Virgilio Guidi

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Virgilio Guidi (1952), photographed by Paolo Monti

Virgilio Guidi ( 4. April 1891 in Rome - 7. January 1984 in Venice ) was an Italian artist and poet .

Life

Guidi was born in Rome as the first of nine children into an artistic family. His father Guido Constantino was a sculptor and poet, his grandfather an architect and decorator. From 1904 he attended the technical school in Rome. In class he showed a particular interest in technical drawing and geometry. In the evening he attended a school for painting. After three years he dropped out of school and from 1907 worked as a restorer and decorative painter in the workshop of Giovanni Capranesi . He decorated several important buildings in Rome for Capranesi. In 1911 he finished his work at Capranesi and enrolled at the Accademia di Belle Arti , where he attended the courses of Giulio Aristide Sartorio .

His relationship with Sartorio was strained from the start due to differences in style and aesthetics, so that he dropped out of the academy after just two years. In the two years he dealt with the works of various old masters, including the works of Giotto , Piero della Francesca , Antonio da Correggio , Jean Siméon Chardin and Gustave Courbet . He was also interested in contemporary painters such as Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse , whose expressionist works were to particularly influence him, or the chromatic works of the Roman painter Armando Spadini . From 1915 until 1924 he had a studio in the Villa Strohl-Fern . During this time he also met his future wife there. In 1915 he presented his work for the first time in a more important exhibition, the III. International Art Exhibition of the Roman Secession . Financial difficulties forced him to take a position as a draftsman in 1916 and to work again in Giovanni Capranesi's workshop in 1919. During that time, however, he did not interrupt his artistic activities as a painter.

In 1922 he was represented for the first time with a work at the 13th Venice Biennale . He only gained fame two years later at the 14th Biennale with the critically acclaimed work “Il tram”, which he had already made in 1923. The work, which is one of his most famous works, is now on display in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome. The success enabled him to work exclusively as an artist. From now on, he was able to show his sought-after work at important exhibitions, including at the biennials in 1940, 1954 and 1964 and at the quadriennials in Rome.

In 1927 he took over the professorship for painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice, but found himself exposed to the resentment of his colleagues who hindered him in his didactic work. In order to be able to teach undisturbed, he and some students occupied some rooms outside the academy.

In February 1928 he married the sculptor Adriana Bernardi and in November his daughter Maria Vittoria was born. Several works with his pregnant wife as a motif date from this period. In 1931 he expanded his artistic circles beyond Rome and Venice and visited, worked or exhibited in Milan , Paris and Florence . In 1935 he gave up teaching in Venice due to the poor working conditions and took the same position at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna . It was not until 1944 that he returned to Venice permanently. This period, which in retrospect can be described as a transitional phase, was very important to him, and it was during this time that he met the painter Giorgio Morandi . The first monograph on him was published in New York City in 1937 , edited by the American journalist Nedda Arnova.

From 1942 he began to work as a poet. His first volume of poetry - "Spazi dell'esistenza" - was not published until 1959. Further volumes followed in 1967 (“La ragione di esser”), 1968 (“Poesie”), 1973 (“L'ingiuria delle nubi”) and 1979 (“L'età improbabile”).

In the post-war period, he initially concentrated on graphic work. During this creative period, which lasted until the 1960s, he created a whole series of cycles with spatial figures and maritime motifs, especially from the Venice lagoon , some of which he subtitled with his own poems. In 1950 he took part in the artist group "Movimento spaziale" (German spatial art) founded by Lucio Fontana . In 1961 he was honored with a medal by the Italian President for his artistic work. In the following year, the city of Venice honored the procuraties with an anthological exhibition in the Ala Napoleonica . In the 1960s and 1970s he worked simultaneously as a painter and poet, doing some of his publications artistically himself, but also distinguished himself as an illustrator for other authors such as Ugo Fasolo , Mario Stefani , Libero Toracca , the Nobel Prize winner for literature Salvatore Quasimodo and 1979 Johannes Paul II from. On the other hand, he edited a portfolio with the painter Roberto Colombo, which combined Colombo's graphic work with his poems.

As a painter, he dealt with various topics such as fear and tumult during this time. Popular motifs also included heads, eyes and trees. For the latter, he was inspired by a trip to the tree-lined Marche , during which he gave a lecture in Recanati, the birthplace of Giacomo Leopardi , and as a result he painted a cycle with large trees. In 1980 he donated numerous works to the Guidi Museum in Venice, which was inaugurated in Palazzo Fortuny and closed in 1998. His second hometown had already dedicated a hall to him in the Fenice in 1976 . In the same year he began to work on his last important cycle of paintings "L'uomo è il cielo" (Eng. "Man and the sky").

On his 90th birthday in 1981, the city of Venice honored him with a congress organized by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore .

Guidi died on January 7, 1984 in Venice and was buried in the cemetery of San Michele .

style

Guidi gave his characters a timeless look by simplifying details of clothing and emphasizing volume. His painting “The Visit” (1922), which he exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1922, is one of his many depictions of the encounter between two women. The composition is reminiscent of a traditional proclamation, according to Jennifer Mundy, and "marks the end of Guidi's exploration of museum styles and is a self-confident statement of a new, Renaissance-inspired realism in his art." Critical successes failed Guidi until 1924 when he "The Tram" (1923) exhibited at the Venice Biennale. The painting earned Guidi recognition as a leading artist of the “Retour à l'ordre”. In 1925, Franz Roh named him in his book "After Expressionism: Magical Realism: Problems of the Latest European Painting" as one of the new magical realists. After the Second World War, his work became increasingly abstract. From 1950 he was associated with Lucio Fontana and the movement of space. From the 1950s onwards, thematic picture cycles such as Tumulti (“uprisings”), Prigioniera (“prisoner”), Grandi Occhi (“big eyes”), Cielo (“heaven”) and Figure agitate (“excited figures”) were created.

His imaging repeatedly goes through thematic-compositional cycles: figures in space, fear, presences, heads, the sea. He dealt with human architecture, with reflections of time.

literature

Web links

Commons : Virgilio Guidi  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Paola Pietrini:  Virgilio Guidi. In: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI).
  2. ↑ a b c Virgilio Guidi. In: bugnoartgallery. Retrieved February 11, 2020 (Italian).
  3. ↑ a b c Virgilio Guidi. In: verbapicta.it. Retrieved February 11, 2020 (Italian).
  4. ↑ Virgilio Guidi. In: ferrarinarte.it. Retrieved February 11, 2020 (Italian).
  5. ↑ a b Virgilio Guidi. In: associazione.miroromagna.it. Retrieved February 11, 2020 (Italian).
personal data
SURNAME Guidi, Virgilio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian artist and poet
DATE OF BIRTH April 4, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Rome
DATE OF DEATH 7th January 1984
Place of death Venice