Giuseppe Uzzaco - The Fishermen

Socially-themed art began to gain prominence around the middle of the 19th century, coinciding with the growing prominence of the social question in various European societies. The work of painters such as Millet or Daumier, for example, favored subjects related to life in the fields, factory work, or strikes. In Italy, among the first painters deeply committed to social themes, we recall Pellizza da Volpedo and, in the contemporary era, Renato Guttuso. Giuseppe Uzzaco also fits into this tradition, and his favorite subjects are precisely fishermen and peasants, represented through his original and personal artistic language, in which contemporaneity is combined with an authentic and sincere description of a typical Sicilian reality.

Giuseppe Uzzaco's artistic production fits perfectly into a pictorial tradition that combines realist themes with a predominantly Expressionist language. Indeed, while the subject is focused on the world of work and the working classes, the style calls for a synthetic interpretation of reality. Within a two-dimensional space, everything is simplified to transfigure reality in an expressive and symbolic sense. One moves away from the particular to reach an iconic representation that has the characteristics of universality. The process of abstraction, therefore, is carried out by the painter to extract the essential from sensory data. The subject is thus resolved into a juxtaposition of chromatic zones, with bright and vivid colors, in which the volume of the subjects and their physiognomies are lost. In this way, Uzzaco creates an image full of primary, immutable values, thanks to expressive essentialism and chromatic strength. The compact application of color, reminiscent of Gauguin's flat application, is achieved through a dense and corporeal application. Light floods the entire scene, further crystallizing it in a timeless dimension.

Giuseppe Uzzaco was a painter from Palermo born in 1932 and passed away in 2020. His artistic production mainly deals with popular genre scenes, with a great interest in the lives of peasants and fishermen. His language is predominantly Expressionist, based on the use of compact colors with bright tones. In 1974, the Municipality of Palermo dedicated the first exhibition to him at Palazzo Butera. Later, he exhibited his works in Italy and Europe in cities such as Rome, Paris, London, Warsaw, and Bari. Uzzaco is also famous for his mural paintings created in Isola delle Femmine, Trappeto, and Montelepre.

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