Giulio Ruffini - Still Life

The "Still Life" genre emerged in the early 17th century. It consists of the depiction of compositions of inanimate subjects, most often flowers or fruit. While initially it was an opportunity for painters to experiment with a naturalistic or photographic reproduction of reality, with contemporary art the "Still Life" also became a way of interpreting reality. Indeed, as happened, for example, in the Cubist avant-garde or in Giorgio Morandi, the in-depth exploration of objects was aimed at a conceptual representation, taken beyond the mere sensory element. In the present work, the artist proposes the subject of a marine still life, a composition in which, instead of fruit, marine fauna predominates, often placed on the seashore. A painter famous for executing this type of subject was, for example, Filippo De Pisis.

Associated with Neorealist aesthetics from the beginning of his career, Giulio Ruffini is an artist for whom capturing sensory data from life is fundamental. This is particularly evident in still lifes such as the present work, where Ruffini displays a marked realist sensibility in the reproduction of objects within a plausible landscape. Indeed, while the female nudes created by this painter are dominated by Expressionist distortion and the insertion of the subject into a complex and non-unique space, in his still lifes Ruffini prefers to focus his pictorial style on an existential interpretation of the objects. Despite their truthful representation, they appear to quiver with profound vibrations. This is due to the undeniable quality of Ruffini's pictorial technique, entirely based on color and possessing a high degree of synthesis and immediacy. This existential interpretation of still life, combined with the solitary setting of the sea, gives the work metaphysical nuances even if Ruffini avoids an illusory plasticism à la De Chirico, leaning instead towards a poetics of memory like De Pisis.

Giulio Ruffini was born in Villanova di Bagnacavallo in 1921 and died in Ravenna in 2011. His artistic career began in the post-war period and he quickly gained recognition: he won the Diomira Prize in Milan (1951) and the Suzzara Prize (1952) with socially committed works that linked him to the neorealist movement. In 1954 he held his first solo exhibition in Bologna and was present at the Venice Biennale. In 1955 he participated in the Rome Quadrennial and was awarded at the “Mostra della Resistenza” in Ferrara. In 1967 he participated for the first time in the Campigna Prize in Santa Sofia, and the following year Raffaele De Grada edited his first major monograph. From the late 1960s, Ruffini returned decisively to figurative works, abandoning expressionistic extremes and entrusting his images with symbolic and allegorical values: between reality and memory. Anthological exhibitions were set up in Faenza in 1974, in Lugo and Alfonsine in 1988 and in Ravenna in 1997.

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