Gianfranco Ferroni

Gianfranco Ferroni (born February 22, 1927 in Livorno , † May 12, 2001 in Bergamo ) was an Italian painter and graphic artist. His works are mostly documents of loneliness as the result of an intensive examination of his environment (1950s and 1960s) as well as introspection and his immediate surroundings (from 1970s).

Life

Ferroni spent his childhood in Livorno, where he was born. In 1944 he moved with his family to Milan, as his father had accepted a job as an engineer in the nearby Tradate. In 1947 Ferroni joined the Italian Communist Party and got in touch with other painters such as Gabriele Mucchi and Ernesto Treccani , supporters of socialist realism of the Italian type. After self-taught beginnings, he soon found acceptance into the illustrious circle of former students of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera , who met regularly in the artists' pub Bar Giamaica . He had his first solo exhibition in 1955 in the Milan branch of the Galleria Schettini .

reception

Ferroni's motifs at this time were, for example, the Hungarian uprising or the mining disaster in the Belgian coal mine Bois du Cazier in 1956. In 1957 he began with his first etchings . Francis Bacon's multi-perspective spatial conception - this is particularly evident in his self-portraits -, Alberto Giacometti's reduction to the essentials, and the informal existentialism of the late Wols had a considerable influence on his work . Together with Bepi Romagnoni , Giuseppe Guerreschi , Giuseppe Banchieri and others, Ferroni was assigned to the Milanese group des Realismo Esistentiale , which Tino Vaglieri gathered around himself after graduating from the Brera Academy in 1954. In 1956 the critic Marco Valsecchi first defined this term. While Vaglieri and Ceretti still had clear influences of the Informel and Guerreschi was approaching the emerging Pop Art , Ferroni's still lifes in aquatint between 1963 and 1965 already show elements of a “New Figurality” ( Nuova Figurazione ).

Ferroni took part in the Venice Biennale four times , in 1958, 1964, 1968 and 1982. In 1968, he was given his own exhibition space at the Biennale. But on the day of the opening, Ferroni turned his pictures for the duration of the Biennale with the canvas facing the wall, in protest against the violent removal of young protesting artists by the police. Ferroni mainly spent the 1970s in the seclusion of his Milan studio in Via Bellezza.

In 1971 he stated: “All I want to do now is to ask myself about my relationship to things.” In terms of style, his works now tended towards hyperrealism ; towards the end of the 1970s he also experimented with the technique of airbrushing . His series of lithographs based on still lifes are often associated with the graphic works of Giorgio Morandi because of their similar sensitivity . In 1987 Ferroni moved to Bergamo .

After 1954 he had several solo exhibitions in Italy. In 1964 he exhibited at the Biennale of Tokyo from the 1970s further exhibitions came abroad to z. B. in Paris , London , Vienna and Berlin . After his death there were a number of retrospectives about Ferroni, which posthumously increased public attention for Ferroni's oeuvre .

In 2002, a 30-minute short film entitled “La notte che si sposta” by Elisabetta Sgarbi about Ferroni was presented at the Venetian Film Festival. In 2004 a brochure of the same name came on the market with an enclosed DVD.

Prices

• In 1963 Ferroni won the Premio Biella for his engravings .
• In 1991 the Accademia di San Luca awarded him honorary membership, which was granted to him by the then President of Italy, Francesco Cossiga .

plant

Ferronis works are u. a .:

• in the Museo civico Floriano Bodini

literature

• Flavio Arensi: Gianfranco Ferroni. Diario esistentiale, gli anni decisivi 1956-1976. Milano 2004 ISBN 88-8215-760-1

Web links

• Gianfranco Ferroni in the IT catalog of the KHI Florence
• Curriculum vitae in English

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Press release on the 1997 exhibition at the Palazzo Reale in Milan ( Memento of the original from May 11, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ( MS Word ; 59 kB; accessed in September 2011)  
2. ↑ Press release on a retrospective collective exhibition of the Milanese Neo-Realists 2005 in Gemonio, VA
3. ^ Chiara Gatti, La solitudine di Ferroni in mostra a Palazzo Reale, Repubblica, July 4, 2007
4. ↑ Some lithographs from the years 1989-95 ( Memento of the original from May 31, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ Website of the Museo civico Floriano Bodini ( Memento of the original from October 10, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.