Felice Casorati (painter)

Felice Casorati (born December 4, 1883 in Novara , † March 1, 1963 in Turin ) was an Italian painter .

Life

Felice Casorati was the son of an officer and spent his childhood and youth in numerous garrison towns; u. a. in Milan , Reggio nell'Emilia , Sassari and Padua . Casorati began studying the piano, but soon moved to the University of Padua for health reasons , where he completed a law degree.

In addition to his studies, Casorati took painting lessons, first in Padua and from 1908 in Naples . In 1907 and 1909 he exhibited his paintings for the first time in Venice . His early work was still strongly influenced by symbolism and Viennese Art Nouveau , especially by the work of Gustav Klimt .

In 1918, after participating in the First World War , he moved to Turin and stayed there until the end of his life. At the beginning of the 1920s, Casorati was influenced by Giorgio De Chirico's metaphysical painting and adopted elements from his spatial conception. In addition to the still lifes , he now placed the human figure at the center of his pictures. In 1923 Felice Casorati was briefly imprisoned for participating in an anti-fascist group.

In the 1920s Casorati taught at the Art Academy in Turin, where a real school developed around him. In 1924, the 26-year-old Daphne Mabel Maugham (born December 18, 1897 in London, † 1982 in Pavarolo near Turin), niece of William Somerset Maugham , came to Turin as an art student, where she became Casorati's pupil. The two married in 1931. In 1934 their son Francesco Casorati was born, who also became a painter and managed his parents' estate after his mother's death in 1982. He died on February 18, 2013, and since then his widow Paola Zanetti and two daughters have been looking after the artistic estate of the Casoratis in Turin and Pavarolo near Turin.

The couple was represented at numerous national and international exhibitions from the 1930s and took an intensive part in the intellectual life of Turin. Lionello Venturi , Giacomo Debenedetti , Carlo Levi , Mario Soldati , Giacomo Noventa, the musicians Alfredo Casella , Giorgio Federico Ghedini and others frequented the Casorati salon . Felice Casorati won, among other things, the prize for painting at the Venice Biennale in 1938. His work Carità di San Martino from 1939 is in the Museo Cantonale d'Arte in Lugano . In 1955 he was a participant in documenta 1 in Kassel . In addition to his painting, he also designed stage sets.

Felice Casorati was buried in Turin.

plant

According to the Vienna Secessionist movement oriented, symbolist beginnings with which Casorati can draw attention to themselves at a young age, the artist goes through about 1918 to 1920 a transitional phase in which it differs from the decorative ornamental conception of Art Nouveau off and a the “own” Italian traditions, namely the masters of the Florentine early Renaissance (especially Piero della Francesca ), turned to the classical conception. Figures and pictorial space are now increasingly sculpted in accordance with the guidelines of Valori plastici , as Casorati is always keeping a clear distance from the ideologically positioned groups around the Novecento italiano and is trying to form a circle of its own in Turin , from that of the City will emit decisive impulses for a few decades.

The years 1920 to 1925 are commonly referred to in literature with the attribute " neoclassical " and continue seamlessly into the main creative period of the late 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. The latter is characterized by an even greater meditative calm in the subject matter compared to the first half of the 1920s, by the great clarity and simplicity of the composition, muted colors and soft contours.

Nudes - predominantly girls and women, occasionally also boys' nudes - in interiors designed as relaxation rooms are the focus of this extremely productive creative period. Casorati's biographer Francesco Poli speaks of the “solitudine casoratesca”, a treatment of the female figure that alternates between quiet melancholy, cheerful serenity and subtle eroticism, which clearly distinguishes Casorati's figure images from the interwar period from those of the New Objectivity with their cool, distant perception.

Portraits, landscapes and still lifes also play a not insignificant, if subordinate role in the oeuvre of the middle creative period.

The second half of the 1940s finally marked the gradual transition to the older work with a now again two-dimensional, decorative conception, which can be seen as a return to approaches from the early work.

literature

• Gerd Roos; The cool look. Realism of the 1920s in Europe and America . Prestel, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-7913-2513-2 (catalog of the exhibition of the same name by the Hypo-Kulturstiftung , June 1 to September 2, 2001).
• Georgina Betolino, Francesco Poli: Catalogo generale dell'opera di Felice Casorati. Turin 1995.

Individual evidence

1. ^ In the Italian Wikipedia: 1930
2. ↑ biography. In: Studio Felice Casorati a Pavarolo. Fabio Malizia, accessed October 3, 2019 . 
3. ↑ Gianfranco Schialvino: Solo donna - La figura femminile nella prima metà del Novecento in Piemonte. In: Exhibition catalog Bra, Palazzo Mathis. Gianfranco Schialvino, 2011, p. 122 , accessed on October 3, 2019 . 
4. ^ Museo Cantonale d'Arte, Lugano: Felice Casorati
5. ↑ cf. Francesco Poli: Casorati. Firenze, Milano, Giunti Editore, 2007.

Web links

• Felice Casorati at Google Arts & Culture
• Materials by and about Felice Casorati in the documenta archive