Franco Girosi - Untitled

The subjects of Franco Girosi's works are always unusual and sophisticated. His pictorial production has always focused on figurative themes, focusing on landscapes and still lifes, but also on historical subjects. Later, his images began to take on an increasingly allegorical connotation, and his still lifes, in addition to demonstrating the painter's interest in plasticity, began to fall within the canons of a metaphysical aesthetic. In this sense, Girosi embraces a cornerstone of the movement founded by De Chirico: the recovery of images from the past, which, for the Neapolitan painter, translates into compositions of archaeological finds set against a rugged, rocky backdrop. In this work, the artist explores a truly unusual subject, depicting two animal fossils still embedded in the same portion of rocky landscape.

While Girosi's themes are inspired by Metaphysics in his presentation of objects from the past, aiming to create a sense of estrangement through their unexpected appearance, he departs from it in his formal rendering. Indeed, Franco Girosi's pictorial style is the complete opposite of De Chirico's dry hyperrealism. The lines are vibrant, driven by an unstoppable hatching that almost dissolves the material. Franco Girosi's research, instead, draws on Cézanne and the premises of Post-Impressionism, in the sense of infusing the representation of the object with vibrations that are not only atmospheric but also emotional, taking these demands to their fullest extent. The sign thus becomes calligraphic, and the lines acquire gestural connotations, transfiguring everything into the timeless dimension of memory, while maintaining an essential connection with the phenomenal given.

Franco Girosi was a Neapolitan painter born in 1896 and died in 1987. From 1930 to 1948, he exhibited at the Venice Biennale. He participated in the first six Rome Quadrennials, followed by numerous solo exhibitions throughout Italy and abroad. From the 1930s onwards, his allegorical and metaphysical painting developed subjects such as landscapes, emblematic and monumental figures, and still lifes. Between 1957 and 1962, he underwent a period of profound rethinking, following which he began a new phase in his painting: his landscapes feature archaeological finds that stand out—like traces of a long-ago human presence—among the rocks, giving rise to fantastical scenes rendered with unreal and delicate chromatic nuances.

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