Renato Guttuso

Renato Guttuso was born in Bagheria, Sicily, on December 26, 1911. He immediately came into contact with painting through his father, also an artist; later he attended the studio of the painter Emilio Murdolo. In the years to come he moved from his hometown to study in Palermo, at the workshop of Pippo Rizzo, a sculptor and painter close to futurism. In the 1930s, Guttuso left the island for Rome, where he exhibited at the National Quadrennial of Art and then the following year, 1932, he arrived in Milan, a guest at the Galleria del Milione together with other Sicilian artists. During his military service, a few years later, he had the opportunity to meet Lucio Fontana, who later became the founder of Spatialism, Elio Vittorini, then creator in 1945 of the magazine Il Politecnico, but also the famous scholar Salvatore Quasimodo; the philosopher Edoardo Persico and many others. These are the years in which the artist develops a political awareness that will influence the creation of his works, imbued with symbols and ideologies. 1939 was the year in which he moved to the capital, Rome, a source of inspiration and an opportunity for continuous study, but which he had to leave a few years later due to political complications. In 1945 he was in Paris where he met Pablo Picasso, considered a friend, but also an ever new stimulus for his works, the Spanish artist being one of the most varied personalities of the twentieth century in terms of technical experimentation. In the post-war period, the adhesion to the artistic group Fronte Nuovo delle Arti (1946-48) was fundamental, to give a voice to all the artists who, due to fascism, were unable to freely exercise their art in Italy. Leoncillo Leonardi, Morlotti, Vedova, Corpora, Fazzini and others are part of it. A very dynamic life that of Guttuso, an artist who travels both in Italy and abroad, obtaining recognition, important collaborations for theatrical sets, Italian and international magazines, as well as the invitation to exhibit several times on the occasion of the Venice Biennale . His 1972 masterpiece, I funerali di Togliatti, now kept at the MAMbo in Bologna, is a sort of manifesto of communist painting. In 1974 he instead painted Vucciria, the masterpiece dedicated to the well-known district of Palermo. On January 18, 1987, he died in Rome at the age of seventy-five. In his career, Guttuso collected four participations at the Venice Biennale (1948, 1950, 1952, 1995) and three at the Rome Quadriennale (1931, 1935, 1937), as well as personal exhibitions at Palazzo Grassi in Venice (1981), in Milan at Palazzo Reale (1985), at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1962), at the Kunstverein in Frankfurt (1975).