Aleardo Terzi

Pittore, illustratore, cartellonista, decoratore, ceramista, scenografo, costumista, incisore, disegnatore di mobili e vestiti. Nasce a Palermo il 6 novembre 1970 da Andrea (1848-1928), acquarellista e litografo, e Rose Engel, di origine svizzera. Suo fratello minore Amedeo (1872-1955) fu un noto disegnatore scientifico. Cresciuto in un ambiente colto e liberale, apprese molto più in seno alla famiglia che nell’Accademia di Palermo, dove pure si era iscritto, abbandonandola però prima di terminare gli studi.

Inizia molto presto a collaborare con il padre come illustratore, imparando l’arte della riproduzione litografica e solo più tardi, nel 1898, si trasferisce a Milano.
Di particolare importanza per la sua carriera di cartellonista fu la collaborazione con le Officine Ricordi, dove era stato chiamato per intercessione dell’amico Giovanni Maria Mataloni (1869-1944).

Per la Ricordi oltre ai manifesti, Terzi, disegna libretti musicali e cartoline illustrate, iniziando la fase più feconda della sua produzione come illustratore, realizzando manifesti che rimasero indelebilmente impressi nell’immaginario collettivo, come quelli per i Magazzini Mele e più tardi quelli notissimi del Dentol, con la scimmia appesa ad un ramo che si lava i denti, e quello per il colorificio Max Meyer, con il cucciolo che tiene il pennello in bocca. Nel contempo l’artista si occupa di illustrazione per riviste e libri, si ricordano le illustrazioni per «Il Giornalino della Domenica», le copertine a colori per la rivista «Ars et Labor» della Ricordi, quelle per «La Lettura», mensile del «Corriere della Sera» e le tavole illustrate per il libro per ragazzi Cantilene dei bambini, stampato dalla casa editrice «Novissima» e le illustrazioni per «Il Corriere dei Piccoli». Nel 1904 è nominato direttore e disegnatore della casa editrice romana Danesi, ma continua la sua collaborazione con la Ricordi.

Nel 1925 dirige la Scuola del libro di Urbino appena istituita, dove orienta la didattica verso la formazione pratica, insegnando disegno illustrazione, xilografia e calligrafia, incarico che mantenne fino al 1930. Nel contempo, nel 1928, cura la parte grafica e illustrativa dell’Enciclopedia Italiana. Nel 1930 torna a Milano dove prosegue la sua attività di illustratore di libri per ragazzi, in particolare per la collana La Scala d’Oro e di grafica pubblicitaria per la casa farmaceutica Wander di cui fu direttore artistico.

Essendosi inoltre misurato con molte discipline artistiche, come la ceramica, la moda e persino la progettazione di mobili, Terzi può correttamente esser definito l’artista artigiano alla maniera di William Morris, del quale per altro condivideva l’ideale socialista della necessità di diffondere a tutti l’arte, la cultura e la bellezza. Molto vicino a Duilio Cambellotti che aveva conosciuto a Roma nel 1903 e dietro consiglio del quale decise di cimentarsi con la ceramica, Terzi aveva partecipato nel 1923, proprio insieme al gruppo di Cambellotti, alla I Biennale di Arti Decorative di Monza, presentando un servizio di piatti che ottiene la medaglia d’argento.

Muore il 15 luglio del 1943 presso l’ultima sua dimora a Castelletto sopra Ticino.

Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt was born on 14^th July 1862 in Vienna into a lower middle-class family of Moravian origin. His father, Ernst Klimt, worked as an engraver and goldsmith, earning very little, meaning that as well as spending his childhood in relative poverty the artist would have to support his family financially throughout his life.

In 1876, Klimt was awarded a scholarship to the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts, where he studied until 1883, and received training as an architectural painter. He revered the foremost history painter of the time, Hans Makart and readily accepted the principles of his conservative training. In 1877 his brother Ernst, who, like his father, would become an engraver, also enrolled in the school. The two brothers began working together alongside friend Franz Matsch and by 1880 they had received numerous commissions as a team which they called the Company of Artists as well as helping their teacher to paint murals in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

After finishing his studies, Klimt opened a studio together with Matsch and Ernst Klimt. The trio specialized in interior decoration, particularly theatres. Already by the 1880s, they were renowned for their skill and decorated theatres throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where much of their work can still be seen. In 1885, they were commissioned to decorate the Empress Elizabeth’s country retreat, the Villa Hermes near Vienna (Midsummer Night’s Dream). In 1886, the painters were asked to decorate the Viennese Burgtheater, effectively recognizing them as the foremost of decorators of Austria. Works that Klimt painted for this project include The Cart of Thespis, The Altars of Dionysos and Apollo and The Theater at Taormina, as well as scenes from the Shakespearean Globe Theater. At the completion of the work in 1888, the painters were awarded the Golden Service Cross (Verdienstkreuz), and Klimt was commissioned to paint the Auditorium of the Old Burgtheater, the work that would bring him to the height of his fame. This painting, with its almost photographic accuracy is considered one of the greatest achievements in Naturalist painting. As a result, Klimt was awarded the Emperor’s Prize and became a fashionable portraitist, as well as the leading artist of his day. Paradoxically, it was at this point, with a fabulous career as a classicist painter unfolding before him, that Klimt began turning towards the radical new styles of Art Noveau.

In the coming few years, the artistic trio fell apart. Franz Matsch wanted to branch out into portrait painting, which he did with some success. Meanwhile, Gustav Klimt’s changing style made it impossible for them to work together on any project. Furthermore his brother died in 1892, shortly after the death of their father. Struck by this double tragedy, Gustav retreated from public life, focusing on experimentation and the study of contemporary styles of art, as well as historical styles that were overlooked within the establishment, such as Japanese, Chinese, Ancient Egyptian and Mycenaean art. In 1893, he began work on his last public commission: the paintings Philosophy, Medicine and Jurisprudence, for the University of Vienna. The three would only be completed in the early 1900s, and they would be criticized severely for their radical style and what was, according to the mores of the time, lewdness. Unfortunately, the paintings were destroyed during the Second World War and only black-and-white reproductions of them remain.

The painter was not alone in his opposition to the Austrian artistic establishment of the time. In 1897, he, together with forty other notable Viennese artists, resigned from the Academy of Arts and founded the Union of Austrian Painters, more commonly known as the Secession. Klimt was immediately elected president. While the Union had no clearly defined goals or support for particular styles, it was against the classicist establishment, which it found to be oppressive.

In 1902, Klimt finished the Beethoven Frieze for XIV Vienna Secessionist Exhibition, which was intended to be a celebration of the composer and featured a monumental, polychromed sculpture by Max Klinger. Meant for the exhibition only, the frieze was painted directly on the walls with light materials. After the exhibition the painting was preserved, although it did not go on display until 1986.

During this period Klimt did not confine himself to public commissions. Beginning in the late 1890s he took annual summer holidays with the Flöge family on the shores of Attersee and painted many of his landscapes there. Klimt was largely interested in painting figures; these works constitute the only genre aside from figure-painting which seriously interested Klimt. Klimt’s Attersee paintings are of a number and quality so as to merit a separate appreciation. Formally, the landscapes are characterized by the same refinement of design and emphatic patterning as the figural pieces. Deep space in the Attersee works is so efficiently flattened to a single plane, it is believed that Klimt painted them while looking through a telescope.

Klimt’s ‘Golden Phase’ was marked by positive critical reaction and success. Many of his paintings from this period used gold leaf; the prominent use of gold can first be traced back to Pallas Athene, (1898) and Judith I (1901), although the works most popularly associated with this period are Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907) and The Kiss (1907-1908). Klimt travelled little but trips to Venice and Ravenna, both famous for their beautiful mosaics, most likely inspired his gold technique and his Byzantine imagery. In 1904, he collaborated with other artists on the lavish Palais Stoclet, the home of a wealthy Belgian industrialist, which was one of the grandest monuments of the Art Nouveau age. Klimt’s contributions to the dining room, including both Fulfillment and Expectation, were some of his finest decorative work, and as he publicly stated, “probably the ultimate stage of my development of ornament.” Between 1907 and 1909, Klimt painted five canvases of society women wrapped in fur. His apparent love of costume is expressed in the many photographs of Flöge modelling clothing he designed.

As he worked and relaxed in his home, Klimt normally wore sandals and a long robe with no undergarments. His simple life was somewhat cloistered, devoted to his art and family and little else except the Secessionist Movement, and he avoided café society and other artists socially. Klimt’s fame usually brought patrons to his door, and he could afford to be highly selective. His painting method was very deliberate and painstaking at times and he required lengthy sittings by his subjects.

By 1910, Klimt had moved past his Golden Style. One of his last pictures in that style was Death and Life (1908-1910). In 1911, the painting was shown at the International Exhibition in Rome, where it won first place. However, the artist was dissatisfied with the work, and in 1912, he changed the background from gold to blue.

In 1915 his mother Anna died. Klimt died three years later in Vienna on February 6, 1918, having suffered a stroke and pneumonia. He was buried at the Hietzing Cemetery in Vienna, leaving numerous works unfinished.

Klimt’s paintings have brought some of the highest prices recorded for individual works of art. In 2006, the 1907 portrait, Adele Bloch-Bauer I, was purchased for the Neue Galerie in New York by Ronald Lauder for a reported USD $135 million, surpassing Picasso’s 1905 Boy With a Pipe (sold May 5, 2004 for $104 million), as the highest reported price ever paid for a painting.

Klimt’s work is often distinguished by elegant gold or coloured decoration, spirals and swirls, and phallic shapes used to conceal the more erotic positions of the drawings upon which many of his paintings are based. This can be seen in Judith I (1901), and in The Kiss (1907-1908), and especially in Danaë (1907). One of the most common themes Klimt used was that of the dominant woman, the femme fatale.

Art historians note an eclectic range of influences contributing to Klimt’s distinct style, including Egyptian, Minoan, Classical Greek, and Byzantine inspirations. Klimt was also inspired by the engravings of Albrecht Dürer, late medieval European painting, and Japanese Rimpa school. His mature works are characterized by a rejection of earlier naturalistic styles, and make use of symbols or symbolic elements to convey psychological ideas and emphasize the freedom of art from traditional culture.

Giulio Aristide Sartorio

Giulio Aristide Sartorio was born in Rome in 1860. He was a painter and film director. He studied at the Rome Institute of Fine Arts. In 1883, he presented a Symbolist work at the International Exposition of Rome and later that year he won a gold medal at the Paris Universal Exhibition. In 1893 he travelled to England, where he met key members of the Pre-Raphaelite group.

In 1895, he participated in the Venice Biennale at the 1^st International Exposition of Art of Venice. From 1896 to 1898, he taught at the Weimar Academy of Fine Arts. The beginning of the century marked the height of Sartorio’s artistic fame.

He produced decorative friezes for the 5^th Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte of Venice (1903), the Mostra Nazionale of Fine Arts (Milan, Parco Sempione, 1906) and Palazzo Montecitorio in Rome (1908–12). He was wounded while serving in the First World War. In 1919, he directed a motion picture entitled Il mistero di Galatea, which starred his wife – Marga Sevilla. The following year, he directed a silent historical film along with Enrico Guazzoni called Il Sacco di Roma.

During the 1920s, he travelled extensively in the Middle East, Japan and Latin America and also became a member of the Italian Royal Academy. He died in 1932.

Manuel Ángeles Ortiz

Manuel Ángeles Ortiz was born on 13^th January 1895 in the southern Spanish town of Jaen. At just three years of age his family moved to Granada, where he would study painting with Juan Larrocha and at The Superior School of Industrial Arts as well as becoming close friends with Federico Garcia Lorca, arguably the most important Spanish writer of the 20^th century, whilst he and his milieu of young artists El Rinconcillo met in the Café Alameda.

In 1919 he married Francisca Alarcon and would later have a daughter, Isabel Clara. During this period he also visited Madrid where he came into contact with Salvador Dalí, Moreno Villa and Luis Buñuel and in 1922 he moved to Paris where met and became friends with Pablo Picasso. During his time in Paris Ortiz became close with a group of artists in the School of Paris and began to participate in their exhibitions, he also collaborated with Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel on his 1930 surrealist masterpiece Le edad de oro, on which Salvador Dali also worked.

From 1932 he returned to Spain where he met artist Joaquín Torres-García and poet Pablo Neruda and collaborated with the anti-fascist intellectual league to exhibit at the Pavilion of the Spanish Republic. At the end of the Spanish Civil War Ortiz exiled to Buenos Aires, where he created his wood series and was involved in the third exhibition at Galeria Muller (1947) before returning to Europe in 1949 where he reconnected with Picasso. In 1957 Ortiz was allowed to go back to Granada where he was reunited with family and friends, after which he began his notes series which included, among many others, Albaycines, Paseos de Cipreses and Cabezas.

In 1981 he received the Gold Medal of the city of Jaén, which also made him Hijo Predilecto for his exceptional contribution to the arts, as well as the National Prize for Plastic Arts. Three years later, on 4^th April 1984, Manuel Angeles Ortiz died in Paris. Today his work is represented in numerous national and international museums, including the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the MoMA in New York and the Musée de Grenoble.

Edita Walterowna Broglio

Edita Walterowna von Zur Muehlen (Edita Walterowna Broglio) was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1886. She was a painter of magic realism. From 1908 to 1910 she studied at Konigsberg Art Academy in East Prussia. In 1910, she left Latvia and moved to Rome, where she immediately began to exhibit alongside Roman secessionists (1913-1914). She married the painter and art collector Mario Broglio, and together they founded the Italian art magazine Valori Plastici in 1918. The magazine was focused on aesthetic ideals and metaphysical artwork. It supported the art movement Return to Order, seeking to create a change of direction from extreme avant-garde art to a revival of classicism and realism. The Return to Order, was a reaction against the War and its associated art movement Futurism, which praised machinery, violence and war. The magazine promoted national and Italic values, associated with the cultural policies of fascism, but equally it had a broader outlook towards Europe and artistic discourse in general. Her pictorial activity, interrupted by the war, resumed again in the fifties. Some of her works were included in the historical exhibition curated by Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti’s Arte Italiana 1915-1935, which was held in Florence at Palazzo Strozzi in 1967. In 1971, she had her most important solo-exhibition at the age of eighty-five. Her painting, sober, composed and enchanted, testifies to her immense artistic talent.

She died in Rome in 1977.

Marisa Mori

Marisa Mori (Maria Luisa Lurini) was born in Florence in 1900. In the signing of her works she used the surname of her husband Mario Mori – who was a topographer, journalist and poet who she married in the early twenties.

In 1918 she moved with her family to Turin, where she made the journey into the world of painting alone, with the exception of the advice and encouragement afforded to her by a family friend – the sculptor Leonardo Bistolfi. Later she enrolled at the private school founded and directed by Felice Casorati, at which she attended classes between 1925 and 1931 before she eventually began working there. In 1926 she participated in ‘Esposizione delle vedute di Torino’ at Palazzo Bricherasio along with a group of students of the Casorati School. The group included: Nella Marchesini, Daphne Maugham, Paola Levi Montalcini and Lalla Romano. While in Turin, she also took part in various exhibitions organised by the ‘Promotrice di belle arti del Valentino’ (1927, 1928, 1930). Mori also participated in the IV Turin Quadriennale (1927), the Annual Exhibition of Casorati (1928); and also in the ‘Sindacali’ of 1929, 1930, 1931 and 1932. In November 1931, in Chiavari, she participated in an exhibition of Futurist painting, sculpture and decorative arts by designing a series of ceramics which were subsequently produced by the company Mazzotti in Albissola. In 1932, Mori’s commitment to Futurism was confirmed by the intense exhibition activity that she was involved in with the second generation of Futurists from the regions of Liguria and Piemonte. In 1933 she was invited to the first National Futurist Exhibition in Rome. That same year, she moved to Florence with her husband, with whom she became part of the Futurist group led by Antonio Marasco. Again in 1933, she won a prize at ‘I Mostra futurista di scenotecnica cinematografica’ at the Bardi Gallery in Rome for a plaster model she made for the film ‘Sintesi dell’isola d’Elba’. Mori’s interest in theatre and cinema led her in the mid-thirties to enrol at the acting school of the Academy of Fidenti in Florence, where, after the war, she taught the history of costume. Mori also contributed to the drafting of ‘Cucina futurista di Marinetti e Fillia’. In April of 1934 she set up her first solo exhibition in ‘Spazio Bragaglia’ in Rome. Her Futurist work was also exhibited at the Rome Quadriennale in 1931, 1935 (Ritorno dalle colonie marine) and 1939 (Concerto di fabbrica sulle Apuane). In the late thirties, in staunch disagreement with the current racial laws, she showed hospitality to Rita and Gino Levi Montalcini which put her relationship with Futurism into question. After her husband’s death in 1943, she finally abandoned the Marinetti movement. In doing so, she returned to a representation of classical and naturalistic themes such as portraits, still life’s, masks and nudes. In 1951 she presented a painting, ‘Studio per il ritratto di Vera Zalla’, at the VI Rome Quadriennale. Following this, Mori led a secluded life, exhibiting rarely and almost exclusively in women’s art exhibitions sponsored by the cultural circle Florentine Lyceum. In this last phase of her career she painted mostly figures, landscapes and still life’s – participating in numerous painting competitions. She died in Florence on 6^th March, 1985.

Mario Sironi

Mario Sironi was born in Sassari on 12^th May 1885. He was the second of six children. Following the untimely death of his father, who left him orphaned at the age of thirteen, he moved to Rome where he later studied. His adolescence was spent in a house on via di Porta Salaria, not far from Villa Borghese. It was an adolescence marked not only by the charm of the Eternal City but also by a great passion for reading (Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heine, Leopardi, the French novelists) and the study of music, especially Wagner who played the piano with his older sister Cristina. In 1902 he began to study engineering but a year later, encouraged by the positive opinion of the old sculptor Ximenes, he left and devoted himself to painting. It was whilst attending Scuola Libera del Nudo in via Ripetta that he met and studied with Giacomo Balla as well and becoming close friends with Umberto Boccioni and Gino Severini.

In 1914 he moved to Milan, where he fought alongside Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in the First World War. The post-war period saw Sironi work as an illustrator for the magazine Popolo d’Italia, during which time he met Margherita Sarfatti, a journalist and art patron who would share a long and mutually influential association with the artist. In 1920 he signed il manifesto futurista along with Leonardo Dudreville, Achille Funi and Luigi Russolo and in 1922 he joined the group of artists called Novecento. From the beginning of the thirties the artistic interests of Sironi diversified, ranging from graphics to stage design, from architecture to mural painting and from mosaics to frescoes. In 1932 Sironi contributed to Mostra della Rivoluzione Fascista, held at Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. His taste for the monumental and spectacular can be seen in many of his works, especially those created for the state (the Palace of Justice in Milan, buildings in Rome’s EUR district, etc.). It was with the same flare that Sironi prepared the hall of honour at the Festival of Sport in Milan (1935), the Fiat pavilion at the Trade Fair of Milan (1936) and the Italian section at the Universal Exhibition in Paris (1937).

After World War II, isolated and weathered by the death of his daughter, he returned to easel painting, creating works of intense expressiveness. These works were dark and dramatic, abandoning the monumental character and great eloquence of prior years in favour of a different, more resigned spatial conception.

He died in Milan on 13^th March, 1961 .

Leoncillo Leonardi

LIFE OF LEONCILLO

Leoncillo was born on the 18^th of November 1915 in Spoleto, an Etruscan, Roman and Medieval town in the heart of Umbria, a region famous for its ancient traditional ceramic workshops. His father, who died when the child was three, taught drawing in the local technical school “G. Spagna”, where Leoncillo signed up in 1926. Confined at home during a summer for punishment, he discovers clay at the age of 14: his first preserved work, a funny monkey.

Encouraged by the Calabrian sculptor Domenico Diano, author of Spoleto’s WW1 memorial, he attends the Art School in Perugia from 1931 to 1935, his first works are portraits in Medardo Rosso’s style. He soon moves to Rome where Lionello, his much elder brother,  teaches Italian at a Catholic school,  where Leoncillo  will teach drawing while attending art classes at the Art Academy of via Ripetta. In 1936 he came into contact with the Galleria della Cometa, a centre of attraction for the so called Scuola Romana: Mario Mafai, Antonietta Raphael, Corrado Cagli and the younger Mirko and Afro Basaldella, and Marino Mazzacurati who will work in the same workshop at Villa Massimo with Leoncillo after the war.

In 1939 he marries Maria Zampa,  a fellow art student of Perugia’s time, daughter of a notary in Umbertide, a small town in which is the Rometti’s factory of modern artistic ceramics where he will work and produce I Mostri:  the Harpy, the Mermaid, the Hermaphrodite. These are his first masterpieces, influenced by the grotesque expressionism of the painter Scipione. They were exhibited in 1940 in Milan, for the VII Triennale, where the artist was invited by the famous architect decorator Giò Ponti, obtaining a gold medal for his work. Enlisted in the Army while working on two monumental Roman Trophies for E42 (Mussolini’s World Fair that never took place) he will join the Resistance after Italy’s Surrender in 1943. The Roman Mother killed by the Germans, exhibited in liberated Rome while the war still went on, is an example of the dramatic style attained by Leoncillo as an artist engaged as he was in the Italian Communist Party. In the years after the war Leoncillo develops a neo-cubist style in which he transforms miners, or typists or switchboard operators, into small colorful monuments in Picasso’s style. Apart from his works exhibited in Italy and abroad and in Venice’s Biennale, Leoncillo is also very active producing ceramic decorations for bars, restaurants, cinemas and theatres which created a new style identifiable with Italy’s renewal and economic postwar “Miracle”.

In 1956, following the USSR invasion of Hungary, Leoncillo resigns from the Italian Communist Party. A crisis that will bring a radical change of style, culminating in an exhibition in the Roman gallery La Tartaruga, where tormented simple forms are shown. Simple subjects, such as a bunch of flowers, a tree, a bush, a cactus, are transformed into barely recognizable semi-abstract sculptures.

Here begins the non naturalistic final development of Leoncillo’s art, which will produce works of increasingly monumental size in which ceramics shaped like mineral  forms are given suggestive titles – Taglio (Cut), Frattura (Fracture), Corpo dolente (Body in pain) – that well convey the tragic and suffering appearance of matter as if human senses have been blown into it. Leoncillo dies suddenly, in Rome, of a brain stroke, on the 9th of September, soon after the opening of the Venice Biennale of 1968, an edition marked by the younger artists’ protest, that forced Leoncillo to cover his works with plastic sheeting.

Gino Severini

Gino Severini was born in Cortona, a hilltop town positioned within the famous landscapes of Tuscany, on 7^th April, 1883.

He moved to Rome in 1899, where he met Giacomo Balla who introduced him to pointillist painting, for which his interest deepened during his stay in Paris in 1906. Whilst in Paris he came into contact with Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, and Guillaume Apollinaire, and participated in the birth and development of Cubism. Despite this stay in Paris, he did not interrupt his contact with Italy. In fact, after having joined the Futurist movement at the invitation of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, he was one of the signatories of the 1910 Manifesto of Futurist Painting with Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carra and Luigi Russolo.

In 1912 he convinced Boccioni and Carra to join him in Paris, where he would organise the first Futurist exhibition at the Bernheim-Jeune gallery. Later he participated in other Futurist exhibitions across Europe and the United States. In 1913 in London, at the Marlborough Gallery, came his first individual exhibition, which was later presented at the Der Sturm gallery in Berlin. From 1921 Severini changed from a Cubo-Futurist aesthetic to a painting style that can be described as neoclassical with metaphysical influences. This evolution falls squarely in the trend which is defined as return to order, or in French Rappel à l’ordre, similar to The Return to Craft introduced in a famous article by Giorgio De Chirico published in 1919 in the journal Valori Plastici. From 1924 to 1934 he devoted himself almost exclusively to sacred art, in the form of large frescoes and mosaics, especially for the Swiss churches of Semsales and La Roche.

In 1926 and 1929 he participated at two exhibitions of the artistic movement Novecento in Milan and one in Geneva (also in 1929). In 1930 he was selected for the Venice Biennale. He then moved to Rome, where he participated in the Quadriennale of 1931 and again in 1935, when he won the Grand Prize for painting, with an entire room dedicated to his work. After this he moved permanently to Paris, where he would teach mosaics with Riccardo Licata working as his assistant. He died there on 26^th February 1966 in his home at 11 rue Schoelcher. On April 15 of that year his remains were transferred to Cortona, his hometown.

Giacomo Balla

Giacomo Balla was born in Turin on July 18^th 1871.

Initially he was interested in music and took violin lessons as a teenager, but soon afterwards he discovered a fondness for painting and drawing. Thanks to the passion imbued in him by his photographer father, Balla decided to attend Accademia Albertina, where he studied perspective, anatomy and geometric composition. In 1895 Balla left Turin and moved to Rome, where he joined the divisionist movement and began to exhibit regularly at the renowned Amatori e Cultori exhibitions. Here he found a following of students, such as Gino Severini and Umberto Boccioni, and become a leading figure in the Roman artistic world. In 1897 he became engaged to Elisa Marcucci, the sister of Duilio Cambellotti’s friend Alessandro, whom he went on to marry.

After the death of Boccioni in 1916, to whom he dedicated il pugno di Boccioni he became the undisputed star of the movement. His ideas are expressed in the Manifesto of Futurist painting as follows, “We Futurists, Balla and Depero, seek to realise this total fusion to reconstruct the universe making it more joyful, namely completely recreating it”. In addition to painting he also began to design furniture, fittings and furnishings as well as sets for Feu D’artifice, a show based on orchestral music written by Igor Stravinsky in 1917. He also participated in the film Vita Futurista (1916) where he filmed alongside Filippo Marinetti. In October 1918 he published Manifesto del colore, where he analyzed the role of colour in avant-garde painting. As part of his relentless adherence to futurism, in 1926, he carved a statue with the inscription at the base ‘I came to give Italy a government.’ The work was delivered directly to Mussolini, who looked upon it with favour. In the nineteen thirties, Balla became the artist par excellence of fascism, earning great critical acclaim. In 1933 he created Marcia su Roma, it seems that this work was commissioned by Mussolini himself. In 1937 Balla wrote a letter to the newspaper Perseo in which he dissociated himself from Futuristic activities. From that moment Balla was shelved by official culture, until the re-evaluation after the war of his works and those of Futurism in general.

He died in Rome on March 1st, 1958 at the age of 87 and is buried there at The Verano Monumental Cemetery.

Duilio Cambellotti

Duilio Cambellotti was born in Rome in 1876 and although he learned his first artistic skills in the workshop of his father Antonio from an early age his initial training was in accountancy, from which he graduated while studying art independently.

Between 1893 and 1897 he enrolled in some courses at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, but without ever attaining his diploma. Upon leaving the academy he received his first commission, for the construction of the support poles of the Roman tramways. Initially his artistic career followed the path of designer, creating lamps, mirrors, boxes and furniture. A key step in his career was when he met with Alessandro Marcucci, an official at the Ministry of Education in Rome, who brought him into the world of theatre as a set designer. Also in Rome he collaborated with the INDA (Istituto Nazionale del Dramma Antico) for whom he created the set for their production of Agamemnon of Aeschylus, which represented the inauguration of the institute in 1914.

Alongside his work in theatre Cambellotti was also a talented illustrator, and in 1901 he won il Concorso Alinari for his illustration of the Divine Comedy. Following on from this achievement he began working with several magazines, such as la Lettura, Rapiditas, La Casa, Fantasio and l’Avanti della Domenica as well as illustrating literary texts. Cambellotti was also very sensitive to socio-political issues, and together with fellow artist Giacomo Balla, writer Cena and Marcucci was dedicated to the redevelopment of the Pontine Marshes, creating in 1905 the first Scuola per Contadini.

He died in Rome on 31st January 1960.

Alberto Savinio

Alberto Savinio (Andrea Francesco Alberto de Chirico) was born in 1891 in Athens. Savinio’s talents took many forms – he was a musician, composer, writer, painter, journalist, essayist, playwright and set designer. Savinio was the third child of Italian expatriates Evaristo de Chirico and Emma Cervetto de Chirico, who was a Genoese noblewoman. His elder brother was the renowned painter Giorgio de Chirico. At the age of twelve Savinio graduated from the Athens Conservatoire, where he specialised in piano and music composition. After his father’s death in 1905, the family returned briefly to Italy and then moved to Munich. Here Andrea began to be tutored in piano and composition by renowned musician Max Reger – under whose tutelage Savinio composed his first piece to receive critical acclaim, a three-act opera, Carmela. By 1911, at the age of 20, Savinio’s music began to be performed in Munich. Later that year he moved to Paris where he befriended Guillaume Apollinaire, one of the foremost poets, critics, and artists at large in the avant-garde movement. While living in Paris, Andrea also became acquainted with a range of writers and artists such as Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Max Jacob, and Fernand Léger – who would remain a constant form of inspiration to him throughout his career. In 1914 Savinio founded the musical movement Sincerismo, which largely abandoned harmony in favour of dissonance and rhythm. Shortly after the outbreak of World War I, Savinio returned to Italy to enlist with his brother. At a military hospital in Ferrara, the brothers met Carlo Carrà and it was here – under the influence of Giovanni Papini – that the three founded the Scuola Metafisica. Scuola Metafisica became one of the most significant and influential artistic movements of twentieth-century Italy. In 1918, Savinio published his first novel Hermaphrodite, which was a multilingual piece that intertwined different languages as well as prose and poetry. Savinio would go on to write four more operas and publish a total of forty-seven books in his lifetime. In 1926, Savinio returned to Paris, where he began to pursue painting. In 1927, he gave his first one-man show as a painter, at the Bernheim Gallery in Paris. His contributions to the Avant-Garde movement during this period where in sharp contrast to the provincialism favoured by the National Fascist Party. Savinio died in Rome on 5th May 1952. In 1954, the Venice Biennale dedicated a room solely to Savinio’s artistic legacy. The works of Savinio and his brother Giorgio de Chirico are often cited as the basis of both the Surrealist movement and Magic Realism.

Alberto Martini

Alberto Martini (Alberto Giacomo Spiridione) was born in 1876 in Oderzo. In 1879 he moved with his family to Treviso, where his father taught design at the Riccati Technical Institute. Between 1890 and 1895 he began to paint and draw under the guidance of his father (who was described by Vittorio Pica as a unique and caring teacher). During his training Martini produced countless drawings, immediately revealing a predilection for graphics. In 1895 he started his first series of illustrations in pen in ink for ‘Morgante Maggiore’ by Luigi Pulci. He quickly grew tired of this project and instead turned his attentions to illustrating ‘Secchia Rapita’ by Alessandro Tassoni, which he devoted himself to until 1903. In 1896 he began illustrating a graphic cycle for ‘Il Poema Del Lavoro’, which consisted of 9 pen drawings in ink. In 1897 he exhibited 14 drawings at the second Venice Biennale for ‘La Corte Dei Miracoli’, which were presented the following year in Monaco and at the International Exhibition of Turin alongside his drawings for ‘Il Poema Del Lavoro’. In 1898 Martini stayed in Monaco and worked as an illustrator for the magazines Dekorative Kunst and Jugend. A pivotal moment in Martini’s career came when he met the artist Vittorio Pica at the International Exhibition of Turin. Pica would go on to support the works of Martini both in Italy and throughout Europe. In 1901 he executed his first cycle of 19 watercolour and pen drawings for the illustrated edition of ‘La Divina Commedia’, commissioned by Alinari of Florence with the intercession of Pica. Following this he participated in the IV Venice Biennale, presenting drawings from ‘La Secchia Rapita’ – 38 of these drawings were subsequently bought by the Gallery of Modern Art in Rome. In the summer of 1905 Martini started to execute display boards for the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, which he worked on until 1909. In 1912, encouraged by Pica, Martini began to paint and became particularly fond of the medium of pastel. Examples of such works are, ‘Le Sinfonie Del Sole (L ‘Aurora, La Notte, I Fiumi’) and the pastel ‘Farfalla Gialla’. At the outbreak of World War I, he made 54 lithographs entitled, ‘Danza Macabra’, through which he revealed his anti-German sentiments. These lithographs were then printed in postcard size and distributed among the allies as propaganda against the German empire. Martini also showed great interest in theatre, creating 84 colour drawings in pen and watercolour and six panels in tempera for the costumes of the ballet ‘Il Cuore Di Cera’. In 1923, Martini envisioned the idea for a theatre on water named ‘Tetiteatro’, which as its name suggests, was dedicated to the sea goddess Thetis. Disappointed and saddened by the hostility of the Italian critics, who in the late twenties seemed to completely ignore his work, Martini moved to Paris where he found friends in high places and many admirers of his art. Whilst in the French capital Martini immersed himself in the environment of critics and writers, befriending Solito de Solis, a musician and art lover who introduced him to the aristocratic salons of Paris. In 1940 Martini was forced to return to Milan due to his precarious financial situation. Here, at the Milan Triennale, he executed the sketch for the triptych ‘Battaglia d’uomini e demoni.’ Between 1935 and 1936 Martini revealed his anti-novecentism through his publication in the journal ‘Perseus’, which displayed his bitingly satirical drawings, captions and cartoons. He died on 8th November 1954 in Milan, requesting in his Last Will and Testament the establishment of a museum to guard the memories and documents of Italian Surrealism.

Afro Basaldella

Afro Basaldella was born in Udine on 4th March 1912.

Following the death of his father he studied in both Florence and Venice, from where he graduated in painting in 1931.

In 1928, aged only 16, he exhibited with his brothers Mirko and Dino at the first and only  Mostra della scuola friulana d’avanguardia in Udine, and the following year at XX Esposizione dell’Opera Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice. Subsequently, thanks to a scholarship from the Marangoni Foundation of Udine, he went to Rome, where he came into contact with the artistic environment of the capital, spending time with artists such as Scipione, Mario Mafai and Corrado Cagli.

Following his move to Milan in 1932 he exhibited the next year at Galleria del Milione, subsequently in 1935 he first participated at the Quadrennial of Rome, and then in 1936 at the Venice Biennale, at which he also exhibited in 1940 and 1942.

In 1938 Afro moved to Paris where he was able to see first-hand the paintings of Picasso, an artist of great influence in his artistic maturity. After a short-lived phase of neocubism and various works of mural painting, in 1950 Afro went to the United States and began a twenty-year collaboration with the Catherine Viviano Gallery. The different cultural environment here further influenced Afro, and his work moved away from modern iconography such as still life, portraits and landscapes and towards abstraction.

In 1952 he joined Gruppo Degli Otto, with whom he took part in XXVI Biennale in Venice; the following year Lionello Venturi composed a critical essay in which he highlighted Afro’s passion for his work, technical skill and precision as well as the natural elegance and poetry of the artist. Moving onto 1955 he was present at the first edition of Documenta in Kassel (Germany), the Rome Quadriennale and once more alongside his brother Mirko as well as Francis Bacon at The New Decade: 22 European Painters and Sculptors, which travelled across the United States.

Afro’s art was now beginning to receive international acclaim, and in 1956 he won the award for best artist at the Venice Biennale as well as joining (in 1955) the commission for invitations to the Seventh Quadrennial of Rome. In 1958 he was commissioned to create a mural at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. The mural, entitled ‘The Garden of Hope’, was included in a series of works, which also contained pieces by Karel Appel, Arp, Calder, Matta, Miro, Picasso and Rufino Tamayo.

The continuation of his work saw Afro invited to the second Documenta in Kassel as well as winning first prize at the Carnegie Triennial in Pittsburgh and the Italian prize at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Afro’s final painting shows significant changes between 1960 and 1975 in his approach, with his later works characterized by an increased focus on graphic work rather than painting.

He died in Zurich 1976.