Basso Ragni - Untitled - RGUI002

Social themes in art began to gain prominence in the mid-19th century, coinciding with the spread of the social question throughout European societies. The work of painters such as Millet and Daumier, for example, favored subjects related to life in the fields, factory work, or strikes. In Italy, among the first painters to engage deeply with social themes were Pellizza da Volpedo and, in the contemporary era, Renato Guttuso. Basso Ragni also falls into this category, and his favorite subjects include horsemen, cowboys, and groups of gypsies and gypsies at the bivouac, depicted through his original and personal artistic language, which combines contemporaneity with an authentic and sincere description of a typical reality of work and poverty.

Having lived for a long time in Livorno, the painter Basso Ragni drew on the influence of post-Macchiaioli painting in the Livorno area. This applies first and foremost to his subjects, drawn from the humblest and poorest strata of society, but also and above all to his style. Indeed, formally, Basso Ragni's post-Macchiaioli style manifests itself as an extreme form of the macchia, which transcends its function of recording light vibrations to become a powerful instrument of expressionistic synthesis. Thus, Basso Ragni's subjects are constructed with broad, thick brushstrokes that roughly reproduce their forms, enlarging them, in a deliberately crude aesthetic reminiscent of popular experience. Color, which takes on strong, almost aggressive hues in some cases, plays a fundamental component in this expressionistic evolution in the use of macchia.

Basso Ragni was an artist born in Termoli in 1921. At a young age, he moved to Livorno, the city where he developed his painting career and where he died in 1979. Profoundly influenced by the Livorno environment, he developed an extremely original post-Macchiaioli painting style made of thick, synthetic brushstrokes and an expressionist use of color.

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