"Tuscan sketch"

SERGIO SCATIZZI

Sergio Scatizzi was born in Gragnano, in the province of Lucca, on 20 October 1918. After spending his childhood in the Valdinievole and the Lucca countryside, he moved to Rome in 1936, where he came into contact with some of the major painters of that environment, being particularly attracted to the artistic talent of Mario Mafai, Giovanni Stradone, Emanuele Cavalli and Antonietta Raphael. Returning to Montecatini in 1938, there he began to paint his first landscapes, interspersing them with some still lives of flowers and some watercolour portraits. Between 1939 and 1943, he met Filippo de Pisis, Giorgio Morandi and Ardengo Soffici, amongst others. In 1948 he went to Paris where he stayed for two years. In 1949, his first solo exhibition was held at the Ariel Bookshop in Montecatini, where only landscapes were exhibited. He achieved sudden success and was in fact invited to exhibit at the 25th Venice Biennale the following year (1950). His first contacts with the Florentine milieu of painters and men of letters also date back to this period, where, once he had met Ottone Rosai, he formed friendships with Ugo Capocchini, Mario Marcucci, Enzo Pregno and Nino Tirinnanzi. Settling definitively in Florence in 1955, in an old studio at number 3, Via de' Federighi, Scatizzi began a fruitful collaboration with the Galleria l'Indiano that was to end in 1969, at the end of a season (that of the dried flowers and Volterra lands, presented for the first time in 1962) that definitively established him as one of the most prominent figures within his generation, as demonstrated by his participation in the IX Quadriennale in Rome in 1965 and his success at the XVIII Premio del Fiorino e della Città di Firenze in 1967. The anthological exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi curated by Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti in 1958 and the first exhibition abroad, in the halls of the Asheville Art Museum in North Carolina, USA, in 1968, are also very important in the exhibition activity of these years. Between 1970 and 2000, other significant recognitions corroborated his success. We would like to mention just a few of them: the personal room at the 20th Premio del Fiorino in 1971, the Palazzo Strozzi anthological exhibition, curated by Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, in 1982, the large exhibition in Palazzo Pitti, at the Galleria d'Arte Moderna, between December 1997 and February 1998, entitled ‘Gli anni dell'informale’. A singular artistic event in the context of the Italian 20th century. Sergio Scatizzi passed away in Florence in 2009, shortly after Florence, his adopted city, dedicated an important recognition to him: an anthological exhibition at the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Palazzo Pitti.