Armando Pizzinato
Encyclopedia
Biography
Armando Pizzinato was the elder son of Battista Pizzinato and Andremonda Astolfo. He started work at 15 to help his mother after the loss of his father. He made an apprenticeship with a house painter and later was employed in a local bank. Since childhood he had a passion for painting and drawing, and the purchase of the book Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and ArchitectsLives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects
The Lives of the Most Excellent Italian Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, from Cimabue to Our Times, or Le Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori da Cimabue insino a' tempi nostri, as it was originally known in Italian, is a series of artist biographies written by 16th century...
by Giorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari was an Italian painter, writer, historian, and architect, who is famous today for his biographies of Italian artists, considered the ideological foundation of art-historical writing.-Biography:...
(The Lives) played a large role in developing that passion even more. He was still a teenager when the manager of the bank arranged lessons for Armando with the painter Pio Rossi. Then, in 1930, thanks to the money he was earning, he could be enrolled in the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia (School of fine arts of Venice). Shortly later he got to know some of his contemporaries such as Alberto Viani, Giulio Turcato
Giulio Turcato
Giulio Turcato was an Italian painter.-Biography:Turcato left Mantua and attended the Venice Academy’s school of nude studies in the early 1930s before moving to Milan and finding work in the firm of the architect Giovanni Muzio in 1937. Pulmonary illness led to frequent stays in sanatoriums...
, Mario De Luigi, Carlo Scarpa
Carlo Scarpa
Carlo Scarpa , was an Italian architect, influenced by the materials, landscape, and the history of Venetian culture, and Japan. Scarpa was also a glass and furniture designer of note....
, Afro Basaldella
Afro Basaldella
Afro Basaldella was an Italian painter and a member of the Scuola Romana. He was generally known by the single name Afro....
and Mirko Basaldella.
In 1933 he takes part with five paintings to the exhibition Cinque giovani pittori veneti (Five young painters from Veneto) in the Gallery Il Milione in Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
. In 1936 he obtains a Marangoni scholarship to go to Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
. In 1940 he is the winner of the second Premio Bergamo (Bergamo award) (National painting exhibition).
In 1941 he marries Zaira Candiani, with whom he had a daughter, Patrizia, born 19 August 1943. Zaira will be a source of inspiration for many of Pizzinato's paintings. After Zaira's death in 1962 Pizzinato married his second wife, Clarice Allegrini.
During WWII Pizzinato was a socialist member of the Italian resistance movement
Italian resistance movement
The Italian resistance is the umbrella term for the various partisan forces formed by pro-Allied Italians during World War II...
, he was arrested by the fascists
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
and imprisoned. After the war Pizzinato dedicates his life to art. He joins Italian avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
movements and participates, with Emilio Vedova
Emilio Vedova
Emilio Vedova was an Italian modern painter, considered one of the most important to emerge in his country's artistic scene after World War II.Vedova was born in Venice into a working-class family...
and others, to the creation of the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti
Fronte Nuovo delle Arti
The Fronte Nuovo delle Arti was an Italian artistic movement that was active in Venice, Rome and Milan in the years following WWII...
. The Fronte movement made an exhibition at the Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
in 1948. Peggy Guggenheim
Peggy Guggenheim
Marguerite "Peggy" Guggenheim was an American art collector. Born to a wealthy New York City family, she was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, who went down with the Titanic in 1912 and the niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim, who would establish the Solomon R...
, who visited that exhibition, bought there the painting Primo maggio (in English: May Day) of Pizzinato and later donated it to the MoMA
Moma
Moma may refer to:* Moma , an owlet moth genus* Moma Airport, a Russian public airport* Moma District, Nampula, Mozambique* Moma River, a right tributary of the Indigirka River* Google Moma, the Google corporate intranet...
, where it still is. In turn, Pizzinato donated to Peggy Guggenheim a couple of paintings, such as Cantieri, still part of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection
Peggy Guggenheim Collection
The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is an art museum on the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy. It is one of several museums of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation....
. In those years he created, among other works, a mural
Mural
A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. A particularly distinguishing characteristic of mural painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture.-History:Murals of...
with Emilio Vedova
Emilio Vedova
Emilio Vedova was an Italian modern painter, considered one of the most important to emerge in his country's artistic scene after World War II.Vedova was born in Venice into a working-class family...
inspired by the Italian resistance.
In 1949 works of Pizzinato were included by Alfred Barr
Alfred Barr
Alfred Hamilton Barr, Jr. , known as Alfred H. Barr, Jr., was an American art historian and the first director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City...
and James Thrall Soby in the exhibition XXth Century Italian Art at the MoMA
Moma
Moma may refer to:* Moma , an owlet moth genus* Moma Airport, a Russian public airport* Moma District, Nampula, Mozambique* Moma River, a right tributary of the Indigirka River* Google Moma, the Google corporate intranet...
. In 1950 the Catherine Viviano Gallery in New York included works by Pizzinato in the exhibition Five Italian Painters. The same year, Pizzinato was invited at the 1950 Pittsgurgh International Exhibition of Contemporary painting (Carnegie International in Pittsburgh). The painting Un fantasma percorre l'Europa, which is considered as one of Pizzinato's masterpieces, is dated 1950 (exhibited in the Galleria d'Arte Moderna Ca' Pesaro, Venice).
From 1950 on he deliberately brought the themes of his paintings in line with his political beliefs (e.g. works entitled Terra non Guerra, I difensori delle fabbricche, Saldatori). In 1952 he takes part to the exhibition Some contemporary Italian painters at the Crane Gallery in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
. The same year he participates to the Congress of People for Peace in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
. In 1968 he makes a large exhibition in Germany, first at the Neue Berliner Galerie and then at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden is a cultural institution in Dresden, Germany, owned by the State of Saxony. It belongs to the most renowned and oldest museum institutions in the world, originating from the collections of the Saxon electors in the 16th century .Today, the Dresden State Art...
. A work of Pizzinato is also part of the Verzocchi collection
Verzocchi collection
The Verzocchi collection or the Galleria Verzocchi - work in contemporary painting is a collection of over seventy 20th century Italian paintings formed by the entrepreneur Giuseppe Verzocchi from 1949 to 1950. It contains only paintings of 90 by 70 cm and only on the themes of work and...
of the Pinacoteca civica di Forlì
Pinacoteca Civica di Forlì
The Pinacoteca Civica of Forlì, one of the civic museums of Forlì and currently based in the Musei di San Domenico, is an Italian art gallery. Artists whose work the gallery exhibits include:* Livio Agresti* Beato Angelico...
.