Bruno Cassinari (29 October 1912 – 26 March 1992) was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked in a style that mixed
cubist
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
and
expressionist
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...
elements.
Biography
Cassinari was born in Piacenza. He attended the local art school but eventually decided to move to Milan, where he studied painting at 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 ...
under
Aldo Carpi
Aldo Carpi (6 October 1886 – 27 March 1973) was an Italian artist, painter and writer, author of a collection of memoirs concerning his imprisonment in the infamous Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp.
Biography
Born in Milan, early in his you ...
. In 1946, he helped found the
Fronte Nuovo delle Arti Fronte Nuovo delle Arti was an Italian artistic movement active in Venice, Rome and Milan in the years following WWII (1946 to 1950). It is considered to be part of the post-cubism movement.
History
"Fronte Nuovo delle Arti" was founded in Septem ...
, an association aiming to restore optimism to post-war Italian art. Other members were
Renato Birolli
Renato Birolli (10 December 1905 – 3 May 1959) was an Italian painter.
Biography
Birolli was born at Verona to a family of industrial workers. In 1923 he moved to Milan where he formed an avantguardist group with artists such as Renato Guttuso ...
,
Renato Guttuso
Renato Guttuso (26 December 1911 – 18 January 1987) was an Italian painter and politician. His best-known works include ''Flight from Etna'' (1938–39), ''Crucifixion'' (1941) and ''La Vucciria'' (1974). Guttuso also designed for the theatre ( ...
,
Ennio Morlotti
Ennio Morlotti (21 September 1910 – 15 December 1992) was an Italian painter of the ''Corrente de Vita'' movement started in Milan as a counterpoint to nationalistic Futurism and the Novecento Italiano movements. His figures show an affinity to t ...
,
Leoncillo Leonardi, and
Alberto Viani
Alberto is the Romance version of the Latinized form (''Albertus'') of Germanic '' Albert''. It is used in Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. The diminutive forms are ''Albertito'' in Spain or ''Albertico'' in some parts of Latin America, Albert ...
.
In 1949, Cassinari was invited by
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
to exhibit his work at the Antibes Museum of Art. In 1952 he won the Grand Prize for Painting at the 26th
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 ...
with his Cubist-inspired paintings ''The Lemon'' and ''Still Life in Pink''. In the 1960s Cassinari briefly relocated to Venice. In 1986 he was recognized for his contributions to Italian painting with a large-scale retrospective of his work in Milan. Cassinari died in Milan on March 26, 1992, about one year after the death of his wife, Enrica.
References
1912 births
1992 deaths
20th-century Italian painters
Italian male painters
20th-century Italian sculptors
20th-century Italian male artists
Italian male sculptors
Brera Academy alumni
People from Piacenza
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