CHILLI PEPPERS - RENATO GUTTUSO

Aldo Renato Guttuso ( Bagheria , 26 December 1911 – Rome , 18 January 1987 ) was an Italian painter and politician , improperly indicated as an exponent of socialist realism , protagonist of the Italian neorealist painting which was expressed in the artists of the New Arts Front ^[1] , senator from 1976 to 1983. Son of Gioacchino ( 1865 - 1940 ), surveyor and amateur watercolourist , and Giuseppina d'Amico ( 1874 - 1945 ) – who preferred to report his birth in Palermo on 2 January 1912 due to disagreements with the municipal administration of Bagheria due to the liberal ideas of the couple ^[2] – little Renato showed early on his predisposition for painting. Influenced by his father's hobby and by frequenting the studio of the painter Domenico Quattrociocchi and the workshop of the cart painter Emilio Murdolo , the young Renato began dating and signing his paintings at the age of thirteen. They were mostly copies (of 19th-century Sicilian landscape painters, but also French painters like Millet and contemporary artists like Carrà ), but there were also original portraits. During his adolescence, he also began frequenting the studio of the Futurist painter Pippo Rizzo and the artistic circles of Palermo. In 1928 , at the age of seventeen, he participated in his first group exhibition in Palermo. His art, linked to expressionism , was also characterised by a strong social commitment ^[3] , which also led him to political experience as a senator of the Italian Communist Party for two legislatures, during the secretariat of Enrico Berlinguer .

Biography

Renato Guttuso was born on Boxing Day, 1911, in the Sicilian town of Bagheria. His father, the knight Gioacchino Guttuso, was a land surveyor, and several portraits of him exist in the collection donated to the Municipality of Bagheria. The first, dating back to 1925, demonstrates the artist's precocious genius. Others, featuring rulers and set squares, emphasize his profession and his admiration for the upright man, passionate about literature and the arts, and possessing a cult of freedom passed down to him from his father, Ciro, who had fought with Garibaldi. His middle-class adolescence was filled with inspiration for the future painter.

The young Guttuso lived in a house near the Valguarnera and Palagonia villas, details of which he later portrayed in later paintings, and he was inspired by the Aspra rocks; between trips to the seaside and his first loves, the painter lived through the entire Sicilian crisis of the post-war period, during which the architectural and social devastation began, which continued for several years to come. In Palermo , and in Bagheria itself, he saw the nobility of the splendid eighteenth-century villas, with their famous monsters, in complete decadence and the advance of a real urban massacre and power struggles within the municipality, which shook Guttuso's temperament, while the family was marked by economic hardship due to the hostility of clerics and fascists towards Renato's father. Feeling an ever-growing inclination towards painting, he moved to Palermo to complete his high school studies at the Liceo Classico Umberto I and then attend university . In 1931, some of his works were accepted by the jury of the first Rome Quadrennial and were included in a group exhibition of six Sicilian painters, hailed by critics – says Franco Grasso in the aforementioned monograph – as "[...] a revelation, a Sicilian affirmation." In Palermo, he opened a studio on Corso Pisani and, with the painter Lia Pasqualino Noto and the sculptors Giovanni Barbera and Nino Franchina, formed the " Group of Four ." In 1933, he moved to Rome to devote himself solely to painting. From November 1933 to May 1934, he attended the Reserve Officer Cadet Course in Palermo, as documented in the volume "The Promise and the Offer. Memoirs of Second Lieutenant Giambattista Lapucci of the 17th Eritrean Battalion, Gold Medal of the Italian Military Police." In his posthumously published letters to his parents, the author, in describing his closest friends, mentions "Renato Guttuso, painter." Lapucci's letters do not reveal Guttuso's outcome at the AUC Course. His training was modeled on European figurative movements, from Courbet to Van Gogh to Picasso, and led him to Milan and travel throughout Europe. Sicilian motifs, such as lush lemon groves, Saracen olive trees, and Mount Palinuro, became increasingly prominent in his Expressionism, a blend of myth and island solitude.

Guttuso's social art [ edit | edit wikitext ]

In 1935 , in Milan for military service, Guttuso met Manzù, Birolli, Fontana, and Antonio Banfi . During that stay, however, he did not fail to return to Bagheria in the summer, where he developed his "social" art, with an increasingly overt moral and political commitment, which was revealed in paintings such as the aforementioned Ficilazione in Campagna (Fucilation in the Countryside), between 1937 and 1938, and Fuga dall'Etna (Escape from Etna) in two versions, before devoting himself a few years later to works representing the maximum expression of Guttuso's social realism such as La Spiaggia (The Beach) (1955) and Carretti a Bagheria (Carts in Bagheria ) (1956). Rejecting all academic canons, with figures free in space or the search for a pure sense of colour, Guttuso joined the "Corrente" artistic movement. In 1937 in Naples , Guttuso ranked second for art criticism at the Littoriali della cultura e dell'arte . In the 1938 edition in Palermo, he necessarily presented himself in the uniform of the GUF and competed with the painting Fucilazione in campagna , dedicated to the poet García Lorca , shot by the Francoists ^[4] . In 1937 he moved permanently to Rome, with a studio in Via Pompeo Magno where, due to his exuberant lifestyle, his friend Mazzacurati jokingly nicknamed him "Sfrenato Guttuso". He frequented the Roman artistic scene with an anti- 20th century tendency: Sebastiano Carta , Alberto Ziveri , Antonietta Raphaël , Mario Mafai ,Marino Mazzacurati , Pericle Fazzini , Corrado Cagli , Toti Scialoja , Filiberto Sbardella , and also kept in touch with the Milanese group of Ernesto Treccani , Giacomo Manzù , Aligi Sassu . He struck up a friendship with Antonello Trombadori , a young art critic, son of the painter Francesco Trombadori , and began an intellectual and political partnership that would last his entire life. In 1940 he joined the clandestine Italian Communist Party (he later designed the symbol of the reborn Italian Communist Party , used until its dissolution in 1991, and collaborated with the magazine Il Calendario del Popolo ); he left Rome for political reasons, taking refuge in Genoa with friends. He later returned to Rome in hiding. The painting that gave him fame, amidst a thousand controversies even from the clergy and the fascist party, since under the sacred subject he denounced the horrors of war, was a painting depicting The Crucifixion (1940) which allowed him to win the second prize at the fourth edition of the Bergamo Prize , in 1942. Guttuso wrote of it in his diary as « [...] the symbol of all those who suffer outrage, prison, torture for their ideas». The artist never stopped working in difficult years such as those of the war and alternated, especially in his still lifes, objects from the humble houses of his land, with glimpses of landscapes of the Gulf of Palermo and a collection of drawings entitled Massacri , which circulated clandestinely, given that they portrayed Nazi repression, such as the one dedicated to the massacre of the Fosse Ardeatine , an oil on canvas of which from 1944 was exhibited at the Galleria Basile in Palermo in what was the last solo exhibition dedicated to the artist.

He met and married the woman who would become his faithful companion and confidant Mimise, whom he portrayed in 1947. Already in the aftermath of the Liberation a breath of hope began to breathe again in the master's painting, as in the painting Pausa dal lavoro , ink and watercolour in 1945 , almost a symbol of the rebirth of which Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote ( 1962 ):

The figures of ten workers

they emerge white on the white bricks

noon is summer .

But the humiliated flesh

they cast a shadow: and the disordered order

of the whites is faithfully followed

from the blacks. Midday is peaceful .

This was followed by Singing Cartwrights , Farmer Hoeing (1947), and Sicilian Farmers (ten drawings published in Rome in 1951) in which the pictorial language becomes clear and essential, and of which Guttuso himself wrote that they were preparatory drawings for the painting Occupation of Uncultivated Lands in Sicily (which would later be exhibited at the Venice Art Biennale in 1950), stating: «I believe they are linked to my deepest and most remote inspiration. To my childhood, to my people, to my farmers, to my father the surveyor, to the lemon and orange groves, to the plains of the large estate familiar to my eye and to my feelings, since I was born. Sicilian farmers who have first place in my heart, because I am one of them, whose faces continually come before my eyes no matter what I do, Sicilian farmers who are such a part of the history of Italy…».

Also in 1949-1950, Renato Guttuso joined the project of the important Verzocchi collection (currently preserved at the Civic Art Gallery of Forlì ), sending, in addition to a self-portrait, the work Sicilian Worker . He promptly returned to amaze, alternating the bright and colorful vision of Bagheria on the Gulf of Palermo with the Battle of the Admiral's Bridge , in which he portrayed his grandfather Ciro Guttuso, who had enlisted as a Garibaldian, and with a series of paintings from life, the peasant struggles for the occupation of the land, the sulfur miners, or glimpses of landscape among cacti and prickly pears, portraits of friends and men of culture, painters such as Nino Garajo and Bruno Caruso . In 1953 he participated in the First Trade Union Exhibition of the Roman Provincial Union adhering to the National Federation of Artists of Rome (in Via Margutta 54, together with the artists Antonio Vangelli, Carlo Levi , Pietro Cascella , Corrado Cagli , Carla Accardi , Vito Apuleio, Claudio Astrologo, Beppe Assenza, Valente Assenza; Ugo Attardi ; Eugenio Bardzki; Giulia Battaglia; Fausta Beer; Stelvio Botta; Leoncillo Leonardi; Alessandro Leonori Cecina; Irma Levi; Roberto Melli; Francesco Mercati; Costanza Minniey; Saro Mirabella; Angelo Moriconi; Aldo Natili; Umberto Padella; Vittorio Parisi; Mario Penelope; Sestilio Picari; Paola Piersanti; Ottavio Pinna; Walter Sanges; Filiberto Sbardella; Sergio Schirato; Renato Selvi; Giuseppe Strachota ; Mario Toppa; Edoardo Treves; Ariosto Zampaloni; Nwart Zarian; Gino Zocchi, etc.) ^[5] . Fascinated by the Dantesque model, from 1959 to 1961 , the artist conceived a series of coloured drawings which were later published in a volume in 1970 , Il Dante di Guttuso , in which the characters of Hell are revisited as examples of the history of the human race ^[6] , confirming the versatility of his genius ^[7] . An entire cycle, however, was dedicated in the seventies to his autobiography in painting, paintings of exceptional value for the knowledge of Guttuso the man-artist. In 1963 one of his works was exhibited at the Contemporary Italian Paintings exhibition, set up in some Australian cities ^[8] . In 1963-64 he exhibited at the Peintures italiennes d'aujourd'hui exhibition, organised in the Middle East and North Africa ^[9] . The female figure became dominant in painting ^[10] as it was in private life and among the largest mixed media paintings we remember Donne stanze paesaggi oggetti del '67 , today exhibited at the municipal gallery of Bagheria, in Villa Cattolica, as well as the important series of paintings in which he portrayed Marta Marzotto , his muse and favourite model for many years, whom he met in Milan at Rolly Marchi 's house. Also famous is the series of Cartoline , a collection of 37 drawings and mixed media (published by the Archinto publishing house in the volume Le Cartoline di Renato Guttuso ), in which the artist masterfully represents the memories, feelings, emotions, fantasies and states of mind of the man Guttuso towards the woman Marta Marzotto. From 1968 is The Daughters of Lot , an erotic painting in two different versions ^[11] , inspired by the biblical episode of the involuntary incest of Lot with his two daughters. In the early 1970s, Guttuso worked on the Museum-Monument to Political and Racial Deportees , producing a wall painting depicting a group of deportees. The painting confronts us with Italy's responsibility for the phenomenon of deportation and extermination. In 1971 he designed the banner for the Palio di Siena on August 16, while in 1972 he painted I funerali di Togliatti , which became a manifesto of post-war communist painting. The work is preserved at the Museum of Modern Art in Bologna . It depicts, in an allegorical manner (often many had already died at the time of Palmiro Togliatti 's funeral in 1964 ), various communist figures, both positive and negative, to compose an ideal representation of the collective communist imagination of the 20th century, including workers, red flags and Togliatti's body. In the painting, for example, in addition to the author himself, we can see Marx , Engels , Trotsky , Elio Vittorini , Angela Davis , Stalin , Lenin (depicted several times), Jean-Paul Sartre , Simone de Beauvoir , Pier Paolo Pasolini and others. The famous painting dedicated to the Vucciria in Palermo, the historic market of the Sicilian capital, dates back to 1974. A bas-relief on silver metal entitled Volto di donna and an enamelled brass sculpture entitled L'Edicola are on display at the Fortunato Calleri Museum in Catania.

The political experience

In the political elections of 20 June 1976 he was elected to the Senate of the Republic for the PCI in the Sciacca constituency, collecting 29,897 preferences ^[12] . He was confirmed in the political elections of 3 June 1979 for the Senate of the Republic for the PCI in the Lucera constituency, collecting 29,418 preferences ^[13] .

The last years and death

In 1977 Guttuso donated, by public deed, to the Study Centre and Archive of Communication in Parma his work The Departure of the Steamer of Naples (1966), preserved in the Fund dedicated to him, public and entirely consultable ^[14] . To this first work, in 1982 , Natura morta con tavola ( 1947 ) was added to the CSAC Fund. In 1980 he dedicated a watercolour to the Bologna massacre , entitled The Sleep of Reason Generates Monsters , like the etching of the same name by Goya . In 1982 he painted the 1,000 lire stamp, depicting the FIFA Cup lifted by Dino Zoff during the award ceremony of the 1982 World Cup in Spain , which is highly prized by collectors ^{[ unsourced ]} . In 1985 I finished the fresco depicting "Colapesce and the sirens" on the ceiling of the Vittorio Emanuele II Theatre in Messina .

Guttuso passed away sadly in Rome , in isolation, after the death of his wife. Her illness, in fact, had affected him to the point of making him stop all other acquaintances. Having no recognized biological children, he adopted , shortly before his death, Fabio Carapezza Guttuso, who died in 2022 ^[15] , the son of the scientist and great friend Marcello Carapezza . The adopted son was very close to the master in the last months of his life and his only comfort after the loss of many loved ones. Marta Marzotto , in an interview, claimed that Renato Guttuso had always been an atheist . ^[16] In reality - as can be seen in the narrative - the countess did not frequent Guttuso in the last months of his life. The fact remains that two funerals were celebrated: one secular and party-related, with a following of red PCI flags, and one religious. The religious ceremony was celebrated by the then archbishop Fiorenzo Angelini , his personal friend, who in the homily and in an interview immediately after his death testified to his spiritual assistance and the painter's religiosity in the last months ^[17] . Upon his death, Guttuso donated many works to his hometown, Bagheria, which have been collected in the local museum of Villa Cattolica, where he himself is buried. His tomb is the work of the sculptor Giacomo Manzù . Fabio Carapezza Guttuso was the sole heir to Guttuso's immense estate. He founded the Guttuso Archives , to which he assigned the studio in Piazza del Grillo, and integrated the Bagheria museum collection with numerous inherited works.

In mass culture [ edit | edit wikitext ]

• He is quoted in the song "Canzone del padre" from the album Storia di un impiegato ( 1973 ) by Fabrizio De André : «And my alibis catch fire, / The Guttuso still to be authenticated» , a probable reference to the painting I funerali di Togliatti from the previous year. ^[19]
• It is mentioned in the song AD 4000 from the album Ingresso libero by Rino Gaetano and in the song Jet-set from the album E io ci sto by the same artist.
• In 2009 he was played by Corrado Fortuna in the film Baarìa by Giuseppe Tornatore .
• He appears, in the role of a street artist, in "FF.SS." - That is: "...what did you bring me to do above Posillipo if you don't love me anymore?" , a 1983 film directed by Renzo Arbore .
• In his painting entitled The Beach , exhibited at the National Gallery of Parma , he depicts Pablo Picasso in profile with a tanned body and a Hawaiian costume, rubbing a green towel over himself, with the movements of a bullfighter, as if he had just arrived on the beach after a long swim in the sea. ^[20]
• The artistic duo Orticanoodles (composed of Wally and Alita) created the largest portrait in the world of Renato Guttuso. It was created in July 2013 in Giardini-Naxos in Sicily during the Emergence Street Festival event. It is a mural created using the stencil technique. ^[21]

Honors

Notes

Bibliography

• Girace P. , Contemporary artists, Naples, Ed. EDART, 1970, pp. 152, 153, SBN IT\ICCU\NAP\0057927 .
• P. Pacini (ed.), Renato Guttuso. Works from 1945 to 1998 , Firenzelibri, Florence 1983
• Vittorio Sgarbi , Guttuso. Visits to the Art of the Past , Milan, Diarte - Galleria Bergamini, 1985, pp. 29.
• M. Calvesi, D. Favatella Lo Cascio, Renato Guttuso from the Beginnings to Gott mit uns (1924-1944) , Sellerio, Palermo, 1987
• Lea Vergine, The Last Eccentrics", Rizzoli, 1990
• Alessandro Masi, Renato Guttuso: the primacy of painting , preface by Marcello Veneziani , Edimond, 1998.
• Werner Haftmann , Guttuso , Florence, Giunti, 2005, pp. 50.
• Paolo Parlavecchia, Renato Guttuso. A Portrait of the Twentieth Century , UTET, Turin, 2007
• Review of the exhibition "Guttuso. Passion and Reality" (Parma, September 11 - December 8, 2010)
• Elena Lissoni, Renato Guttuso , Artgate online catalogue of the Cariplo Foundation , 2010, CC-BY-SA.
• C. Quattrini, M. Ragozzino, Brera Never Seen Before. Renato Guttuso 1940. The Portrait of Alberto Moravia , Skira, 2011
• E. Dei (edited by), Guttuso and the Friends of Corrente , Pacini publisher, Pisa, 2011
• Maria Antonietta Spadaro, Renato Guttuso , Flaccovio, ebook, 2012
• Renato Guttuso, Writings , edited by M. Carapezza, Bompiani, Milan, 2013
• F. Gualdoni, F. Calarota, Renato Guttuso. Realism and the Relevance of the Image . Exhibition catalog (Aosta, March 27–September 22, 2013)
• Mario Ursino (edited by), Guttuso's Greek Coffee, Rome, Nuova Cultura, 2014, ISBN 978-88-6812-275-1 .
• F. Carapezza Guttuso, V. Crispino, (edited by), Guttuso, the disquiet of a realism , De Luca Editori d'Arte, Rome, 2016

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