Scuola Romana
Encyclopedia
Art movement
An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a restricted period of time, or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defined within a number of years...
defined by a group of painters within Expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
and active in 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...
between 1928 and 1945, and with a second phase in the mid-1950s.
Birth of the Movement
In November 1927, artists Antonietta RaphaëlAntonietta Raphael
Antonietta Raphaël , was an Italian sculptor and painter of Jewish heritage and Lithuanian birth, who founded the Scuola Romana movement together with her husband Mario Mafai. She was an artist characterised by a profound anti-academic conviction, also affirmed by her sculptures which, especially...
and Mario Mafai
Mario Mafai
Mario Mafai , was an Italian painter, founder with his wife Antonietta Raphaël of the modern art movement called Scuola Romana.- Biography :...
move to No. 325 of Roman street via Cavour
Via Cavour, Rome
Via Cavour is a street in the Castro Pretorio rione of Rome, named after Camillo Cavour. It is served by the Rome Metro stations Cavour and Termini. The facade of the original permanent Roma Termini railway station reached this street, though it is now 200 metres farther back...
, in a Savoyan palace subsequently demolished in 1930 in order to allow the fascist construction of the New Empire Way (currently the via dei Fori Imperiali
Via dei Fori Imperiali
The Via dei Fori Imperiali is a road in the centre of the city of Rome, Italy, that runs in a straight line from the Piazza Venezia to the Colosseum....
). The apartment's larger room is transformed into a studio
Studio
A studio is an artist's or worker's workroom, or the catchall term for an artist and his or her employees who work within that studio. This can be for the purpose of architecture, painting, pottery , sculpture, scrapbooking, photography, graphic design, filmmaking, animation, radio or television...
.
Within a short time, this studio becomes a meeting point for literati
Literati
Literati may refer to:*Intellectuals or those who read and comment on literature*The scholar-bureaucrats or literati of imperial China**Literati painting, also known as the Southern School of painting, developed by Chinese literati...
such as Enrico Falqui, Giuseppe Ungaretti
Giuseppe Ungaretti
Giuseppe Ungaretti was an Italian modernist poet, journalist, essayist, critic and academic. A leading representative of the experimental trend known as Ermetismo , he was one of the most prominent contributors to 20th century Italian literature. Influenced by symbolism, he was briefly aligned...
, Libero de Libero, Leonardo Sinisgalli
Leonardo Sinisgalli
Leonardo Sinisgalli was an Italian poet and art critic active from the 1930s to the 1970s.Sinisgalli was born in Montemurro, Basilicata. His early education and careers led to him being called the "engineer poet"....
, as well as young artists Scipione
Scipione (Gino Bonichi)
Gino Bonichi , known as Scipione, was an Italian painter and writer.He was born in Macerata. In 1909 he moved to Rome, where he later enrolled at the Scuola Libera di Nudo of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma...
, Renato Marino Mazzacurati
Renato Marino Mazzacurati
Renato Marino Mazzacurati , was an Italian painter belonging to the modern movement of the Scuola romana , of eclectic styles and able within his career span to represent the artistic currents of Cubism, Expressionism, and Realism, thus showing a distinctive open mind towards Art and its multiple...
, and Corrado Cagli
Corrado Cagli
Corrado Cagli was an Italian painter of Jewish heritage, who lived in the USA during World War II.Cagli was born in Ancona, but in 1915 moved with his family to Rome....
.
Contraposition to the sensitivity of the Return to Order Movement
From start, this spontaneous confluence of artists at the via Cavour studio does not appear to be led by true and proper programmes or manifestoManifesto
A manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. Manifestos relating to religious belief are generally referred to as creeds. Manifestos may also be life stance-related.-Etymology:...
s, but rather by friendship, cultural syntheses and a singular pictorial cohesion. With their firm approach to European expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
, they formally contrapose the solid and orderly painting of neoclassic
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
character, promoted by the socalled Return to order
Return to order
The return to order was a European art movement that followed the First World War, rejecting the extreme avant-garde art of the years up to 1918 and taking its inspiration from traditional art instead. The movement was a reaction to the War...
current of the 1920s, particularly strong in the Italian sensitivity of post-World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
The first identification of this artistic group should be attributed to Roberto Longhi, who writes: and adds:
Longhi uses this definition precisely because he wishes to indicate the special work these artists are performing within the expressionist universe, breaking off from official art movements.
Corrado Cagli
Corrado Cagli was an Italian painter of Jewish heritage, who lived in the USA during World War II.Cagli was born in Ancona, but in 1915 moved with his family to Rome....
too uses the appellative of Scuola romana. His critique does not linger on name identification for the "nuovi pittori romani (new Roman painters)" canimating this new movement. Cagli describes a spreading sensitivity and speaks of an Astro di Roma (Roman Star), affirming that is the real poetic basis of the "new Romans" :
thus highlighting the complex and articulated Roman situation, as opposed to what Cagli called the imperating Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
of the Novecento Italiano
Novecento Italiano
Novecento Italiano was an Italian artistic movement founded in Milan in 1922 by Anselmo Bucci , Leonardo Dudreville , Achille Funi, Gian Emilio Malerba , Piero Marussig, Ubaldo Oppi and Mario Sironi...
. The Scuola romana offers a wild painting style, expressive and disorderly, violent and with warm ochre and maroon tones. The formal rigour is replaced by a distinctly expressionist visionariness.
Scipione
Scipione (Gino Bonichi)
Gino Bonichi , known as Scipione, was an Italian painter and writer.He was born in Macerata. In 1909 he moved to Rome, where he later enrolled at the Scuola Libera di Nudo of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma...
, for instance, brings to life a sort of Roman
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...
baroque expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
, where often decadent landscapes appear of Rome's historical baroque
Baroque architecture
Baroque architecture is a term used to describe the building style of the Baroque era, begun in late sixteenth century Italy, that took the Roman vocabulary of Renaissance architecture and used it in a new rhetorical and theatrical fashion, often to express the triumph of the Catholic Church and...
centre , populated by priests and cardinals
Cardinal (Catholicism)
A cardinal is a senior ecclesiastical official, usually an ordained bishop, and ecclesiastical prince of the Catholic Church. They are collectively known as the College of Cardinals, which as a body elects a new pope. The duties of the cardinals include attending the meetings of the College and...
, seen with a vigorously expressive and hallucinated eye. Similar themes will be present in Raffaele Frumenti
Raffaele Frumenti
Raffaele Frumenti , was an Italian painter belonging to the modern movement of the Scuola romana .-Life and career:...
's paintings in the Second Season of the Scuola, with vivid red hues and soft brush strokes.
Second Season of the Scuola Romana
After 1930, instead of dying out due its major representatives' death (i.e., ScipioneScipione (Gino Bonichi)
Gino Bonichi , known as Scipione, was an Italian painter and writer.He was born in Macerata. In 1909 he moved to Rome, where he later enrolled at the Scuola Libera di Nudo of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma...
, Mafai
Mario Mafai
Mario Mafai , was an Italian painter, founder with his wife Antonietta Raphaël of the modern art movement called Scuola Romana.- Biography :...
and wife Antonietta Raphaël
Antonietta Raphael
Antonietta Raphaël , was an Italian sculptor and painter of Jewish heritage and Lithuanian birth, who founded the Scuola Romana movement together with her husband Mario Mafai. She was an artist characterised by a profound anti-academic conviction, also affirmed by her sculptures which, especially...
), the Scuola Romana continued with various other artists of a "second season", which developed during the 1930s
1930s
File:1930s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: Dorothea Lange's photo of the homeless Florence Thompson show the effects of the Great Depression; Due to the economic collapse, the farms become dry and the Dust Bowl spreads through America; The Battle of Wuhan during the Second Sino-Japanese...
and matured soon after World War II. Among them Roberto Melli, Renato Marino Mazzacurati
Renato Marino Mazzacurati
Renato Marino Mazzacurati , was an Italian painter belonging to the modern movement of the Scuola romana , of eclectic styles and able within his career span to represent the artistic currents of Cubism, Expressionism, and Realism, thus showing a distinctive open mind towards Art and its multiple...
, Guglielmo Janni
Guglielmo Janni
Guglielmo Janni , was an Italian painter belonging to the modern movement of the Scuola romana .-Biography:Son of a renowned Roman family - his father Giuseppe was a lawyer and his mother Teresa Belli was the niece of famous Italian poet Giuseppe Gioachino Belli - Guglielmo Janni will be much...
, Renzo Vespignani
Renzo Vespignani
Renzo Vespignani was an Italian painter, printmaker and illustrator.Vespignani illustrated the works of Boccaccio, Kafka and T. S. Eliot, among others...
and the socalled tonalists led by Corrado Cagli
Corrado Cagli
Corrado Cagli was an Italian painter of Jewish heritage, who lived in the USA during World War II.Cagli was born in Ancona, but in 1915 moved with his family to Rome....
, Carlo Levi
Carlo Levi
Dr. Carlo Levi was an Italian-Jewish painter, writer, activist, anti-fascist, and doctor.He is best known for his book Cristo si è fermato a Eboli , published in 1945, a memoir of his time spent in exile in Lucania, Italy, after being arrested in connection with his political activism...
, Emanuele Cavalli
Emanuele Cavalli
Emanuele Cavalli , was an Italian painter belonging to the modern movement of the Scuola romana . He was also a renowned photographer, who experimented with new techniques since the 1930s.-Biography:...
and Capogrossi, all gravitating around the activities of the "Galleria della Cometa”.
Later members include personalities such as Fausto Pirandello
Fausto Pirandello
Fausto Pirandello , was an Italian painter belonging to the modern movement of the Scuola romana . He was the son of Nobel laureate Luigi Pirandello.-Biography:...
(son of Nobel Prize Luigi
Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello was an Italian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934, for his "bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage." Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written...
), Renato Guttuso
Renato Guttuso
Renato Guttuso was an Italian painter.His best-known paintings include Flight from Etna , Crucifixion and La Vucciria . Guttuso also designed for the theatre and did illustrations for books...
, the brothers Afro
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, Leoncillo Leonardi, Raffaele Frumenti
Raffaele Frumenti
Raffaele Frumenti , was an Italian painter belonging to the modern movement of the Scuola romana .-Life and career:...
, Sante Monachesi
Sante Monachesi
Sante Monachesi , was an Italian painter belonging to the modern movement of the Scuola romana and founder in 1932 of the Movimento Futurista nelle Marche .-Life and career:...
, Giovanni Omiccioli
Giovanni Omiccioli
Giovanni Omiccioli , was an Italian painter belonging to the modern movement of the Scuola romana , with a dynamic paintwork representing soccer games and sports scenes.-Biography:...
and Toti Scialoja.
Museum of the Scuola Romana
The Villa TorloniaVilla Torlonia (Rome)
Villa Torlonia is a villa and surrounding gardens in Rome, Italy, formerly belonging to the Torlonia family. It is entered from via Nomentana....
in 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...
hosts, in its classic "Casino Nobile", the renowned Museums of Villa Torlonia
Villa Torlonia (Rome)
Villa Torlonia is a villa and surrounding gardens in Rome, Italy, formerly belonging to the Torlonia family. It is entered from via Nomentana....
, part of the Museum System of the Comune di Roma: on its 2nd floor one can visit the Museum of the Scuola Romana, offering a comprehensive view of this art movement, deemed one of the most interesting and captivating movements in the vital Roman figurative
Figurative art
Figurative art, sometimes written as figurativism, describes artwork—particularly paintings and sculptures—which are clearly derived from real object sources, and are therefore by definition representational.-Definition:...
research of the 20th century.
See also
- Return to orderReturn to orderThe return to order was a European art movement that followed the First World War, rejecting the extreme avant-garde art of the years up to 1918 and taking its inspiration from traditional art instead. The movement was a reaction to the War...
- Avant-gardeAvant-gardeAvant-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....
- ExpressionismExpressionismExpressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
- Corrente di VitaCorrente di VitaCorrente di Vita Giovanile , later renamed Corrente di Vita or Corrente, was an Italian magazine founded on 1 January 1938 in Milan by artist Ernesto Treccani....
- ClassicismClassicismClassicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint...
- Novecento ItalianoNovecento ItalianoNovecento Italiano was an Italian artistic movement founded in Milan in 1922 by Anselmo Bucci , Leonardo Dudreville , Achille Funi, Gian Emilio Malerba , Piero Marussig, Ubaldo Oppi and Mario Sironi...
- Baroque architectureBaroque architectureBaroque architecture is a term used to describe the building style of the Baroque era, begun in late sixteenth century Italy, that took the Roman vocabulary of Renaissance architecture and used it in a new rhetorical and theatrical fashion, often to express the triumph of the Catholic Church and...
- Baroque painting
- Villa Torlonia (Rome)Villa Torlonia (Rome)Villa Torlonia is a villa and surrounding gardens in Rome, Italy, formerly belonging to the Torlonia family. It is entered from via Nomentana....
- Figurative artFigurative artFigurative art, sometimes written as figurativism, describes artwork—particularly paintings and sculptures—which are clearly derived from real object sources, and are therefore by definition representational.-Definition:...
- Representational ArtRepresentation (arts)Representation is the use of signs that stand in for and take the place of something else. It is through representation that people organize the world and reality through the act of naming its elements...