirandello. Bagnanti Roma, 1999–2000 e continuità 1927–1988 Moderna, Palazzo dei Diamanti, Gian Ferrari, Maurizio Fagiolo Palazzo Sarcinelli, 10 November 1928–1972 Fausto Pirandello. La vita attuale e Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Ferrara, 1990 January–March 1992, curated Ferrara, 1994 dell’Arco, Flavia Matitti, Flaminio 1996 – 6 January 1997. Ex convento del Carmine, 4 April la favola eterna Contemporanea di Palazzo Forti, I Tal Ya’ by Elena Pontiggia. Sesta Biennale Donna Gualdoni, Mario Quesada. – 7 June, curated by Claudia Gian exhibition for the centenary 9 April – 15 June, curated Palazzo dei Diamanti, 18 March – Palazzo Massari, 8 May – 3 July. Finalborgo, 1996–97 Ferrari, Sergio Troisi. Palazzo delle Esposizioni, 20 by Fabio Benzi. 17 June. Tübingen, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Roma, 1995 Aligi Sassu. La Liguria, il October 1999 – 10 January 2000, 1991–92 Ferrara, Morlotti, 1994 Guttuso Pirandello Ziveri. Realismo Mediterraneo. Opere 1929–1990 Milano, 1998 curated by Maurizio Fagiolo Milano, 1988–89 Macerata, 1990 Renato Guttuso. Gemälde und Morlotti. Opere 1940–1992 a Roma, 1938–1943 Chiostri di Santa Caterina, Edoardo Persico e gli artisti dell’Arco with the collaboration Vitalità della figurazione. Pittura Fausto Pirandello Zeichnungen Civiche Gallerie d’Arte Moderna Galleria Netta Vespignani, April– Oratorio de’ Disciplinati, 20 1929–1936. Il percorso di un of Claudia Gian Ferrari. italiana 1948–1988 Palazzo Ricci, 2 June – 16 Tübingen, Kunsthalle Tübingen, e Contemporanea, Palazzo dei May, curated by Fabrizio D’Amico. October 1996 – 19 January 1997, critico dall’impressionismo al Palazzo della Permanente, September, curated by Giuseppe 26 September – 24 November 1991 Diamanti, 6 March – 12 June, curated by Mario De Micheli, Silvio primitivismo 22 December 1988 – 29 January Appella, Guido Giuffré. Düsseldorf, Kunstmuseum curated by Andrea Buzzoni. Saronno, 1995 Riolfo Marengo. Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, 2000–09 1989, curated by Vittorio Sgarbi. Düsseldorf im Ehrenhof, 1 Broggini 11 June – 13 September, curated Marina di Pietrasanta, 1990 December 1991 – 16 February 1992 Gerusalemme, 1994 Galleria Il Chiostro – Arte Alessandria, 1997 by Elena Pontiggia. Brescia, 2000 Busto Arsizio, 1989 Ennio Morlotti. Antologica Hamburg, Kunstverein in Hamburg, Natura morta italiana. La raccolta Contemporanea, October– Anima & Corpo Lo sguardo innocente – L’arte, Luigi Broggini Fabbrica dei pinoli – La Versiliana, 29 February – 12 April 1992. Silvano Lodi November, curated by Rossana Palazzo Cuttica di Cassine, Milano, Corrente, 1998 l’infanzia, il ’900 Galleria privata Bambaia, July–August. Israel Museum, June–October. Bossaglia. 10 May – 13 July, curated by Corrente e oltre. Opere dalla Palazzo Martinengo, 12 May – 5 15 April – 28 May. Feltre, 1992 Marisa Vescovo, Francesco Poli. collezione Stellatelli 1930–1990 November, curated by Renato Milano, 1990 Ernesto Treccani. Opere 1941–1992 Milano, 1994 Bergamo, 1995–96 Museo della Permanente, Barilli, Rosa Persini, Maria Milano, 1989 Omaggio a Francesco De Rocchi Palazzo Guarnieri, July–August, Francesco De Rocchi Aligi Sassu. Dal 1930 a Corrente Conegliano, 1997 October–November, curated by Palladin. Ernesto Treccani Galleria privata Carini, November– curated by Raffaele De Grada, Nuova Galleria Carini, 12 April Accademia Carrara – Da Monet a Morandi. Paesaggi Marina Pizziolo. Palazzo Reale, 18 May – 25 June, December. Silvio Guarnieri. – 10 May, curated by Elena Galleria d’Arte Moderna e dello spirito Frascati, 2000 curated by Antonello Negri. Pontiggia. Contemporanea, 20 December Palazzo Sarcinelli, Galleria Milano, Del Bon, 1998 Il Novecento allo specchio. L’arte Milano, Espressionismo, 1990 Modena, 1992 1995 – 28 January 1996, curated Comunale d’Arte, 13 April – 15 Angelo Del Bon. Omaggio italiana degli anni Trenta Torino, 1989 Milano. Espressionismo lirico Alberto Ziveri Roma, 1994 by Vittorio Fagone. June, curated by Marco Goldin. per il centenario, 1898–1998 e Quaranta nelle Collezioni Apocalisse 1929–1936 Galleria Civica – Palazzina dei Aligi Sassu. Dipinti 1930–1990 Galleria del Centro Culturale e negli Archivi Scuola Romana Studio d’Arte, Galleria privata Philippe Daverio, Giardini, 27 September – 29 Galleria La Vite, 11 February San Fedele, 5 November – 19 Scuderie Aldobrandini, 11 April from 21 April, curated by Maurizio March–April, curated by Fabrizia November, curated by Fabrizio – 10 March, curated by Mauro December, curated by Marina – 28 May, curated by Alessandro Fagiolo dell’Arco. Lanza Pietromarchi. D’Amico, Walter Guadagnini. Lombardo. De Stasio, Elena Pontiggia. Masi, Laura Turco Liveri.

396 397 EXHIBITIONS — EDITED BY RISCHA PATERLINI 2001 – 2017

Milano, 2001 Cagliari, 2003 Milano, 2004–05 Settimo Torinese, 2005–06 Marsala, 2008 Milano, Maggi, 2010 Roma, 2012–13 London, 2015 Tempo di guerra Da Tiziano a De Chirico. Milano Anni Trenta. L’arte e la città Il gruppo dei Sei e la pittura Mediterraneo. Mitologie della Carla Maria Maggi e il ritratto Guttuso 1912–2012 Pirandello 1899–1975 Palazzo della Permanente, La ricerca dell’identità Spazio Oberdan, 2 December a Torino 1920–1940 figura nell’arte italiana tra le due a Milano negli anni trenta Complesso del Vittoriano, Ala Brasini, Estorick Collection 13 September – 18 October, Castel San Michele, 14 June – 2004 – 27 February 2005, curated Casa per l’Arte La Giardinera, guerre Palazzo Reale, 5 June Via San Pietro in Carcere, Roma, of Modern Italian Art, 8 July curated by Paolo Rusconi, 26 October, curated by Vittorio by Elena Pontiggia, Nicoletta 16 December 2005 – 26 March Ex convento del Carmine, 13 July – – 5 September, curated by Elena 11 October 2012 – 3 February – 6 September, curated by Antonello Negri. Sgarbi. Colombo. 2006, curated by Rolando Bellini, 5 October, curated by Sergio Troisi. Pontiggia. 2013, curated by Fabio Carapezza Fabio Benzi. Ivana Mulatero. Guttuso, Enrico Crispolti. San Giovanni in Valdarno, 2001 Ivano Fracena, 2003 Roma, 2004–05 Milano, 2008 Roma, 2010 Milano, Expo, 2015 Filippo de Pisis. Natura Cinquant’anni di pittura. Opere dal Mario Mafai 1902–1965. Una Mantova, 2006 Corrente. Le parole della vita. Fausto Pirandello alle Quadriennali Monchiero, 2013 Il tesoro d’Italia. Storia, geografia e contaminazione 1939 al 1989 calma febbre di colori Semeghini e il Chiarismo Opere 1930–1945 del 1935 e del 1939 Ritratto di Famiglia. Un secolo e biodiversità dell’arte italiana Galleria Il Ponte, 10 November Associazione Castel Ivano Palazzo Venezia, 6 December fra Milano e Mantova Palazzo Reale, 18 June Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, di arte italiana (1912–2013) Padiglione Eataly di Expo Milano – 29 December 2001, curated Incontri, 12 July – 31 August, 2004 – 27 February 2005, curated Fruttiere di Palazzo Te, 11 March – 7 September, curated by Marina 18 March – 2 May, curated by attraverso le opere di una famiglia 2015, 1 May – 21 October, by Luigi Cavallo. curated by Giovanni Anzani, by Claudia Terenzi, Fabrizio – 28 May, curated by Francesco Pizziolo. Claudia Gian Ferrari. di artisti Eso Peluzzi, Scipione curated by Vittorio Sgarbi. Elisabetta Staudacher. D’Amico, Giuseppe Appella, Netta Butturini. (Gino Bonichi), Claudio Bonichi, Tokyo, Niigata City, Hokkaido, Vespignani. Milano, Sassu, 2008 Milano, 2010–11 Benedetta Bonichi Milano, Caglio, 2015 Toyama, Ashikaga, Yamagata, Lodève, 2003 Milano, 2006 Sassu. Dal mito alla realtà. L’artista, il poeta Arte Internazionale al Museo Eso I luoghi di Corrente 2001 Musée de Lodève, Palazzo Hotel Brescia, 2005 Fausto Pirandello. Opere dal 1935 Dipinti degli Anni Trenta Palazzo della Permanente, Peluzzi, 21 June – 24 November. Milano, Fondazione di Corrente, Italian Still Life Painting du Cardinal De Fleury, Casa Mafai, Da Via Cavour agli anni estremi Palazzo Reale, 18 June 12 November 2010 – 9 January via Carlo Porta 5, 14 May April–May. 20 June – 26 October. a Parigi (1925–1932) Galleria Gian Ferrari ’900 Italiano, – 7 September, curated 2011, curated by Flaminio Padova, 2013 – 9 June Museo di Santa Giulia, 14 January Arte Contemporanea, 1 June – by Giuseppe Bonini. Gualdoni, Alberto Pellegatta. Ebraicità al femminile, Otto Caglio, Sala Civica del Comune Vicenza, 2001 Ravenna, 2003 – 20 March, curated by Fabrizio 21 July, curated by C. Gian Ferrari. artiste del Novecento di Caglio (Como), 19 July – 30 Italo Valenti 1912–1995 Da Renoir a De Staël. Roberto D’Amico, Marco Goldin. Pesaro, 2008 Milano, 2010–13 Centro Culturale Altinate San August, curated by Nicoletta Salone degli Zavatteri, nella Longhi e il moderno Taranto, 2006 Il segno marchigiano nell’arte Works exhibited at the Museo del Gaetano, 31 August – 13 October, Colombo, Jacopo Muzio, Basilica Palladiana di Vicenza, Loggetta Lombardesca, Mendrisio, 2005 Raffaele Carrieri del Novecento. Scipione, Licini, Novecento in Milan on temporary curated by Marina Bakos, Virginia Antonello Negri, Paolo Rusconi, 13 May – 22 July, curated 23 February – 30 June, curated Renato Birolli. Sentire la natura Museo Nazionale Archeologico, Cucchi loan for a period of five years, Baradel, Serena De Dominicis. Giorgio Seveso. by Giuliano Menato. by Claudio Spadoni. Museo d’Arte, 1 May 22 April – 22 May, curated by Centro Arti Visive Pescheria which actually lasted only three – 3 July, curated by Gianfranco Elena Pontiggia, Aldo Perrone. e Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio, years from its inauguration on Parma, 2013 Milano, 2016 Vigevano, 2001 Ravensburg, 2003 Bruno, Simone Soldini. 12 July – 14 September, 6 December 2010. De Pisis en voyage. Roma, Le gallerie milanesi tra le due La pittura in Lombardia Natura morta italiana: Italianische Fabriano, 2007 curated by Francesca Romana Parigi, Londra, Milano, Venezia guerre nel XX secolo Stilleben aus vier Jahrunderten Sorrento, 2005 Aria. Premio Internazionale d’Arte Morelli, Federica Pirani, Ludovico Castelbasso, 2011 Fondazione Magnani Rocca, Fondazione Stelline, 24 February Lions Club Vigevano Colonne, Schloss Achberg, April–October. Fausto Pirandello. Antologica 10th edition Pratesi. Renato Guttuso – Immaginazione Mamiano di Traversetolo, – 22 May, curated by Luigi Lions Vigevano Sforzesco, Museo Correale di Terranova, Spedale di Santa Maria del Buon realista 13 September – 8 December, Sansone. Fondazione di Piacenza Torino, 2003 23 March – 29 May, curated Gesù, 7 July – 16 September. Lugano, 2008–09 Fondazione Malvina Menegaz curated by Paolo Campiglio. e Vigevano, 31 March – 1 July, Arte in due. Coppie d’artisti by Claudia Gian Ferrari. Sassu. Maison Tellier per le Arti e le Culture, 2 July – 31 Milano, Badodi, 2016 curated by Raffaele De Grada. in Europa 1900–1945 Milano, 2007 Villa Ciani, 17 October 2008 August, curated by Francesco Poli. Bergamo, 2014 In pratica n. 2. Luca De Leva Palazzo Cavour, 14 March – 8 Torino, 2005 Camera con vista. Arte – 1 March 2009, curated Italiani a Parigi. Da Severini a Collezione Giuseppe Iannaccone, Venezia, 2001–02 June, curated by Lea Mattarella, Renato Guttuso. Opere scelte e interni 1900–2000 by Fondazione Aligi Sassu Milano 2011 Savinio, da De Chirico a Campigli corso Matteotti 11, 9 April Da Rossi a Morandi, da Viani Elena Pontiggia, Tulliola Sparagni. 1935–1986 Palazzo Reale, 18 April – 1 July, and Helenita Olivares. Lo stupore nello sguardo. Palazzo Storico Credito – 13 November, curated by ad Arp Galleria D’Arte Mazzoleni, curated by Luigi Settembrini, La fortuna di Rousseau in Italia Bergamasco, 10–30 May, curated by Giuseppe Iannaccone, Rischa Galleria Bevilacqua, 10 November Busto Arsizio, 2003–04 11 March – 11 June, curated Claudia Gian Ferrari. Venezia, 2008–09 da Soffici e Carrà a Breveglieri Angelo Piazzoli, Paola Silvia Ubiali. Paterlini. 2001 – 14 January 2002, curated Ernesto Treccani e gli Artisti by Angelo Mistrangelo. Carlo Cardazzo. Una nuova visione Fondazione Stelline, 24 March by Giuseppe Marchiori. di Corrente Reggio Emilia, 2007 dell’arte – 1 June, curated by Elena Favignana, 2014 Roma, 2016 Fondazione Bandera per l’Arte, Torino, Guttuso, 2005 Aligi Sassu. Uomini rossi Collezione Peggy Guggenheim, Pontiggia. Artisti di Sicilia. Da Pirandello Fausto Pirandello. Opere Saronno, 2002 25 October 2003 – 29 February Renato Guttuso. Capolavori 1930–1933. Tempere, acquarelli, 1 November 2008 – 9 February a Iudice dal 1923 al 1973 Francesco De Rocchi 2004, curated by Elena Pontiggia. dai musei inchiostri e pastelli 2009, curated by Luca Massimo Seravezza, 2011 Stabilimento Florio delle Tonnare Galleria Russo, 19 November (1902–1978) Palazzo Bricherasio, 18 February Galleria La Scaletta, September, Barbero. Guttuso e gli amici di Corrente di Favignana e Formica, – 14 December, curated by Fabio Casa Morandi, Sala Nevera, Monza, 2003–04 – 25 June, curated by Fabio curated by Vittorio Fagone, Alessia Palazzo Mediceo, 2 July 11 July – 12 October, curated Benzi, Flavia Matitti. 12 October – 16 November, Guido Pajetta – fra primo Carapezza Guttuso. Giglio Zanetti. Taormina, 2009 – 11 September. by Vittorio Sgarbi. curated by Elena Pontiggia. e secondo Novecento Migneco europeo Salò, 2016 Serrone della Villa Reale, Pordenone, 2005–06 Roma, 2007 Chiesa del Carmine, 25 July – 1 Chieti, 2012 Roma, 2014 Da Giotto a De Chirico Monsummano Terme, 2002–03 26 October 2003 – 6 January 2004. Ado Furlan 1905–1971. Artisti Antonietta Raphaël. Sculture in Villa November, curated by Lucio Sassu e Corrente 1930–1943. Artiste del Novecento tra visione Museo di Salò, 13 April Tendenze del Novecento: e amici romani. Opere 1930–1945 Casino dei Principi Villa Torlonia, Barbera, Anna Maria Ruta. La Rivoluzione del colore e identità ebraica – 6 November, curated by Vittorio naturalezza come stile: l’idea Palermo, 2003–04 Complesso di San Francesco, 28 March – 15 July, curated by Palazzo de’ Mayo – S.E.T Spazio Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Roma Sgarbi. dell’arte nelle pagine de La ricerca dell’identità. Da Galleria Sagittaria – Centro Archivio della Scuola Romana. Torino, 2009 Esposizioni Temporanee, Capitale, 12 June – 5 October, “Il Frontespizio” 1937/1939 Antonello a De Chirico Iniziative Culturali, Nuova sede Jessie Boswell 25 July – 7 October, curated by curated by Marina Bakos, Olga Torino, 2016 Museo di Arte Contemporanea Albergo delle Povere, della Provincia di Corso Garibaldi, Roma, 2007–08 Sala Bolaffi, 17 March – 10 May, Elena Pontiggia, Alfredo Paglione. Melasecchi, Federica Pirani. Renato Birolli. Figure e del Novecento, 15 December 15 November 2003 – 15 February 10 December 2005 – 26 February Scipione 1904–1933 curated by Ivana Mulatero. e luoghi 2002 – 16 March 2003, curated 2004, curated by Vittorio Sgarbi. 2006, curated by Giancarlo Casino dei principi dei Musei di Firenze, 2012–13 Roma, Levi, 2014 Museo Ettore Fico, 9 March by Marco Moretti. Pauletto. Villa Torlonia, 7 September 2007 – Anni Trenta. Arti in Italia oltre Carlo Levi. La realtà e lo specchio – 26 June, curated by Elena Torino, 2004 6 January 2008, curated by Netta 2010–17 il fascismo Galleria d’Arte Russo, Pontiggia, Viviana Birolli. Rovereto, 2002–03 I Sei di Torino. Per i quindici anni Potenza, 2005–06 Vespignani, Claudia Terenzi. Palazzo Strozzi, 22 September 20 November – 12 December, Le stanze dell’arte. Figure della Galleria del Ponte Visionari, primitivi, eccentrici da Milano, 2010 2012 – 27 January 2013, curated curated by Fondazione Carlo Levi. Milano, 2017 e immagini del XX secolo Galleria del Ponte, 7 May Alberto Martini a Licini, Ligabue, Firenze, 2008 Il Chiarismo. Omaggio a De by Antonello Negri, Silvia Bignami, Collezione Giuseppe Iannaccone. Museo di Arte Moderna e – 26 June, curated by Stefano Ontani Ottone Rosai Cinquanta dipinti Rocchi. Luce e colore a Milano Paolo Rusconi, Giorgio Zanchetti, Bagheria, 2015 Italia 1920–1945. Una nuova Contemporanea di Trento Testa. Galleria Civica di Palazzo Loffredo, a 50 anni dalla scomparsa negli anni trenta Susanna Ragionieri. Ritratti e Autoritratti figurazione e il racconto del sé e Rovereto, 14 December 2002 14 October 2005 – 29 January Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Palazzo Reale, 16 June Museo Guttuso, 18 April Triennale, 31 January – 19 March, – 13 April 2003, curated 2006, curated by Laura Gavioli. 27 January – 25 March, curated – 5 September, curated by Elena – 21 June, curated by curated by Alberto Salvadori, by Gabriella Belli. by Luigi Cavallo, Piero Pananti, Pontiggia. Fabio Carapezza Guttuso, Rischa Paterlini, artistic director Filippo Pananti. Dora Favatella Lo Cascio. Edoardo Bonaspetti.

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Ivano, 13 July – 31 August 2003), catalogue (Bergamo, Palazzo della Scipione 1904–1933, exhibition AA.VV. Arte Moderna 1992 AA.VV. Anni ’30 2012 Anceschi 1941 Trento: Edizioni Temi e Provincia Ragione, September–October AA.VV. 1971 catalogue (Macerata, Palazzo Arte Moderna. L’Arte del AA.VV. 1997 A. Negri, S. Bignami, P. Rusconi, Aligi Sassu, exhibition catalogue Autonoma di Trento. 1941), foreword by G. Gallarini, Milano 70/70. Un secolo d’Arte, Ricci, 6 July – 15 September Novecento dal Futurismo École romaine 1925–1945, G. Zanchetti, S. Ragionieri (edited (Milan, Bottega di Corrente, 19–31 Bergamo: Istituto Italiano di Arti exhibition catalogue (Milan, Museo 1985), Rome: De Luca. a Corrente, no. 2, Milan: Giorgio exhibition catalogue by), Anni ’30. Arti in Italia oltre il March 1941), introduction by L. Apollonio 1950 Grafiche. Poldi Pezzoli, 28 April Mondadori. (Parigi, Les musées de la Ville fascismo, exhibition catalogue Anceschi, Milan: Edizioni Bottega U. Apollonio, Pittura italiana – 10 June 1971), Milan: AA.VV. Sassu 1985 de Paris – Pavillon des Arts, (Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, 22 di Corrente. moderna. Idea per una storia, AA.VV. 1942 Editrice Edi Stampa. Aligi Sassu. Cuadernos AA.VV. 1993 24 October 1997 – 25 January September 2012 – 27 January Vicenza: Neri Pozza. IV Premio Bergamo. Mostra Guadalimar, no. 23, Madrid: Gli anni del Premio Bergamo. 1998), Paris: Paris Musées. 2013), Florence. Anceschi Aligi Sassu 1941 Nazionale di pittura, exhibition A.A. VV. 1972 Ediciones Rajuela. Arte in Italia intorno agli anni Aligi Sassu, exhibition catalogue Appella 1984 catalogue (Bergamo, Palazzo della Guttuso, exhibition catalogue Trenta, exhibition catalogue AA.VV. Arte Moderna 1997 AA.VV. 2015 (Genova, Galleria Genova, 1–15 G. Appella, Scipione. 306 disegni, Ragione, September–October (Berlino, Neue Gesellschaft für AA.VV. 1986 (Bergamo, Galleria d’arte moderna Arte Moderna. L’arte I Luoghi di Corrente, exhibition February 1941), introduction by Rome: Edizioni della Cometa. 1942), XX, Bergamo: Istituto bildende Kunst, February–March Cassinari, exhibition catalogue e contemporanea e Accademia contemporanea dal secondo catalogue (Caglio, Sala Civica L. Anceschi, Genova: Galleria Italiano di Arti Grafiche. 1972), Rome: De Luca. (Milan, Palazzo Reale, September– Carrara, 25 September 1993 dopoguerra ad oggi, no. 33, Milan: del comune, 19 July – 30 August Genova. Appella 1988 November 1986), Milan: Arnoldo – 9 January 1994), Milan: Electa. Giorgio Mondadori. 2015), Milan: Scalpendi. G. Appella (edited by), Scipione AA.VV. 1943 AA.VV. 1974 Mondatori Editore. Anceschi 1945 e il Garda 1931–1933, exhibition IV Quadriennale d’Arte Nazionale, Ernesto Treccani, exhibition AA.VV. Arte Moderna 1993 AA.VV. 2000 Acatos 1987 L. Anceschi (edited by), Migneco. catalogue (Riva del Garda, Museo exhibition catalogue (Rome, catalogue (Ferrara, Palazzo dei AA.VV. Arte Moderna 1989 Arte Moderna. L’arte Lo sguardo innocente. L’arte, S. Acatos, Italo Valenti, Dodici tavole in nero e otto a Civico, 9 July – 9 October), Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Diamanti, 3 March – 7 April 1974), Catalogo dell’arte moderna contemporanea dal secondo l’infanzia, il ’900. Da Kandinsky Lausanne–Paris: La Bibliothèque colori, Milan: Galleria Santa Calliano: Manfrini Arti Grafiche. May–June 1943), Rome: Casa Cento: Siaca Grafiche. italiana, no. 25, Milan: Giorgio dopoguerra ad oggi, no. 29, Milan: a Maloney, exhibition catalogue des Arts. Radegonda. Editrice Mediterranea. Mondadori. Giorgio Mondadori. (Brescia, Palazzo Martinengo, 12 Appella 2016 AA.VV. 1976 May – 5 November 2000), Milan: Agnellini 1994 Anceschi Giuseppe Migneco G. Appella, Antonietta Raphaël. AA.VV. 1948 AA.VV., Renato Guttuso, Milan: AA.VV. Scuola Romana 1989 AA.VV., Novecento 1993 Mazzotta. M. 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Arte Moderna 1990 AA.VV., Novecento 1994 dopoguerra ad oggi, no. 38, Milan: Appella, D’Amico 1986 AA.VV. 1954 AA.VV. 1982 Catalogo dell’arte moderna Novecento. Catalogo dell’arte Giorgio Mondadori. Agnellini 1996 Antomarini, Stewart 2001 G. Appella, F. D’Amico (edited by), Pittura d’oggi (collezione del Guttuso. Opere dal 1931 al 1981, italiana, no. 26, Milan: Giorgio italiana dal Futurismo a Corrente, M. Agnellini (edited by), B. Antomarini, S. Stewart, Roma 1934, exhibition catalogue Vieusseux), Florence: Vallecchi. exhibition catalogue (Venice, Mondadori. no. 4, Milan: Giorgio Mondadori. Novecento italiano. Pittori Scipione. Poesie e prose, Milan: (Modena, Galleria Civica, 19 April Palazzo Grassi, 4 April – 20 June e scultori 1900–1945. Opere Charta. – 8 May 1986; Rome, Palazzo 1982), Florence: Sansoni. e mercato, vol. I, Novara: Braschi, June–August 1986), De Agostini. Modena: Edizioni Panini.

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Rosci, “Cassinari, i classici Pirovano 1993 exhibition catalogue (Castelbasso, nell’Italia degli anni ’30 tra Lo stupore nello sguardo. catalogue (Trento, 30 June Florence: Vallecchi. “Corrente” trent’anni dopo, e le fiamme”, in La Stampa, C. Pirovano (edited by), La pittura Borgo Medievale e Palazzo chiarismo e Corrente, exhibition La fortuna di Rousseau in Italia – 4 November 2007), Trento. exhibition catalogue (Napoli, y. 117, no. 170, Turin, 20 July. in Italia. Il Novecento/2 1945–1990, Clemente, 2 July – 31 August), catalogue (Civitanova Marche, da Soffici e Carrà a Breveglieri, Ragghianti 1954 Galleria Mediterranea, November vol. II, 2nd ed., Milan: Electa. Castelbasso: Edizioni Fondazione chiesa di Sant’Agostino, 5 July – exhibition catalogue (Milan, C. L. Ragghianti, “Firenze di 1971), introduction by P. Ricci. Rosci 1996 Malvina Menegaz. 27 September 1998), Milan: Skira. Fondazione Stelline, 24 March Q Rosai”, in Critica d’arte, 5. M. Rosci (edited by), Icone Pittura di Birolli 1966 – 1 June 2011), Cinisello Balsamo: Riccomini 1960 di Bruno Cassinari, exhibition Pittura di Birolli e Mostra della Politi 1963 Silvana Editoriale. Quadrum 1958 Ragghianti 1963 E. Riccomini (edited by), Mostra catalogue (Aosta, chiesa di San Giovane Arte in Italia intorno G. Politi, “Retrospettiva di Morlotti. Quadrum, revue internationale C. L. Ragghianti, “Guttuso”, in del rinnovamento dell’arte in Lorenzo, 11 July – 29 September al 1930, exhibition catalogue Lettere da Lecco”, in La Fiera d’art moderne, Bruxelles. seleArte, y. XI, no. 64, Florence, Italia dal 1930 al 1945, exhibition 1996), Milan: Electa. (Genova, Palazzo Reale, Sala del Letteraria, y. XVIII, no. 26, Rome, July–August. catalogue (Ferrara, Casa Romei, Falcone, 27 May – 18 June 1966), 30 June. June–September 1960), Bologna: Genova: Sapeg. Edizioni Alfa.

416 417 BIBLIOGRAPHY — EDITED BY RISCHA PATERLINI R – T

Rosci 1998 Salò 2016 Santini 1960 Scarpellini 1960 Sgarbi 2003 Sironi 1931 T Testori 2001 M. Rosci, Cassinari. Catalogo V. Sgarbi (edited by), Da P. C. Santini (edited by), Mostra P. Scarpellini, “I quindici della V. Sgarbi (edited by), Da Tiziano a M. Sironi, in Il Popolo d’Italia, G. Testori, La cenere e il volto. generale dei dipinti, vol. I, vol. II, Giotto a De Chirico, exhibition dell’opera di Ottone Rosai, Scuola Romana”, in Il Ponte, de Chirico. La ricerca dell’identità, Milan, 11 March. Taccani 1959 Scritti sulla pittura del Novecento, Milan: Electa. catalogue (Salò, MuSa, Museo exhibition catalogue (Florence, Florence, July. exhibition catalogue (Cagliari, R. Taccani (edited by), 50 anni Florence: Le Lettere. di Salò, 13 April – 6 November), Palazzo Strozzi, May–June 1960), Castel San Michele, 14 June – 14 Sironi 1931 Il popolo d’arte a Milano. Dal divisionismo Rosi 1942 Santarcangelo di Romagna: Florence: Vallecchi. Sciascia, Russoli, Grasso 1971 September 2003), Milan: Skira. M [M.Sironi], “Mostre di pittura”, ad oggi, exhibition catalogue Il Tevere 1938 M. Rosi, “Prefazione a Renato Maggioli Musei Editore. Technical Mostra antologica dell’opera in Il Popolo d’Italia, 22 January. (Milan, Palazzo della Permanente, “Tutto nulla e qualche cosa. Guttuso”, in Il Campano, no. 1–2, entries of the collection: Renato Santini Rosai 1960 di Renato Guttuso, exhibition Sgarbi La ricerca 2003 31 January – 15 March 1959), Straniera bolscevizzante Pisa, January–February. Guttuso, Ritratto di Antonino P. C. Santini, Rosai, Florence: catalogue (Palermo, Palazzo V. Sgarbi (edited by), La ricerca Sironi 1935 Milan: Vallardi Editore. e giudaica”, in Il Tevere, no. 23, Santangelo, Francesco Menzio, Vallecchi. dei Normanni, 13 February – 14 dell’identità. Da Antonello a de M. Sironi, “II Quadriennale d’arte Rome, 24–25 November. Rubiu 1984 Ritratto di giovane, Fausto March 1971), texts by L. Sciascia, Chirico, exhibition catalogue nazionale”, in La Rivista Illustrata Taccani 1960 V. Rubiu (edited by), Guttuso Pirandello, La famiglia dell’artista, Santini 1972 F. Russoli, F. Grasso, Palermo: (Palermo, Albergo delle Povere, del Popolo d’Italia, February. R. Taccani (edited by), Mostra Torriano 1932 grandi opere, exhibition catalogue Alberto Ziveri, Il postribolo, edited P. C. Santini, Rosai, 2nd ed., Banco di Sicilia. 15 November 2003 – 15 February Commemorativa di Pittori Soci, P. Torriano, “Cronache d’arte. (Milan, Palazzo Reale, 12 by Rischa Paterlini. Florence: Vallecchi. 2004), Milan: Skira. Solmi 1937 exhibition catalogue (Milan, Due giovani”, in La Casa Bella, December 1984 – 24 February La scuola romana 1983 S. Solmi, in Bollettino della Palazzo della Permanente, 9 April no. 49, Milan, January. 1985), Milan: Mazzotta. Salvagnini 2000 Santini 1977 La Scuola romana dal ’29 al ’33, Sgarbi 2014 Galleria del Milione, no. 57, 23 – 10 May 1960), Milan: Edizioni S. Salvagnini, Il sistema delle P. C. Santini, Rosai, 3rd ed., exhibition catalogue (Rome, V. Sgarbi (edited by), Artisti di November – 15 December 1937. della Permanente. Torriano 1943 Ruscio 1998 Arti in Italia 1919–1943, Bologna: Florence: Vallecchi. Galleria Marino – La Tartaruga, Sicilia. Da Pirandello a Iudice, P. Torriano, “Visto alla R. Ruscio, L’archivio di Renato Minerva. Santini 1983 1983). exhibition catalogue (Favignana, Solmi 1984 Tassi 1970 Quadriennale”, in Sette Giorni, Marino Mazzacurati nei Musei P. C. Santini (edited by), Ottone ex Stabilimento Florio delle F. Solmi (edited by), Sassu, Morandi – Morlotti. Per i y. IX, no. 22, Milan, 29 May. Civici di Reggio Emilia, Reggio Salvagnini 2001 Rosai, exhibition catalogue Sebastiani 1998 Tonnare di Favignana e Formica, exhibition catalogue (Ferrara, quarant’anni del Milione due Emilia Edizioni Diabasis. S. Salvagnini (edited by), Da (Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, 1983), G. Sebastiani (edited by), I Libri 11 July – 12 October 2014), Milan: Palazzo dei Diamanti, 15 January – antologiche (Milan, Galleria del Torriano Pittura 1943 Rossi a Morandi, da Viani ad Arp. Florence: Vallecchi. di Corrente. Milano 1940–43: Skira. 4 March 1984), Bologna: Grafis. Milione, 12 December 1970 – 12 P. Torriano, “Pittura. Gli estremi si Rusconi 2000 Giuseppe Marchiori critico d’arte, una vicenda editoriale, Bologna: January 1971), introduction by R. toccano”, in Sette Giorni, y. IX, P. Rusconi, Eldorado, Dossier 3, exhibition catalogue (Venice, Santini, Ottone Rosai 1983 Pendragon. Sgarbi Hopper 2015 Spadoni 1985 Tassi, Milan: Edizioni del Milione. no. 25, Milan, 19 June. Milan: Skira. Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, P. C. Santini (edited by), Ottone V. Sgarbi, “Hopper? È italiano. Si C. Spadoni, “Scipione il romano. 10 November 2001 – 14 January Rosai. Opere dal 1911 al 1957, I Sei Pittori 1993 chiamava Ziveri”, in il Giornale, 31 Macerata / 30 quadri e 130 disegni Tassi 1972 Toscani 2005 Rusconi 2001 2002), Venice: Fondazione exhibition catalogue (Turin, Circolo I Sei Pittori di Torino 1929–1971, January. in mostra”, in Il Resto del Carlino, R. Tassi, Ennio Morlotti, Edizioni C. Toscani, Musica e architettura P. Rusconi, Tempo di guerra. Artisti Bevilacqua La Masa. degli Artisti, Palazzo Graneri, exhibition catalogue (Turin, 8 August. Milan: Galleria Cocorocchia. nell'età di Giuseppe Terragni al fronte, sfollati, sotto le bombe, April–May 1983, poi Rome, Galleria Biasutti, 30 November Sgarbi Dipingere tra le due (1904–1943), Milan: Cisalpino. Dossier 11, Milan: Skira. Salvi 1964 Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, – 30 December 1993), Turin. guerre 2015 Spadoni 2003 Tassi 1975 E. Salvi, “Poesia e tragedia July–September 1983), Florence: Vittorio Sgarbi, “Dipingere tra le C. Spadoni (edited by), Da Renoir R. Tassi (edited by), Morlotti. Trasanna 1940 Russoli, Maltese, Naitza 1967 nell’arte di Guttuso”, in Il Giornale Vallecchi. Sellani 1939 due guerre – La pittura al termine a De Staël. Roberto Longhi e il Figure 1942/1975, exhibition “Broggini”, in Augustea, y. XV, F. Russoli, C. Maltese, S. Naitza di Brescia, y. XX, no. 29, Brescia, Primo Premio Bergamo. Mostra della notte di Scipione”, in il moderno, exhibition catalogue catalogue (Parma, Palazzo della no. 9, Rome, 15 March. (edited by), Aligi Sassu 1927–1967, 4 February. Sarfatti 1927 Nazionale del Paesaggio, Giornale, 5 April. (Ravenna, Loggetta Lombardesca, Pilotta, 8 March – 13 April 1975), exhibition catalogue (Cagliari, M. Sarfatti, “La ‘seconda ondata’ exhibition catalogue (Bergamo, 23 February – 30 June 2003), Milan: Electa. Treccani 1967 Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna) Sangiorgi 1957 alla Mostra di Brera”, in Il Popolo Palazzo della Ragione, Siciliano 2004 Milan: Mazzotta. Ernesto Treccani, exhibition Cagliari: Ed. Sarda Fossataro. Roberto Melli, exhibition catalogue d’Italia, Milan, 21 October. September–October 1939), E. Siciliano, Il risveglio della Tassi, Pirovano 1993 catalogue (Florence, L’Indiano (Rome, Palazzo Barberini), introduction by O. Sellani, bionda sirena. Raphaël e Mafai. Spagnesi 2004 R. Tassi, C. Pirovano, Morlotti, Galleria d’Arte Moderna, 28 Rovesti 2004 introduction by G. Sangiorgi, Savarese 1938 Bergamo: Istituto Italiano d’Arti Storia di un amore coniugale, L. Spagnesi, “Il mio vizio? Milan: Electa. January – 10 February 1967), F. Rovesti, Il chiarismo milanese, Rome: Ente Premi Roma. Renato Guttuso, exhibition Grafiche. Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori. Collezionare pittura Italiana”, dedication by E. Treccani, Legnano. catalogue (Rome, Galleria della interview with Giuseppe Tassi, Pizzetti, Soavi 1993 Florence: Nuova Grafica Sansone 2016 Cometa, 28 March – 8 April 1938), Sette Giorni 1942 Silva 1939 Iannaccone, in Arte, no. 372, R. Tassi, S. Pizzetti, G. Soavi Fiorentina. L. Sansone (edited by), Le introduction by N. Savarese, “Badodi”, in Sette Giorni, y. VIII, U. Silva, “Accostamento a Birolli”, Milan, August. (edited by), La collezione Barilla di S gallerie milanesi tra le due guerre, Rome: Edizioni della Cometa. no. 21, Milan, 23 May. in Corrente, 15 July. Arte Moderna, Parma: Guanda. Troisi, Gian Ferrari 1998 exhibition catalogue (Milan, Stefanelli Torossi 1986 S. Troisi, C. Gian Ferrari (edited S. 1963 Fondazione Stelline, 24 February Savarese Pittura di Renato Serri 2005 Silva 1941 L. Stefanelli Torossi (edited by), Terenzi 1977 by), Fausto Pirandello. Bagnanti S., “Artisti della ‘generazione – 22 May), Cinisello Balsamo: Guttuso 1938 M. Serri, I redenti, Milan, p. 216. Giuseppe Migneco, exhibition Virgilio Guzzi, Rome. A. Terenzi (edited by), Mostra 1928–1972, exhibition catalogue di mezzo’. Guttuso”, in Comunità, Silvana Editoriale. N. Savarese, Pittura di Renato catalogue (Milan, Bottega retrospettiva delle opere di Mario (Marsala, ex Convento del y. XVII, no. 110, Milan: Edizioni di Guttuso, in “Corrente”, y. I, no. 7, Severini 1936 di Corrente, 6–18 January), Steingräber 1987 Mafai dal 1928 al 1964 (Todi, Carmine, 4 April – 7 June 1998), Comunità, June. Santangelo 1941 Milan, 30 April. G. Severini, “Garbari nel ricordo introduction by U. Silva, Milan: E. Steingräber (edited by), Sassu. Palazzo del Popolo, 24 April Milan: Charta. A. Santangelo (edited by), di Severini”, in Il Milione, no. 44, Edizioni di Corrente. Sein schaffen von 1927 bis 1985, – 5 June 1977), Todi: Edizioni Sacchi 1999 Scipione, exhibition catalogue S. B. 1949 25 January, n.p.n. exhibition catalogue (Munich, Associazione Piazza Maggiore. Troisi 2000 L. Sacchi (edited by), Guttuso, (Milan, Regia Pinacoteca di Brera, S. B., “Mostre d’Arte. Una Simongini 1971 Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst, 28 S. Troisi (edited by), Lazzaro. Milan: Rizzoli. 8–23 March 1941), collettiva”, in Il Gazzettino Sgarbi 1987 F. Simongini, “Intervista con January – 15 March 1987), Ivrea: Testa 2004 Opere 1927–1964, exhibition Milan: La Tipocromo. Veneziano, Venice, 1 February. V. Sgarbi (edited by), La natura Raphaël Mafai. Scipione pittore Priuli & Verlucca Editori. S. Testa, I Sei di Torino. Per i catalogue (Marsala, ex convento morta nell’arte italiana del di Roma”, in Vita, Rome, 20 quindici anni della Galleria del del Carmine, 16 April – 11 June Santini 1957 Sborgi 1995 Novecento, exhibition catalogue November. Strinati 1929 Ponte, exhibition catalogue (Turin, 2000), Palermo: Sellerio. P. C. Santini (edited by), Ottone F. Sborgi (edited by), Arte della (Mesola, Castello Estense, 2 Mostra di otto pittrici e scultrici Galleria Il Ponte, 7 May – 26 June Rosai, exhibition catalogue (Ivrea, libertà. Antifascismo, guerra e August – 15 October 1987), Milan: Sinisgalli 1950 romane, exhibition catalogue 2004), Turin: Galleria Il Ponte. Troisi 2005 Centro Culturale Olivetti, May liberazione in Europa 1925–1945, Mazzotta. L. Sinisgalli, Furor Mathematicus (Rome, “Camerata degli Artisti” S. Troisi (edited by), Interni italiani. 1957), Milan: All’Insegna del exhibition catalogue (Genova, – Ricordo di Scipione, Milan: di piazza di Spagna, 9–24 June Testori 1981 Figure, oggetti, stanze nella Pesce d’Oro. Palazzo Ducale, 16 November Sgarbi 1988 Mondadori. 1929), introduction by R. Strinati. G. Testori, “Arte: un ritratto di pittura italiana dagli anni Venti 1995 – 18 February 1996), Milan: V. Sgarbi (edited by), Vitalità Guttuso. Capolavoro nella calura”, agli anni Sessanta del Novecento, Mazzotta. della figurazione. Pittura italiana Sinisgalli 1952 in Corriere della Sera, y. 106, no. exhibition catalogue (Marsala, 1948–1988, exhibition catalogue Alberto Ziveri, introduction by L. 161, Milan, 12 July. ex convento del Carmine, 10 (Milan, Palazzo della Permanente, Sinisgalli, Rome: De Luca. July – 16 October 2005), Palermo: 22 December 1988 – 29 January Sellerio. 1989), Milan: Vangelista.

418 419 BIBLIOGRAPHY — EDITED BY RISCHA PATERLINI T – Z

Troisi 2008 Valsecchi 1960 Venturi 1954 Vescovo, Vespignani 1997 Vivarelli 1989 S. Troisi (edited by), Mediterraneo. M. Valsecchi, in XXX Biennale di L. Venturi, “Renato Birolli”, in M. Vescovo, N. Vespignani P. Vivarelli (edited by), Renato Mitologie della figura nell’arte Venezia, exhibition catalogue, Commentari. Rivista di critica (edited by), Le Capitali d’Italia. Birolli, exhibition catalogue (Milan, italiana tra le due guerre, Venice: Stamperia di Venezia. e storia dell’arte, y. V, no. IV, Torino–Roma 1911–1946, Palazzo Reale, 30 September exhibition catalogue (Marsala, ex Florence: Le Monnier, October– exhibition catalogue (Turin, – 12 December 1989; Rome, convento del Carmine, 13 July – 5 Valsecchi 1963 December. Palazzo Bricherasio; Stupinigi, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, October 2008), Palermo: Sellerio. M. Valsecchi (edited by), Gli artisti Palazzina di Caccia, 4 December December 1989 – January 1990; di “Corrente”, exhibition catalogue Venturi Pirandello 1954 1997 – 22 March 1998), Milan: Verona, Palazzo Forti, February– Trombadori 1930 (Ivrea, Centro Culturale Olivetti, L. Venturi, “Fausto Pirandello”, Electa. March 1990), Milan: Mazzotta. F. Trombadori, “Mafai e Scipione” June 1963; Verona, Palazzo della in Commentari. Rivista di critica in Gente nostra, Rome, November. Gran Guardia, July–August 1963), e storia dell’arte, y. V, no. 1, Vespignani 1992 Volpe 1963 Milan: Edizioni di Comunità. January–March 1954. Donghi, Fazzini, Ferrazzi, Mafai, C. Volpe, Ennio Morlotti, Rome: Trombadori 1984 Pirandello, Raphaël, Scipione, Edizioni Galleria Odyssia. D. Trombadori (edited by), Mafai, Valsecchi Artisti di Corrente 1963 Venturi 1958 Trombadori, Ziveri. Nove maestri exhibition catalogue (Rome, M. Valsecchi (edited by), Gli artisti L. Venturi, Pittori italiani d’oggi, della Scuola Romana, with essays Volta 1931 Studio Sotis), Rome: De Luca. di “Corrente”, exhibition catalogue Rome: De Luca. by F. D’Amico, F. Gualdoni, S. Volta, “Ottone Rosai”, in Arte (Milan, Palazzo Reale, reduction M. Quesada, V. Rivosecchi; Moderna Italiana, no. 21, Milan: Trombadori 1987 of Ivrea exhibition catalogue, 25 Venturoli 1943 project and coordination by Netta Hoepli. D. Trombadori (edited by), Guttuso September – 20 October 1963), M. Venturoli, Viaggio intorno alla Vespignani, Turin: Edizioni Seat. 1937–1974, exhibition catalogue Milan: Edizioni di Comunità. Quadriennale, Rome: Edizioni (Ravenna, Galleria Il Patio, 20 June Raccolta. Vespignani, Terenzi 2007 W – 30 September 1987), Ravenna: Valsecchi 1966 N. Vespignani, C. Terenzi (edited Essegi. M. Valsecchi, Renato Birolli, Milan: Venturoli 1952 by), Scipione 1904–1933, Walch 2010 Edizioni del Milione. M. Venturoli, “Un’artista exhibition catalogue (Rome, Villa G. M. Walch, “Capolavori degli Trovato 2014 coraggiosa tra preti e gerarchi”, Torlonia, 7 September 2007 – 6 anni Trenta tutti da sfogliare. S. Trovato, “L’arte del ‘900 Valsecchi Broggini 1969 in Vie Nuove, y. VII, no. 14, Rome, January 2008), Rome: Palombi Il volume sulla collezione raccontata dai siciliani”, in M. Valsecchi (edited by), Broggini. 6 April. Editori. Iannaccone”, in Il Giorno, y. 55, Giornale di Sicilia, 11 July. Disegni – Acquarelli dal 1928 al no. 69, Milan, 24 March, p. 32. 1966, exhibition catalogue (Milan, Venturoli 1955 Villari Cataldi 1971 Galleria delle Ore, from 8 February M. Venturoli, “Raphaël Mafai alla F. Villari Cataldi (edited by), V 1969), Milan: Edizioni delle Ore. ‘Tartaruga’”, in Paese Sera, Garbari, exhibition catalogue, Z y. VII, no. 121, Rome, 21 May. (Rome, June–July 1971; Trento, Vailland 1928 Valsecchi 1969 September–October 1971), Rome: Zangrando 2016 R. Vailland, “Le fils de Pirandello M. Valsecchi (edited by), Arnaldo Veronesi 1954 Arti Grafiche Privitera. “La pittura come arte assoluta: est peintre à Montparnasse”, in Badodi, exhibition catalogue G. Veronesi, Tre pittori e tre Omaggio a Renato Birolli”, Paris-Midi, 8 October. (Milan, Galleria Eunomìa, scultori a Milano, Milan: Banca Vinca Masini 1979 in La Lettura, inserto del Corriere from 29 November 1969), Milan: Popolare di Milano. L. Vinca Masini (edited by), della Sera, 13 March. Vanzetto 2010 Edizioni Franco Sciardelli. Scipione, Mafai, Raphaël nella C. Vanzetto, “La mia casa è un Veronesi 1959 collezione A. Della Ragione del Zeri 1982 museo e vi invito a scoprirla…”, in Valsecchi Migneco 1969 Del Bon, exhibition catalogue Comune di Firenze e in collezioni F. Zeri (edited by), Storia dell’arte. Corriere della Sera. Tempo Libero, M. Valsecchi (edited by), Migneco, (Milan, Galleria Annunciata, 28 private, exhibition catalogue (Todi, Il Novecento, part two, vol. III, y. 135, no. 70, Milan, 24 March. exhibition catalogue (Bari, Galleria November – 17 December 1959), Palazzo del Popolo), Bologna: Turin: Einaudi. La Rosta), Bari: Galleria La Rosta. introduction by G. Veronesi, Milan: Editografica Rastignano. Vanzetto I colori degli angeli Galleria L’Annunciata. Zoccoli 1985 impacciati 2010 Valsecchi 1975 Vitali 1936 F. Zoccoli, “Il grande delirio. C. Vanzetto, “I colori degli M. Valsecchi, “Le donne dello Veronesi 1964 L. Vitali, “Dove va l’arte italiana”, Scipione, due anni all’inferno”, angeli impacciati. Evanescenze scultore solitario”, in Lo Speciale, G. Veronesi (edited by), Edoardo in Domus, no. 108, Milan. in Il Resto del Carlino, romantiche dagli anni ’30, nel y. II, no. 5, Milan, 4 February. Persico. Tutte le opere (1923– 18 September, p. 4. clima neoclassico di Novecento”, 1935), Milan: Edizioni di Comunità. Vitali 1970 in Corriere della Sera, y. 135, Valsecchi, Apollonio 1950 Broggini, exhibition catalogue no. 140, Milan, 15 June. M Valsecchi, U. Apollonio, Vescovo 1997 (Milan, casa dell’antiquario Panorama dell’arte italiana, Turin: M. Vescovo (edited by), Luci del Gianfranco Luzzetti), with an essay Vallora 2014 Lattes. Mediterraneo, exhibition catalogue by L. Vitali, Gianfranco Luzzetti, M. Vallora, “La creatività siciliana (Turin, Palazzo Bricherasio, 27 Milan. lungo il Novecento”, in Velani 1969 March – 29 June 1997), Milan: La Stampa, 11 October. L. Velani (edited by), Mafai, Electa. Vittorini 1941 catalogo, Edizioni Ente Premi Bruno Cassinari, exhibition Valsecchi 1945 Roma, Rome: De Luca. Vescovo, Poli 1997 catalogue (Milan, Bottega di Mostra personale del pittore Anima & Corpo, exhibition Corrente, 8–20 February 1941), Arnaldo Badodi, exhibition Venti anni 1972 catalogue (Alessandria, Palazzo introduction by E. Vittorini, Milan: catalogue (Milan, Galleria Venti anni dalla morte, exhibition Cuttica di Cassine), texts by M. Edizioni di Corrente. Sant’Andrea, from 24 November catalogue (Milan, Galleria Vescovo, F. Poli, Turin: Elede. 1945), Milan: Galleria Sant’Andrea. dell’Annunciata), Milan: Vittorini 1960 Annunciata. E. Vittorini, Storia di Renato Valsecchi 1954 Guttuso e nota congiunta sulla M. Valsecchi, “I nervi delle donne pittura contemporanea, Milan: scolpite da Broggini”, in Tempo, Edizioni del Milione. 15 April.

420 421 Acknowledgements

My passion for art and pursuit of emotion have ripened over the years but never ceased I am grateful to Lara Facco for the indispensable professionalism displayed in organizing to grow. I have focused a great deal on contemporary art in recent years and the part even the slightest of details in the field of communications. of the collection concerned with the present day has expanded considerably as a result. I wish to thank Dario Moalli, a young but rigorous scholar, for his considerable help But when I come across an expressionist masterpiece from the interwar years, in the constant research on the works and artists of the collection and for having chosen I cannot resist. I have to make it mine. It makes no difference whether I already have to develop his first professional experience in my collection. I wish to recall the very one or two or even ten works by the artist in question: if it is a masterpiece then important contribution of Daniela De Palma, one of the first to help me in documenting I want it to be part of the family. the works, and thank the scholar Silvia Somaschini for her precious assistance with This is exactly the way it is. There is a force within me that always draws me back to the the previous volume Una caccia amorosa. start of my history as a collector, a force that leads me by the hand back to the thirties. Special thanks to the Romanò brothers, who have helped me in the choice of frames ever Thus it is that the collection illustrated in Una caccia amorosa [A Loving Hunt] has grown since my first purchase, enhancing every work with the skill and sophistication that belongs so much that I decided to present it anew in a new book on which Rischa Paterlini only to master craftsmen. Thanks also to the photographer Paolo Vandrasch, who has and I have been working for about a year now. Something quite extraordinary occurred assisted in the documentation of the works with his great culture and passion from recently, however, when Claudio De Albertis, the late president of the Milan Triennial, the very outset. proposed an exhibition of the collection at the Palazzo della Triennale. While I am I still recall with great joy and emotion my meeting with Ernesto Treccani and Aligi Sassu. overjoyed that the collection will be shown to the public, the event will be important above If I have managed to reconstruct unclear periods in the history of many works, all for these artists of mine, who deserve to be known and admired by everyone because it is thanks to them. they are a crucial part of the history of Italian art. What it is truly extraordinary is that, Unique and precious contributions have also been made by the relatives of my artists: by sheer coincidence or perhaps a quirk of fate, the publication of this book will coincide Stefano Broggini, Pier Rosa De Rocchi, Fabio Carapezza Guttuso, the Gian Ferrari with the inauguration of the exhibition. My first thanks therefore go precisely family, Giulia and Simona Mafai, Adele Lilloni Schubert, the Sassu family and Nella Ziveri. to Claudio De Albertis for the appreciation he has displayed for my collection and My warmest thanks to you all. for making it possible for the fondest dream I have had since I began collecting art Fond memories bring me to Ro’ Birolli and Zeno Birolli, dear friends and providers to come true. I also wish to thank Andrea Cancellato, director general of the Triennial, of precious support. Particular thanks go to Marco Birolli, to whom I am grateful, among for supporting the decision to hold the exhibition and allowing me to organize other things, for tracking down magnificent works. it independently as a personal history of those extraordinarily exciting years. I must now say a thank you that is perhaps unusual but of great importance to me. I thank the artistic director Edoardo Bonaspetti for his deep and sensitive study I am grateful to Alessia, my companion in life, for understanding the great importance of the collection and the driving forces of my pursuit, and Elena Tettamanti, president that art in general and the collection of the thirties in particular have for me. I thank of the Amici della Fondazione Triennale, for her prompt involvement in the project. her for allowing the few holidays I take to be devoted principally to art. I also thank Fundamental importance attaches to the part played by the Fondazione Credito my son Leonardo for following us through museums and exhibitions with such patience. Bergamasco in the person of Angelo Piazzoli, the first of all to take an interest I remember once when he had spent over two hours visiting galleries at the Miami art fair in the collection and the first to think of exhibiting it to the public. With the great without ever protesting. “Leo, you’ve been really good”, I told him. “Believe me, Dad, sensitivity peculiar to those of a now bygone era, he understood my desire to show it’s been a real effort”, he replied. And so, my dear Leo, Dad thanks you and asks you the collection for the first time in my beloved Milan and therefore decided to postpone the to forgive him a bit of selfishness in the pursuit of this passion. exhibition already scheduled to take place in Bergamo until after the event at the Triennial. I now wish to thank Rischa Paterlini, the primary driving force in the organization I also thank Paola Silvia Ubiali for the uncommon sensitivity displayed in conducting one and production both of this book and of the exhibition at the Milan Triennial. of the most intimate interviews I have ever granted during my time as a collector. I have seen Rischa grow in every respect over the years. Her cultural growth has been A major contribution was made to my project by Alberto Salvadori with his experience enormous. She has never contented herself, as she could well have, with playing the part and professional expertise, opening up new horizons that have helped to improve this book I had in any case entrusted to her on the grounds of affection and her great passion and develop the exhibition. I thank him in particular for the interview, which offered for art. With great humility and commitment, she has studied endlessly, reading dozens me yet another opportunity for reflection on my life and my choices. and dozens of art books. She has the approach to things in everyday life that she knows I thank my dealer friend Giò Marconi for introducing me to the staff of Mousse in the I love, and thus addresses every question by examining it thoroughly in depth before persons of Carlotta Poli, Marco Fasolini and Fausto Giliberti, who have worked on the expressing her judgment. I have seen her sometimes find reassurance and confirmation projects for the collection with real passion from the very outset. A vital contribution was of an initially instinctive opinion and sometimes instead change her mind. made by the major art historians Fabio Benzi, Giorgina Bertolino, Paola Bonani, Fabrizio This humble but intense commitment has made Rischa a scholar of art at the highest level D’Amico, Flavio Fergonzi, Lorella Giudici, Mattia Patti and Carlo Sisi, whose essays have and one with great prospects in the world of art criticism and curatorship. provided a clearer picture of the artistic scene in the interwar years. l also thank Alessandra She has acquired an exceptional flair for relations that helps her to support and develop Acocella and Caterina Toschi for their precious contribution. the many projects we have in art, and her constant hard work and commitment enable Particular thanks to my dear friend Elena Pontiggia, who has been at my side in all my us to handle different initiatives at the same time, as in the case of this book, the exhibition decisions. I have always felt the support not only of her extraordinary knowledge and at the Triennial, the exhibition at the Fondazione Credito Bergamasco and the forthcoming expertise but also of her disinterested friendship and affection. With these inestimable exhibition of a young artist in my offices within the framework of the IN PRATICA qualities, Elena has been a unique and invaluable confidant ever since I took my first steps project. as a collector. Rischa is a constant companion and comfort in a shared and ineradicable passion. I thank Paolo Rusconi for his silent but fundamental contribution and am also grateful For all this and many other things besides, I thank her with all my heart and ask her to his degree student Maria Chiara Ghilardi and her impassioned exploration of Birolli’s affectionately never to change. colours. Giuseppe Iannaccone