Aligi Sassu - Horses in Love

Born in Milan in 1912, he died in Pollença, Spain, in 2000. His father, Antonio, was the founder of the Sardinian Socialist Party, and in 1921 he and his family moved to Thiesi, Sardinia, where he remained for three years. It was during this period that he became acquainted with horses, which would recur as a central subject in his work. Returning to Milan, he followed Futurist art, thanks in part to his father's friendship with Carlo Carrà. He dropped out of school due to his family's financial difficulties and worked as a lithographer at La Pressa. He studied in evening classes. Together with the young Bruno Munari, he met Marinetti at the Hotel Corso: he brought him his drawings of Mafarka the Futurist. The contact was fruitful: in 1928, at just 16 years old, Sassu was invited to submit two works to the Venice Biennale: Plastic Nude and Man Drinking at the Spring. He particularly loved Boccioni and, beyond his native Italy, looked to Picasso. In the same year, Sassu, along with Munari, signed the painting manifesto Dynamism and Muscular Reform, which remained unpublished until 1977. In 1929, he enrolled at the Brera Academy, where he met Lucio Fontana (they would work together years later in Albissola). He exhibited in Futurist shows in Italy and abroad, but in reality he shared the movement's youthful enthusiasm more than its formal research. Furthermore, his socialist political orientation distanced him from the Futurists of the 1920s, supporters of the Fascist regime. During these years, he produced numerous temperas, oils, and drawings that constitute the Uomini Rossi cycle (1929–1933), and produced the Cyclists series: this was the most prolific and apogee of his production, characterized by his exaltation of youth as an existential condition, his use of red as a symbol of passion and blood, and the abolition of shadows and black. In Paris (1934) Sassu established relationships with Magnelli, De Pisis, Léger, Campigli, as well as with the critic Lionello Venturi, through whom he deepened his passion for the Primitives such as Beato Angelico, Paolo Uccello, and Mantegna. Also in 1934 he exhibited in Milan together with Giacomo Manzù and Luigi Grosso. An anti-fascist, he was arrested in 1937 and locked up in prisons in Milan, Rome, and Piedmont (in Fossano). During the year and a half of imprisonment he wrote and drew (he produced numerous sketchbooks and notes). Upon his return to Milan (1938) he was one of the founders of the periodical Corrente. The critic Edoardo Persico, the cultural driving force of the movement, was for him «a prophet. I was 18 when I met Persico, and he was immediately a teacher and a guide for me. He had the rare gift of identifying the soul of young people with crystalline clarity, and he passionately pushed us to understand man and the reality of things». In 1943, he painted 58 watercolors as a commentary on The Betrothed (published in a deluxe edition in 1983). After the war, he began exhibiting regularly at the Venice Biennials and the Rome Quadrennials, as well as at Italian exhibitions in Argentina, France, the United States, Sweden, England, Spain, and China (which he visited in 1956). In 1963, he opened his new studio in Cala S. Vicente on the island of Majorca. At the beginning of the following decade, having settled in Brianza (since 1968), Sassu created the sets and costumes for Cavalleria Rusticana at the Verona Arena and for Sicilian Vespers at the Teatro Regio in Turin, beginning his relationship with the opera house thanks to his love for the Colombian singer Maria Helenita Olivares. He made lithographs and aquatint engravings (I cavalli innamorati) for an edition of Orlando Furioso. He traveled extensively, but later returned to live in Milan. From 1981 to 1986 he painted 113 works inspired by the Divine Comedy. Among the artist's public works in Milan are: the Monument to the Guardia di Finanza in Piazza Tricolore (1985) and the Prancing Horse in front of the Brera Academy. Recent exhibitions include the retrospective in Barcelona (Palau Robert), the solo exhibition in Tokyo (Gallery Universe), both in 1989, and the retrospective in Palermo in 2010. A group of his works are preserved in the Vatican Museums (a room in the Museum of Contemporary Sacred Art is dedicated to him), and others are in numerous museum collections.

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