RENATO GUTTUSO ©

© Renato Guttuso by SIAE

RENATO GUTTUSO

Renato Guttuso was born in Bagheria, in the province of Palermo, in 1912. The son of a liberal-minded agronomist, he nurtured from early youth a great love for painting, which he cultivated by attending, in his home town, the studio of naturalist painter Domenico Quattrociocchi and the workshop of decorator Emilio Murdolo. In Palermo, where he completed his high school studies, he attended instead the studio of the painter Pippo Rizzo. He made his debut in 1928 at the Sicilian Trade Union Exhibition. After graduating from high school in 1930, he enrolled in the Faculty of Law, which he soon abandoned to devote himself entirely to painting. In his early twenties Renato Guttuso exhibited at the I Quadriennale Nazionale romana in 1931, where he would return to exhibit in 1935 and 1937. In 1932 he participated in the exhibition of the “Gruppo dei pittori siciliani” at the Galleria del Milione in Milan; in the years that followed he lived between Rome, Sicily and Milan, forging friendships with painters including Birolli, Cagli, De Grada, Fazzini, Franchina, Mafai, Melli and Sassu. He settled permanently in Rome, where he shared a studio with Colacicchi and Scialoja that soon became an important meeting point for artists. In 1938 he held his first solo show at the Galleria della Cometa, and the following year in Milan he participated with the Roman group in the Corrente exhibition. In 1942 he presented Crocifissione at the Bergamo Prize, a painting with a violently expressionist tone that provoked polemical reactions and was a prelude to the realism with strong, dramatic tones that would characterize his painting after World War II; two years later he took part in the Resistance. In 1945 Renato Guttuso went to France where he became friends with Picasso, and from the following year he began participating in numerous exhibitions abroad as well. He takes part in the “New Front of the Arts,” in an attempt to highlight the ethical and political problems of society, beyond the purely artistic fact, presenting himself together with the other exponents of the group at the XXIV Venice Biennale in 1948. From this period are the series dedicated to the Terni Steelworks and the Sicilian “Zolfare”. A Communist Party militant, even after the dissolution of the “Front” in March 1950, he would always remain linked to social issues and a staunch supporter of Realism. In the following decade he also executed numerous portraits and landscapes; he participated with paintings of different subjects in the 1964 exhibition at the Galleria del Milione in Milan, and in 1966 he created the Autobiography cycle. Impressed by the events of 1968, he created the large mural panel entitled The Mural Newspaper: May 1968 for the occasion. In 1973 he dedicated a series of paintings to the recently deceased Picasso, and in 1974 he made Vucciria, later donated to the University of Palermo. Among the many exhibitions dedicated to him are solo shows at the XXVI Venice Biennale in 1952, New York (1958), Moscow (1961), Bagheria (1962), Parma (1963-64), Stockholm (1978), and Venice (1982). Renato Guttuso died in Rome in 1987.