Franco Rognoni - The Beautiful Otero

Franco Rognoni's entire oeuvre displays a marked expressionist vocation, emphasizing the expression of emotion. Expressionist art seeks to proclaim its emotional states to the world and flaunt them with passion. For this reason, Rognoni's subjects feature a strong existential component, composed of "types" and characters. Formally, this translates into a summary rendering of the figures, through a highly nervous and animated line, as well as the use of a violent and anti-naturalistic color palette. These characteristics are already found in the historical avant-garde movements of expressionism: Fauvism and the Die Brucke movement in Germany. But Franco Rognoni's expressionism takes on a wholly personal and original character, as exemplified by this beautiful work.

Franco Rognoni's artistic language tends to minimize phenomenal reality, but this exercise in reducing the sensory data helps the artist go beyond the appearance of things and grasp their true essence. What remains is the spiritual, emotional, and existential concentration of the depicted figure, which Rognoni seeks to connect with by eliminating any formal frills and leaving only an elegant trace to identify the subject. However, Franco Rognoni, despite his minimalism, does not forgo the excitement and drama of historical expressionism. Indeed, his style is dynamic, powerfully gestural in its primal simplicity. The figures he depicts are expressive even in their bulging, almost caricatural forms, which recall the characters of Osvaldo Licini, a painter whom Rognoni closely followed. Indeed, as in Licini, Rognoni's expressionism almost transfigures into abstract surrealism. Even the application of color is consistent with this poetics in the choice of entirely symbolic colors and in their gestural application, close to the aesthetics of abstract expressionism.

Franco Rognoni (Milan, 1913 - Milan, 1999). From a young age, he showed a passion for drawing and painting, attending evening classes at the Scuola Superiore d'Arte del Castello Sforzesco in Milan. His education, self-taught and characterized by an openness to the new arts, took a turning point when he frequented the library of art critic Raffaello Giolli, who was the first to recognize his talent. From 1949-1950, he began exhibiting for over thirty years at the Galleria dell'Annunciata in Milan. He formed friendships with artists and poets, such as Quasimodo and Gatto. Giovanni Botta commissioned him to illustrate several great literary masterpieces, which he created using watercolor. At the end of World War II, due to the atomic bombing, he experienced an existential crisis, which he resolved by dedicating himself to publishing illustration, political drawing, and social commentary. In 1947, he began collaborating with the newspaper Avanti! and the activity of set designer.

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