Renato Guttuso

Painter of Modern Life

  • Series Estorick Collection
  • Binding Paperback with flaps
  • Size 17 x 24 cm
  • Pages 80
  • Illustrations 40 colour illustrations
  • Language English
  • Year 2014
  • ISBN 9788836630448
  • Price € 18,00
  •   Not available
Abstract

Renato Guttuso (1911-1987) is one of Italy’s most widely respected modern painters. Towards the end of the 1930s his powerful brand of expressionist realism vividly conveyed the angst of a generation which wanted its art to reflect and engage with the urgency of contemporary life.

Rejecting both the formalism of abstract painting and the naturalism advocated by those on the far right of Fascism’s cultural establishment, Guttuso played a key role in forging a style that would go on to dominate Italian art during the immediate post-war years.

Born in Sicily, Guttuso began to paint at an early age. His first assured works of the late 1920s reveal the influence of the then dominant Novecento school, yet after moving to Rome in 1937 he aligned himself with the Corrente group, which sought to create an art free from rhetorical overtones, and adopted an increasingly critical stance toward Mussolini’s ailing regime. Resolutely ‘popular’, his work continued to chronicle Italy’s frequently turbulent political life, and the changing face of its society, for over forty years.

Among Guttuso’s most enduring subjects were the landscapes and inhabitants of southern Italy, their vitality being celebrated in works employing a suitably rich and vibrant palette reflecting the intense colours of his native Sicily.

Renato Guttuso: Painter of Modern Life is the first major exhibition in the United Kingdom for almost twenty years to focus on the career of this important artist, offering British audiences the opportunity to explore the work of a pivotal figure in modern Italian culture.

London, Estorick Collection, January - April 2015