A major retrospective on Felice Casorati at Ravenna's Museum of Art celebrates one of Italy's most enigmatic modern artists, whose intellectually charged paintings have yet to receive the full critical acclaim achieved by contemporaries like Giorgio Morandi.
The show features around 100 works on loan from museums and private collections, showcasing the full range of styles and themes that Casorati explored during his lengthy career.
Born in 1883, Casorati was captivated by art from an early age.
Although he graduated in law to satisfy his parents, he soon returned to his true passion and his first painting was displayed at the Venice Biennale of 1907.
Entitled Ritratto di Signora (Portrait of a Lady), it shows his sister Elvira, who frequently posed for his paintings.
"She was 10 years older than him and, truth be told, not the most attractive of women but my father loved using her as a model," recalled Casorati's 73-year-old son, Francesco, at the exhibition's recent presentation
La Preghiera (The Prayer), completed in 1914, recalls the artist's brief flirtation with symbolism. The painting, depicting a woman, head bowed, against a backdrop of flowers, is strongly reminiscent of Gustav Klimt, whose work Casorati studied closely.
This painting was followed by a break in Casorati's artistic output for several years, as he was sent to fight in World War I.
He left the front in 1917, when his mother died, and moved to Turin, where he became an important figure on the local art scene.
In line with many of his contemporaries, a more formalist, classical approach started to dominate his work at that time, a reaction against the chaos and uncertainty of the war.
It was during this period that he produced some of his best-known paintings, including his most famous work of all, Ritratto di Silvana Cenni (1922).
Inspired by 15th-century artists, particularly the work of Piero della Francesca, the portrait shows a seated woman in a white dress. Its symmetrical style and meticulous balance, both in terms of composition and colour, infuse it with a sense of the unreal.
Casorati continued in this vein of rigid simplicity, focusing on cool female forms and minimalist still lifes, which won him a room to himself in the 1924 Venice Biennial.
Yet in 1928, his work took a sudden turn in a different direction, moving towards more fluid lines and richer, brighter colours.
This resulted in a more emotionally and pictorially vivid style, which would characterize his art for the rest of his life.
Vocazione (Vocation), painted in 1939, is typical of this later work, a warmly illuminated painting of a woman kneeling before a low table, her head resting on her arms, on top of an open book.
After being arrested during a brief brush with the anti-Fascist movement in the early 1920s, Casorati steered well clear of politics, and his career consequently flourished throughout both the Fascist and the post-war period.
He exhibited widely and won many awards, including First Prize at the Venice Biennial of 1938, before dying in Turin in 1963.
Felice Casorati: Dipingere Il Silenzio (Felice Casorati: Painting Silence) runs from March 31 until July 15.
