BIOGRAPHY THIRTIES 1930-1932 In these years he exhibits at The Milan Gallery, in a collection with Grassi, Manzù, Giuseppe Occhetti, Gino Pancheri and Strada showing pictures of landscapes and figures. The show, presented by Raffaello Giolli, meets with great success and is reviewed by amongst others Carlo Carrà sull'Ambrosiano; in 1932 he exhibits at the Galleria del Milione, with Birolli, Gianni Cortese, Grosso, Manzù and Tomea. The exhibition creates great interest, so much so that Sandro Bini, a young critic doing military service in Florence, dedicates a publication to Sassu (Aligi Sassu, whims and the nostalgia of criticism) that constitutes the first study on the work of the painter. In order to meet Bini, Sassu heads for Florence by bicycle, where he visits the convent of San Marco and The Uffizi and is impressed overall by the Battle of San Romano by Paolo Uccello, a piece that will have a notable influence on his painting. MUSEO ALIGI SASSU THIESI | www.museoaligisassu.it | [email protected] BIOGRAPHY THIRTIES 1934 In the autumn he leaves for Paris. During his stay, of about three months, he frequents the Sainte Geneviève library, where he reads the diary of Delacroix, and naturally the great museums: he studies the works of Géricault, of Renoir and those of the impressionists; at the Paul Guillaume Gallery he visits an exhibition by Matisse, and is struck by the way he uses colour, which reminds him of the frescos of Delacroix in Saint Sulpice, where he was to be found every week "as if on a pilgrimage", while surrealist and abstract research– avant-guard in that period– do not seem to interest him. A friend of the boxer Cleto Locatelli – light weight European Champion – he often frequents boxing gyms, a sport to which he dedicates numerous pictures and drawings. He meets amongst others Alberto Magnelli, Gualtieri di San Lazzaro, Filippo De Pisis, Massimo Campigli, Leonor Fini, Fernand Léger, Gino Severini and the critic Lionello Venturi. The writer Antonio Aniante, author in France of a biography of Mussolini, organises for Sassu, Tomea and Francis Gruber an exhibition at the Galerie des Quatre Chemins but no pictures are sold. At this time he starts to paint the first Cafés, a theme suggested to him also by the chain of cafés Chez Dupont inaugurated a short time before in Paris. 1935 He begins clandestine anti-fascist activity: His group, which also includes Raffaele De Grada, Grosso and Renato Guttuso, is in connection with other self-formed groups in Italy (Rome, Sicily) and abroad (Lugano, Paris). They meet in cafés or in the houses of De Grada and Gabriele Mucchi; they handle clandestine newspapers and propaganda materials. Shooting in Asturie is considered to be one of the first pictures of the European Resistance. During the Spanish Civil War Sassu and his companions carry out intense activity, distributing fliers and organising demonstrations in Valtellina, in Novarese, in factories and public places in Milan and Sesto San Giovanni. MUSEO ALIGI SASSU THIESI | www.museoaligisassu.it | [email protected] BIOGRAPHY THIRTIES 1937 On the occasion of the success of the International Brigades against volunteer fascist troops, in the battle of Guadalajara, Sassu and De Grada prepare a text paying tribute to the uprising. The morning of 6 April the OVRA police carry out a search of the artist’s study, finding the manuscript for the manifesto and the paper used to print it. After being interviewed Sassu is referred to the Tribunale Speciale di Roma. As the letters show, his detention put his physical and psychological resistance to the test, overall because of the impossibility to paint. Towards the end of June he is transferred to the Regina Coeli prison, in Rome. Newspapers and radio stations in London and Paris ask to be able to send their correspondents to follow the trial; Mussolini allows this and, between 12 and 13 October, the only political trial of that period that is publicised in Italy and abroad takes place. For Sassu, defended by the lawyer Maurizio Ferrara, the accusation is of undermining the law of the state; the trial concludes with a guilty verdict for the Socialist Sassu and the other Communists on trial (accused of preparing the dictatorship of the proletariat) and they are sentenced to ten years in prison. MUSEO ALIGI SASSU THIESI | www.museoaligisassu.it | [email protected] BIOGRAPHY THIRTIES 1938-1940 Transferred to the prison of Fossano, in Piedmont, where he passes the first fifteen days in solitary confinement, two floors below ground. In the following months he lives in a room, with other political prisoners. To his great satisfaction, he is allowed notebooks for writing and an album for drawing. In the four hundred and more drawings produced in the eight months passed in Fossano, subjects dear to him can be found, like cyclists, historical and allegorical scenes and some self portraits. Even though he is condemned to ten years in prison, on 27 July 1938 the king pardons him, after the persistent soliciting of his father Antonio. Out of prison, but under "special surveillance" and banned from appearing in public, he continues to paint works of opposition, in which the political metaphor emerges clearly: Spain 1937 and The death of Caesar (this last canvas, presented at the Triennale di Milano in 1941, for reasons of "security" was exhibited in a secondary room dedicated to Sardinia) and several Crucifixions; this period of intense creative work is illustrated moreover in the pictures of Cafés and Battles. At the same time, he re-establishes his relationship with the group of intellectuals (De Grada, Ernesto Treccani, Migneco, Carlo Bo, Salvatore Quasimodo, Giancarlo Vigorelli, Luciano Anceschi, Emilio Sereni, Mario De Micheli, Giuseppe Marchiori) who give birth to the Corrente movement. MUSEO ALIGI SASSU THIESI | www.museoaligisassu.it | [email protected] .