Aligi Sassu (17 July 1912 – 17 July 2000) was an Italian
painter and
sculptor
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...
.
Biography
Aligi Sassu was born in Milan,
Lombardy. He was the son of Lina Pedretti (from
Parma
Parma (; egl, Pärma, ) is a city in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna known for its architecture, music, art, prosciutto (ham), cheese and surrounding countryside. With a population of 198,292 inhabitants, Parma is the second mos ...
,
Emilia
Emilia may refer to:
People
* Emilia (given name), list of people with this name
Places
* Emilia (region), a historical region of Italy. Reggio, Emilia
* Emilia-Romagna, an administrative region in Italy, including the historical regions of Emi ...
) and Antonio Sassu (from
Sassari,
Sardinia
Sardinia ( ; it, Sardegna, label=Italian, Corsican and Tabarchino ; sc, Sardigna , sdc, Sardhigna; french: Sardaigne; sdn, Saldigna; ca, Sardenya, label=Algherese and Catalan) is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after ...
). His father Antonio was one of the founders of the
Italian Socialist Party
The Italian Socialist Party (, PSI) was a Socialism, socialist and later Social democracy, social-democratic List of political parties in Italy, political party in Italy, whose history stretched for longer than a century, making it one of the l ...
(Partito Socialista Italiano) in
Sassari in 1894, and had moved to Milan in 1896, where he married Pedretti in 1911. At the beginning of the 1920s, the Sassu family moved back to Sardinia to
Thiesi
Thiesi ( sc, Tiesi) is a town and ''comune'' located in the northern province of Sassari, in Sardinia, Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located ...
, where Antonio opened a shop. After three years, the family returned to Milan, where Aligi got interested in art and enrolled to the
Brera Academy
The Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera ("academy of fine arts of Brera"), also known as the or Brera Academy, is a state-run tertiary public academy of fine arts in Milan, Italy. It shares its history, and its main building, with the Pinacoteca di ...
of Fine Arts. Together with his friend and designer
Bruno Munari
Bruno Munari (October 24, 1907 in Milan – September 29, 1998 in Milan) was an Italian artist, designer, and inventor who contributed fundamentals to many fields of visual arts (painting, sculpture, film, industrial design, graphic design) in ...
, he decided to introduce himself to the Futurism leader,
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti (; 22 December 1876 – 2 December 1944) was an Italian poet, editor, art theorist, and founder of the Futurist movement. He was associated with the utopian and Symbolist artistic and literary community Abbaye d ...
.
In 1928, he wrote, together with Munari, the ''Manifesto della Pittura'' (Painting Manifesto), taking as basic assumption the display of anti-naturalistic forms. He studied
Diego Velázquez and the plastic nude. It was in this period that he painted ''L'Ultima cena'', a painting destined to sum up Sassu's visual poetic. In the same year he was invited to participate to the
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
.
In 1930, in Milan, he met
Giacomo Manzù
Giacomo Manzù, pseudonym of Giacomo Manzoni (22 December 1908 – 17 January 1991), was an Italian sculptor.
Biography
Manzù was born in Bergamo. His father was a shoemaker. Other than a few evening art classes, he was self-taught in s ...
, Giandante X (also known as Dante Persico) and Giuseppe Gorgerino. In 1934, Sassu started studying
Delacroix Delacroix is a French surname that derives from ''de la Croix'' ("of the Cross").
It may refer to:
People
* Caroline Delacroix (1883–1945), French-Romanian mistress of Leopold II of Belgium
* Charles-François Delacroix (1741–1805), ...
and the paintings of the
Louvre
The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...
in Paris. In this period he also painted his first horse, a theme that would be recurrent in his future work.
In 1935, he established the ''Gruppo Rosso'' with, among others, Nino Franchina and Vittorio Della Porta. In 1936, he finished one of his most known paintings, ''Il Caffè'', as well as ''Fucilazione nelle Asturie'', painted in favour of the Spanish resistance. He joined the
anti-fascist cultural movement of ''
Corrente di Vita ''Corrente di Vita'' was a biweekly Italian culture magazine published between 1938 and 1940.
The Corrente Magazine
In 1938 artist Ernesto Treccani founded the magazine ''Vita Giovanile'' with the financial backing of his father, Senator Giovanni ...
'' in 1938.
After the
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, link ...
, he started studying
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, inc ...
and moved back to Sardinia for some time. During this period, he made several paintings dedicated to the Sardinian rural life. He also studied mural painting.
In 1963, he moved to
Majorca, first to
Cala de Sant Vicent
Cala de Sant Vicent is a beach resort village on the Spanish island of Ibiza."579 Regional Map, Spain, Islas Baleares. Pub:Michelin Editions des Voyages, 2004, The resort is in the municipality of Sant Joan de Labritja. The resort is reached al ...
then to
Palma, and finally to the village of
Pollença. In 1967, the cycle ''Tauromachie'' was presented by the Spanish poet
Rafael Alberti
Rafael Alberti Merello (16 December 1902 – 28 October 1999) was a Spanish poet, a member of the Generation of '27. He is considered one of the greatest literary figures of the so-called ''Silver Age'' of Spanish Literature, and he won numerou ...
. Red became Sassu's favourite colour. In 1976, he worked on the frescoes of the Sant'Andrea Church in
Pescara
Pescara (; nap, label= Abruzzese, Pescàrë; nap, label= Pescarese, Piscàrë) is the capital city of the Province of Pescara, in the Abruzzo region of Italy. It is the most populated city in Abruzzo, with 119,217 (2018) residents (and approxim ...
.
In 1964, Sassu's work mostly focused on bullfights and the landscapes of Majorca. He would spend the rest of his life living between Majorca and
Monticello Brianza in Italy.
In 1973, he designed the scenes and costumes of the
Sicilian Vespers
The Sicilian Vespers ( it, Vespri siciliani; scn, Vespiri siciliani) was a successful rebellion on the island of Sicily that broke out at Easter 1282 against the rule of the French-born king Charles I of Anjou, who had ruled the Kingdom of ...
for the reopening of the
Teatro Regio in Turin. In the same year the Gallery of Modern Art in
Vatican City
Vatican City (), officially the Vatican City State ( it, Stato della Città del Vaticano; la, Status Civitatis Vaticanae),—'
* german: Vatikanstadt, cf. '—' (in Austria: ')
* pl, Miasto Watykańskie, cf. '—'
* pt, Cidade do Vati ...
dedicated a room to his work. In 1976 he completed two mosaics for the church of Sant'Andrea in Pescara.
In 1982, he presented 58 watercolours he had originally made in 1943 to illustrate
Alessandro Manzoni
Alessandro Francesco Tommaso Antonio Manzoni (, , ; 7 March 1785 – 22 May 1873) was an Italian poet, novelist and philosopher. He is famous for the novel '' The Betrothed'' (orig. it, I promessi sposi) (1827), generally ranked among the maste ...
's ''
The Betrothed''.
In 1986, he completed 113 works inspired by the ''
Divine Comedy
The ''Divine Comedy'' ( it, Divina Commedia ) is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun 1308 and completed in around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature ...
'', three of which were purchased by the
Pushkin Museum in
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...
.
In 1993, he completed "Miti del Mediterraneo", a 150 square meters mural for the new building of the European Parliament in Brussels. The following year he presented ''Manuscriptum'', a series of engraves that were included in the itinerant exhibition "The Bridges by Leonardo".
In 1995, he exhibited at the Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in
Bergamo and was nominated ''Cavaliere della Gran Croce'' by the Italian president. In 1996 he donated 362 works made between 1927 and 1996 to the city of
Lugano
Lugano (, , ; lmo, label=Ticinese dialect, Ticinese, Lugan ) is a city and municipality in Switzerland, part of the Lugano District in the canton of Ticino. It is the largest city of both Ticino and the Italian-speaking southern Switzerland. Luga ...
. They are currently housed at the Aligi Sassu and Helenita Olivares Foundation in the city.
On 17 July 1999, the day of the artist's eighty-seventh birthday, a big retrospective on his work opened at
Palazzo Strozzi
Palazzo Strozzi is a palace in Florence, Italy.
History
The construction of the palace was begun in 1489 by Benedetto da Maiano, for Filippo Strozzi the Elder, a rival of the Medici who had returned to the city in November 1466 and desired the ...
in Florence.
In 2000 Sassu died on the day of his 88th birthday in Pollença.
References
External links
Aligi Sassu
Aligi Sassu. Painting's General CatalogueAligi Sassu. Cultural AssociationArchive Aligi Sassu Aligi SassuAligi Sassu. Bibliography Aligi Sassu. Exhibitions
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sassu, Aligi
1912 births
2000 deaths
Artists from Milan
20th-century Italian painters
Italian male painters
20th-century Italian sculptors
20th-century Italian male artists
Italian male sculptors
Italian contemporary artists
Modern painters
Italian scenic designers
Brera Academy alumni