Felice Casorati

Felice Casorati (Dec 4, 1883 - Mar 1, 1963) was an Italian painter, sculptor, and printmaker The paintings for which he is most noted include figure compositions, portraits and still lifes, which are often distinguished by unusual perspective effects

Casorati was born in Novara He showed an early passion for music, but abandoned his study of piano after a serious illness, and became interested in art To please his mother he studied law at the University of Padua until 1906, but his ambition to be a painter was confirmed in 1907 when a painting of his was shown in the Venice Biennale The works he produced in the early years of his career were naturalistic in style, but after 1910 the influence of the symbolists and particularly of Gustav Klimt turned him toward a more visionary approach In 1915 he had a solo exhibition at the Rome Secession III, where he showed several paintings and the first of his sculptures in varnished terracotta His military service in World War I began that year and lasted until his discharge from the army after the death of his father in 1917

Felice Casorati descends from a family he had given to mathematicians and renowned scientists in Italy The father was a career officer and amateur painter Casorati spent his childhood in Milan, Reggio Emilia, Sassari and finally in Padua, where he dedicated himself to musical studies with an intensity that remained a victim of a nervous breakdown at the age of eighteen During a rest at Praglia, on the Euganean hills, he began painting, performing the first known work, a Padua landscape of 1902

He refined the technique with the artist Giovanni Vianello In 1907 he graduated in law at the University of Padua, but decided to devote himself to artistic career Portrait of a lady, an elegant image of her sister Elvira, was admitted to the Biennial of Venice in 1907 In Naples from 1908 to 1911 she studied Pieter Brueghel's work in the National Museum collection

His works were exhibited at the Biennale of 1909 and 1910; On this second occasion was greatly impressed by the room dedicated to Gustav Klimt The symbolic and decorative style of the Viennese Secession influenced decisively the successive works of Casorati Between 1911 and 1915 he lived in Verona together with others in 1914, the magazine La Via Lattea, to which he collaborated with art nouveau artwork in the manner of Jan Toorop and Aubrey Beardsley During the last few years he was close to the artists of Ca 'Pesaro, Arturo Martini, Gino Rossi, Umberto Moggioli, Pio Semeghini, whose European orientation introduced him to the recent artistic developments of Paris and Monaco

Casorati was enlisted in the army in 1915 At the death of his father in 1917 he moved with his family to Turin, soon becoming a central figure in the intellectual circles of the city He formed friendships with composer Alfredo Casella and with Piero Gobetti, joined in 1922 at the "Liberal Revolution" group In 1923, as a result of friendship with the anti-fascist Gobetti, he was arrested and imprisoned for a few days; After that episode he avoided entering into open conflict with the regime In Turin in 1921 Casorati will open a painting school for young artists, an entirely new experience and far from any systematic academy, students with whom he will exhibit in 1929 at the exhibition "Casorati fra i discepoli", accompanied by a text by Giacomo Debenedetti In which, among the students, Silvio Avondo, In Marchesini, Daphne Maugham, Marisa Mori, Andrea Cefaly junior, Sergio Bonfantini, Albino Galvano, Paola Levi Montalcini, Lalla Romano and Richard Chicco are remembered

In 1918, "intrigued by the decadent atmosphere of Turin with its sinister views", he settled there with his mother and two sisters His works of the next decade typify, in their emphasis on geometry and formal clarity, the "return to order" then prevalent in the arts as a reaction to the war Although many critics found his work cold, cerebral, and academic, Casorati achieved international recognition as a leading figure in this movement Often working in tempera, Casorati drew inspiration from his study of Renaissance masters, especially Piero della Francesca, as in his 1922 portrait entitled Silvana Cenni This symmetrical composition of a seated woman in a white dress is perhaps the best-known of the artist's works In it, the careful rendering of volumes results paradoxically in a sense of unreality which is characteristic of Casorati's art

The crystalline purity and the enigmatic tone of the Casorati compositions contributed to delineating the "magical realism" originally shared by the twentieth century While participating in the exhibitions of the "20th Century Italian" of 1926 and 1929, Casorati remained independent of Margherita Sarfatti's movement During the 1920's she played a leading role in Italian cultural life In 1923 he opened a school for young artists in the studio of Via Mazzini in Turin; Among the students were Francesco Menzio, Carlo Levi, Gigi Chessa and Jessie Boswell, who later became part of the group of "Six Turin Painters" Later he also received the Piedmont painters Enrico Accatino and Caty Cake, and the Modena painter Ida Donati Formiggini, wife of the Socialist deputy Pio Donati

In the works of maturity, in the postwar period, such as the Portrait of Silvana Cenni of 1922 and the afternoon of 1923, decorative detail replaced the meditation of an essential form influenced by the spatial mathematical constructions of the fifteenth century painting and, in particular, Atmosphere of immobility typical of Piero della Francesca's work In 1924 Casorati held a staff at the Biennale, accompanied by an authoritative presentation essay in Lionello Venturi's catalog

In 1925, Raffaello Giolli summarized the disconcerting aspects of Casorati's art—"The volumes have no weight in them, and the colors no body Everything is fictitious: even the living lack all nervous vitality The sun seems to be the moon nothing is fixed or definite"—and argued that these very qualities give his work its originality, and connect him to the metaphysical painters Casorati himself wrote, in 1931: "In taking up, against me, the old polemic of classicism and romanticism, people rail against intellectualized and scholastic order, accuse my art of being insincere, and wilfully academic—in a word, of being neoclassical since my art is born, so to speak, from within, and never has its source in changing "impressions", it is quite natural that static forms, and not the fluid images of passion, should be reflected in my works"

Briefly arrested in 1923 for his involvement with an anti-Fascist group, Casorati subsequently avoided antagonizing the regime Beginning in 1923, he opened his studio to the young art students of Turin, and to emerging Italian artists such as Quinto Martini and painters of the Gruppo dei Sei (Group of Six) In 1925, one of his students was Daphne Mabel Maugham, later his wife One of his later students was the Italian painter Enrico Accatino His Work Carità di San Martino, 1939, is in Museo cantonale d'arte of Lugano After 1930 the severity of Casorati's earlier style softened somewhat and his palette brightened He continued to exhibit widely, winning many awards, including the First Prize at the Venice Biennale of 1938 He was also involved in stage design He died in Turin in 1963

In 1930 he married Daphne Maugham, who had attended his school since 1926; He was also the painter of his son Francesco In 1925 he was among the founders of the Society of Fine Arts Antonio Fontanesi, in order to promote exhibitions of Italian and foreign artists of the nineteenth century and contemporaries Friendship with industrialist and collector Riccardo Gualino encouraged Casorati's interest in interior design In 1925 he worked with Alberto Sartoris at the Gualino home theater At the III Biennial of Decorative Arts organized by ISIA in Monza in 1927 he collaborated with Sartoris at the "commercial street" for the Piedmontese pavilion; He also designed the atrium of the Architecture Exhibition at the Triennale of Milan in 1933

In 1935 Casorati and Enrico Paulucci hosted the "First Collective Exhibition of Italian Abstract Art", including works by Licini, Melotti and Fontana Casorati won the Grand Prize for painting at the 21st Venice Biennale in 1938 He also received official awards at the great exhibitions of Paris, Pittsburgh and San Francisco at the end of the 1930s He was particularly active in the creation of scenes and costumes for the Rome Opera Theater, the Milan Scala and the Florentine Musical May, activities that continued even after the war In 1941 he was assigned the painting of the Academy of Albertina in Turin The fame that surrounded him then induced the Verzocchi to contact him at the end of the forties, to contribute to his collection on work in contemporary painting In 1952 he held a staff at the Biennale, and with Bruno Rosai received the special prize of the Presidency

Most of Casorati's important works are in Italian collections, public and private, including the Modern Art Revoltella Museum in Trieste and Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna

Works:
People (1910)
The wait (1918 - 1919)
The Dream of Pomegranate (1912)
The Prayer (1914)
A Woman (1919)
Portrait of Riccardo Gualino (1922)
Silvana Cenni (1922)
Meriggio (1923)
Angel of the Night (1925)
Factories (1940)
Hands, Objects, Head (1949-1950), realized with a self-portrait for the important Verzocchi collection on the subject of work The collection is now kept at the Pinacoteca Civica di Forlì
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