Enrico Accatino - Workers

Social themes in art began to gain prominence in the mid-19th century, coinciding with the spread of social questions throughout European societies. The work of painters such as Millet and Daumier, for example, favored subjects related to life in the fields, factory work, or strikes. In Italy, among the first painters to engage deeply with social themes were Pellizza da Volpedo and, in the contemporary era, Renato Guttuso. Born into a working-class environment like Genoa and into a peasant family from Monferrato, Enrico Accatino was deeply sensitive to social issues. Indeed, before turning to abstract art, he developed iconographic themes related to work, the lower social classes, and also figures of the marginalized and the destitute.

The intent to narrate and denounce social issues in his early work led Enrico Accatino to adopt a decidedly Expressionist language. Expressionist art sought to proclaim its emotional states to the world and flaunt them with passion. Formally, this translated into a summary rendering of figures, through a highly nervous and animated line, as well as the use of a violent color palette. These characteristics are found in the historical avant-garde movements of Expressionism, such as Fauvism and the Die Brücke movement in Germany. Thus, in Enrico Accatino's figurative work, he sought to forcefully express the toil of labor and the harsh living conditions of the most deprived. He did so with a highly energetic and nervous line that synthesized the figures according to a frenetic rhythm of broken lines. In the works of this socially charged production, unlike historical Expressionism, Accatino's use of a sparse palette of earthy and brown tones prevails, in keeping with the essentiality of the representation.

Enrico Accatino was born in Genoa in 1920 and passed away in Rome in 2007. He grew up in a rural area and began drawing as a self-taught artist. He later graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and entered Felice Casorati's studio in Turin. He spent a year in Paris, where he refined his technique and style. Returning to Italy in the late 1940s, he developed a figurative, strongly expressionist style inspired by social issues. From the 1950s onwards, his work evolved towards a rather rigorous abstraction, placing the circular element as a fundamental theme in his painting.

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