Ennio Morlotti - Bather

The human figure has always been at the center of artistic research. Since the classical age, the naturalistic rendering of human anatomy has been a primary goal of painters and sculptors throughout history. The representation of the nude is the ultimate expression of this aspiration, pervasive across all eras and stylistic trends. Indeed, in addition to the naturalistic interpretations of the Renaissance and various classicisms, which aimed for a truthful and detailed representation of the human body, the nude has also been a central theme in the new aesthetic concepts brought about by the historical avant-garde movements, such as Cubism, Expressionism, and Surrealism.

This work is part of a series of etchings in which Morlotti, unlike the abstraction of works categorized as "Late Naturalism," does not adopt an informal aesthetic, but rather focuses on exploring the structure of his subjects, whether human figures or flowers. Indeed, we can see how, in these etchings, Ennio Morlotti emphasizes the plasticity of his subjects, rendering them with a bold graphic style and placing them in a complex, three-dimensional space. Equally complex, however, is the execution, which brings us back to a thoroughly contemporary character in Morlotti's artistic practice. The linework is decidedly dynamic, charged with existential vibrations that permeate the subjects and the space in which they interact.

Ennio Morlotti (Lecco 1910-Milan 1992). In 1937, during a brief stay in Paris, he encountered Cézanne, Fauvism, and the expressionism of Soutine and Georges Rouault. At the Paris International Exhibition, he was deeply impressed by Picasso and his Guernica. Upon returning to Italy, he moved to Milan and enrolled at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. He then painted his first works. In 1939, he joined the group of painters of the magazine Corrente with Ernesto Treccani, Renato Guttuso, Renato Birolli, and Bruno Cassinari. After a second stay in Paris in 1947, he participated in the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti and, after the split between Cassinari and Birolli, joined Lionello Venturi's Gruppo degli Otto, founded in 1952 and dissolved in 1954. Representative of a sort of informal and lyrical naturalism, his favorite subjects are landscapes, still lifes, and nudes.

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