Italians in Paris

Their paint did not comprehend neither the classical rhetoric of Novecento nor the trendy polemicists and those of Roman school and they were most of all alienated from the birth of incoming abstract reasoning. Theirs representations, started from the realism of the “return to order” were recognized in the lyric poetry vein of the impressionism, in synthetic space of the cubism, in the expressive force of the colour and the free iconography of the surrealism, of which second manifest had been launched to Paris in the 1928. In fact «les Italiens de Paris», in the moment in which art in Italy was closing into regime of propaganda chopped ingredients, they recognized the more present international research, still confirming the really classic tradition.
] The work of Severini, already protagonist of the futurism, then renegade on account of the return to order, and that of Paris has made its principal residence, it is documented from the picture belonged to Alberto della Ragione. It concerns «La finestra coi colombi»(1930-1931 ca., room IX), specimen of natural depicted death series in front of the window rue Marie Dairy atelier. In the painting, the evident overall realism is unified with the contract spatiality of cubism and the colour of brilliant Matisse, avoiding so the gloomy chiaroscuro of the nine hundred painters.
In Paris De Chirico painted the «Les bains mysterieux», successfully exposed in the second «Quadriennale» of Roma in 1935. It was perhaps in this occasion that he saw della Ragione, then he bought a specimen (room IX). The painting confirms the interest of the author, started to the Mitteleuropean symbolism and protagonist of the metaphysics then of «Valori Plastici» (Plastic Values), toward the theme of the suspended and mystery reality, here renewed on the themes of the dream of the surrealists.
Campigli separated his engagements between Italy and Paris, dedicating to the painting and the correspondence for the «Corriere della Sera». Friend of the Courbusier, Léger and Picasso, Campigli took part in the Novecento expositions and in the 1933 signed manifest of the mural art, experience that led ihim to elaborate Etruscan representations, of the Fayum, Byzantine, recalling arcane values, that the author based on his metaphysics experience. In this way began the fashion of manikin-woman that they made him famous (room VIII). «Testa di donna con collana» (1932), «Dames aux colombiers» (1937), «Due Ballerine» (1938), are admirable examples. The manikin in metaphysics waiting, the architecture as constituent wing, the moved curtain, the sea, dear themes to «les Italiens de Paris», these returns in the painting of Renato Paresce (room VIII). More of the other connected to the surrealists, Paresce showed a call living person to the solar Mediterranean culture and rich of person of ancient and immutable values.
Di Licini (room IX), he also was an artist who often visited Paris but oriented to an abstract representation animated by surreal creatures, the Alberto Della Ragione collection has «Natura morta con l’uva» (1927-1928 ca.) and «Paesaggio» (1928), paintings still tied to the intimist and naturalist poetics of the Giorgio Morandi friend, renewed on the lyric colour of the impressionism.

Similar was the Parisian experience of Menzio (sala XIV), started in 1928, after that with the Group of the six, when his staying was defended by the collector Riccardo Gualino. The painter, faithful to his avant-gardistes shutters beginnings, dedicated himself to the recover of impressionists painting, of Cézanne, of Modigliani, of the Laurencin, gathering suggestion for his new painting (composition, 1941 ca.).
More complex the work of De Pisis (rooms I, II, XVIII) – he also stayed in Paris after the experience of the metaphysics. His painting is enriched of the brush-stroke and of the impressionist colour, that allowed the creation of a chipped painting, emotional and melancholy. Alberto Della Ragione and Aldo Palazzeschi, his estimators, collected different painting which are exhibited today in the «Raccolta di Arte Italiana del Novecento» of Florence, between which «Natura morta marina» (1931), «San Francesco predica agli uccelli» (1931) and «Angolo con balcone fra il verde, Giardino a Saint-Claude» (1931), considered his masterpieces.

Paola Cammeo

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