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"Ritratto femminile" - Donato Frisia
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Description
(Merate (LC) 1883-1953)
Cm 55x45,5 | In 21.65x17.91
Oil on canvas
He was born Aug. 30, 1883, in Merate, near Como, to Costantino, a builder and decorator with an intense Risorgimento past, and Giuseppina Grancini, who came from a wealthy family of Milanese merchants. He began working as a boy with his father in the stately villas of Brianza, where he had the opportunity to observe works by E. Gola, which led him to approach painting. After attending R. Brambilla's classes at the Merate Drawing School, from 1905 he studied at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, where he simultaneously attended courses in sculpture (E. Butti), painting (C. Tallone) and architecture (C. Boito). With time his interests became more precise: in 1908 he obtained a license for the sculpture course and, two years later, for the painting course, while he gave up the third license. In 1910 in Milan, at the exhibition organized by the Permanente, he exhibited a painting with a clear Tollonian matrix, but with a personal accent in the evocative use of color, The Blind Cellist (1909), the first essay of his talents as a talented colorist, which met with the approval of established artists such as G. Previati, A. Morbelli, and V. Grubicy. 1910 was also the year of his meeting with Gola, to whom Frisia became linked not in a discipleship relationship but in a fellowship equally charged with implications; working in close contact with the older artist-educated and up-to-date on the European situation-expanded his horizons, emancipating him from Tallone's rigid realist teaching. A member of the Permanente since 1910 (he would take part in all that institution's subsequent exhibitions), in 1912 Frisia was made an honorary member of Brera. The following year records his participation, as an official representative of Italy, at the Quadriennale in Munich, where he exhibited several canvases, including the Ritratto del padre (Milan, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana). To the same 1913 dates his marriage to Maria Galli, from which five children were born (Bruno, Costanza, Emilio, Lucia and Luisa). In 1914 he took part for the first time in the Venice Biennale - where he exhibited almost continuously until 1950 - presenting an unidentified Pastel. In the panorama of pre-war Italian painting, his figure appears to be consistently oriented toward a line of independence, as shown by his refusal to be aggregated to the Divisionist movement (he did not accept the invitation to join proposed to him by Grubicy), his extraneousness to Futurist suggestions and the same gradual departure from the Golian lesson, due to a need for constructive solidity that derives to the painter from the experience of sculpture. This material component is such that for paintings such as Al fronte: carico di legname, executed during the war, and Il valloncello one has spoken of precursors of informal painting, in particular of E. Morlotti. The plastic taste that characterizes Frisia's painting is destined to be more fully defined in the years between the wars. In that period the artist actively devoted himself to landscape (executed on the spur of the moment, without the stylistic filter constantly interposed, for example, by A. Tosi) as well as still life and portraits. It was precisely in the latter two genres, which required slower and more thoughtful elaboration and, therefore, allowed him greater decantation, that Frisia felt he achieved superior results to those he had achieved as a landscape painter. Fidelity to nineteenth-century iconography, which has sometimes led to the forcing of considering Frisia an epigone of so-called Lombard Impressionism, does not mean, however, adherence tout court to nineteenth-century formal modes. His painting is distinguished by something arid (predominant in the Frisian palette are lime white and natural earths of dull tones, traditional colors of mural technique), solid outline, the abolition of sfumato, and the renunciation of the abuse of chiaroscuro: these elements all contribute to an overcoming of Romantic residues in favor of a more modern form of expression. With the new aesthetic demands Frisia had occasion to confront himself in 1919, the year of the first of his many sojourns in Paris (almost biennially, until 1949), during which, as a guest of A. Bucci, he cultivated a brief but intense friendship with A. Modigliani, who portrayed him in three drawings. In the French capital, Frisia also frequented P. Picasso and G. Braque, whom he esteemed while sensing their distance from his own poetic world; nevertheless, the plastic connotation of space in his landscapes, certain "slipped planes" of still lifes, a sometimes exasperated technical research, denounce his contact with the Parisian milieu. Travels to major European capitals and the Mediterranean multiplied from this time (frequent and long stays in Venice and Portofino were also frequent). In Malta in 1932 he was commissioned, with R. De Grada and E. Paolucci, to execute on behalf of the Italian Foreign Ministry a series of watercolor views, now housed in the British Museum in Valletta and the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Rome. This public commission was part of a series of official awards: from the Principe Umberto prize in Milan (1922) for Ritratto di signora to the E. Mortara prize in Florence (1924, IV concorso S. Ussi) for The Pregnant Woman and Her Family, to the gold medal received at the 1927 and 1929 editions of the National Exhibition of Landscape Art in Bologna; from the prize at the Milan Self-Portrait Exhibition (1932) for the painting kept at the Milan Municipal Gallery of Modern Art to the silver medal at the Paris Universal Exhibition (1937) for Figura rosa (Monza, Civici Musei), to the G. Ricci di Brera (1939), awarded to the painter - ex aequo with U. Lilloni - by a jury that included C. Carrà and A. Soffici. The fame and esteem enjoyed by Frisia are reaffirmed by his participation in the Roman Quadrennial Exhibitions since the first edition (1931), by the purchases of his works by both the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome and the municipal galleries of the capital, Milan, and Turin, and finally by the numerous solo exhibitions at prestigious galleries (Pesaro, Barbaroux, Gian Ferrari in Milan), but especially by the one organized by the Milanese Permanente in 1941 with a commission composed of A. Carpi and A. Martini, who collaborated with Frisia in the selection of the 140 works exhibited. He also constantly participated in the exhibitions organized by the Fascist Fine Arts Syndicate: both in the regional ones (which were held from 1928 in Milan at the same time as the annual exhibitions of the Permanente) and in the national ones in Florence in 1933, where he exhibited Dissonanze and Siracusa, and in Milan (1941). Far from group logic-he did not adhere to Novecento, whose idealizing climate was, moreover, alien to him-and while apparently isolated, he could actually count on professional friendships based on a common ethical attitude in dealing with the problems of painting. Beginning in the 1930s his house was frequented by such personalities as U. Lilloni, A. Savinio, E. Treccani, B. Cassinari, and E. Morlotti, and precisely in the web of contacts established by him among differently oriented artists the historical role of the Brianza painter should be recognized. It is worth mentioning in this regard how he was among the supporters of the Bergamo Prize and participated in all four editions of the exhibition (1939-42); in 1940, thanks to the painting Composizione (location unknown), he won the second prize - the first went to M. Mafai and the third to R. Guttuso - which was awarded to him by a jury in which C. Carrà , O. Rosai and G.C. Argan. In 1942 he took part in the XXIII Venice Biennale exhibiting 27 works, including the 1933 landscape Constantinople: the Bosphorus (Piacenza, Galleria d'arte moderna Ricci Oddi). [...]
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(Merate (LC) 1883-1953)
Cm 55x45,5 | In 21.65x17.91
Oil on canvas
He was born Aug. 30, 1883, in Merate, near Como, to Costantino, a builder and decorator with an intense Risorgimento past, and Giuseppina Grancini, who came from a wealthy family of Milanese merchants. He began working as a boy with his father in the stately villas of Brianza, where he had the opportunity to observe works by E. Gola, which led him to approach painting. After attending R. Brambilla's classes at the Merate Drawing School, from 1905 he studied at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, where he simultaneously attended courses in sculpture (E. Butti), painting (C. Tallone) and architecture (C. Boito). With time his interests became more precise: in 1908 he obtained a license for the sculpture course and, two years later, for the painting course, while he gave up the third license. In 1910 in Milan, at the exhibition organized by the Permanente, he exhibited a painting with a clear Tollonian matrix, but with a personal accent in the evocative use of color, The Blind Cellist (1909), the first essay of his talents as a talented colorist, which met with the approval of established artists such as G. Previati, A. Morbelli, and V. Grubicy. 1910 was also the year of his meeting with Gola, to whom Frisia became linked not in a discipleship relationship but in a fellowship equally charged with implications; working in close contact with the older artist-educated and up-to-date on the European situation-expanded his horizons, emancipating him from Tallone's rigid realist teaching. A member of the Permanente since 1910 (he would take part in all that institution's subsequent exhibitions), in 1912 Frisia was made an honorary member of Brera. The following year records his participation, as an official representative of Italy, at the Quadriennale in Munich, where he exhibited several canvases, including the Ritratto del padre (Milan, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana). To the same 1913 dates his marriage to Maria Galli, from which five children were born (Bruno, Costanza, Emilio, Lucia and Luisa). In 1914 he took part for the first time in the Venice Biennale - where he exhibited almost continuously until 1950 - presenting an unidentified Pastel. In the panorama of pre-war Italian painting, his figure appears to be consistently oriented toward a line of independence, as shown by his refusal to be aggregated to the Divisionist movement (he did not accept the invitation to join proposed to him by Grubicy), his extraneousness to Futurist suggestions and the same gradual departure from the Golian lesson, due to a need for constructive solidity that derives to the painter from the experience of sculpture. This material component is such that for paintings such as Al fronte: carico di legname, executed during the war, and Il valloncello one has spoken of precursors of informal painting, in particular of E. Morlotti. The plastic taste that characterizes Frisia's painting is destined to be more fully defined in the years between the wars. In that period the artist actively devoted himself to landscape (executed on the spur of the moment, without the stylistic filter constantly interposed, for example, by A. Tosi) as well as still life and portraits. It was precisely in the latter two genres, which required slower and more thoughtful elaboration and, therefore, allowed him greater decantation, that Frisia felt he achieved superior results to those he had achieved as a landscape painter. Fidelity to nineteenth-century iconography, which has sometimes led to the forcing of considering Frisia an epigone of so-called Lombard Impressionism, does not mean, however, adherence tout court to nineteenth-century formal modes. His painting is distinguished by something arid (predominant in the Frisian palette are lime white and natural earths of dull tones, traditional colors of mural technique), solid outline, the abolition of sfumato, and the renunciation of the abuse of chiaroscuro: these elements all contribute to an overcoming of Romantic residues in favor of a more modern form of expression. With the new aesthetic demands Frisia had occasion to confront himself in 1919, the year of the first of his many sojourns in Paris (almost biennially, until 1949), during which, as a guest of A. Bucci, he cultivated a brief but intense friendship with A. Modigliani, who portrayed him in three drawings. In the French capital, Frisia also frequented P. Picasso and G. Braque, whom he esteemed while sensing their distance from his own poetic world; nevertheless, the plastic connotation of space in his landscapes, certain "slipped planes" of still lifes, a sometimes exasperated technical research, denounce his contact with the Parisian milieu. Travels to major European capitals and the Mediterranean multiplied from this time (frequent and long stays in Venice and Portofino were also frequent). In Malta in 1932 he was commissioned, with R. De Grada and E. Paolucci, to execute on behalf of the Italian Foreign Ministry a series of watercolor views, now housed in the British Museum in Valletta and the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Rome. This public commission was part of a series of official awards: from the Principe Umberto prize in Milan (1922) for Ritratto di signora to the E. Mortara prize in Florence (1924, IV concorso S. Ussi) for The Pregnant Woman and Her Family, to the gold medal received at the 1927 and 1929 editions of the National Exhibition of Landscape Art in Bologna; from the prize at the Milan Self-Portrait Exhibition (1932) for the painting kept at the Milan Municipal Gallery of Modern Art to the silver medal at the Paris Universal Exhibition (1937) for Figura rosa (Monza, Civici Musei), to the G. Ricci di Brera (1939), awarded to the painter - ex aequo with U. Lilloni - by a jury that included C. Carrà and A. Soffici. The fame and esteem enjoyed by Frisia are reaffirmed by his participation in the Roman Quadrennial Exhibitions since the first edition (1931), by the purchases of his works by both the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome and the municipal galleries of the capital, Milan, and Turin, and finally by the numerous solo exhibitions at prestigious galleries (Pesaro, Barbaroux, Gian Ferrari in Milan), but especially by the one organized by the Milanese Permanente in 1941 with a commission composed of A. Carpi and A. Martini, who collaborated with Frisia in the selection of the 140 works exhibited. He also constantly participated in the exhibitions organized by the Fascist Fine Arts Syndicate: both in the regional ones (which were held from 1928 in Milan at the same time as the annual exhibitions of the Permanente) and in the national ones in Florence in 1933, where he exhibited Dissonanze and Siracusa, and in Milan (1941). Far from group logic-he did not adhere to Novecento, whose idealizing climate was, moreover, alien to him-and while apparently isolated, he could actually count on professional friendships based on a common ethical attitude in dealing with the problems of painting. Beginning in the 1930s his house was frequented by such personalities as U. Lilloni, A. Savinio, E. Treccani, B. Cassinari, and E. Morlotti, and precisely in the web of contacts established by him among differently oriented artists the historical role of the Brianza painter should be recognized. It is worth mentioning in this regard how he was among the supporters of the Bergamo Prize and participated in all four editions of the exhibition (1939-42); in 1940, thanks to the painting Composizione (location unknown), he won the second prize - the first went to M. Mafai and the third to R. Guttuso - which was awarded to him by a jury in which C. Carrà , O. Rosai and G.C. Argan. In 1942 he took part in the XXIII Venice Biennale exhibiting 27 works, including the 1933 landscape Constantinople: the Bosphorus (Piacenza, Galleria d'arte moderna Ricci Oddi). [...]
Women painted in the 19th and 20th Centuries - Italian Fine Art
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