Renato Guttuso - The Blackbird

Animal portraits in art have ancient origins, even appearing in primitive cave paintings. For religious reasons, various types of animals appear in the works of various ancient civilizations. It was especially in the Middle Ages, within the International Gothic style, that animal depictions became widespread as true life portraits, both within works of art and in notebooks of drawings and sketches. The presence of animals as subjects in art remained constant until the contemporary era.

The lithograph demonstrates how Guttuso's style always straddles the boundary between phenomenal reality and the noumenal reality of the object. Indeed, his drawing structure is extremely solid, anchored in the perceptible world before his eyes. However, his interpretation of this scene demonstrates that his perception of the subject, and especially of the subject in space, transcends the phenomenon. The representation is conducted along multiple directional lines, according to a non-univocal perspective, to explore reality more deeply. The full exaltation of the plastic qualities of the objects is also evident, in a type of language that can be described as mechanomorphic. This type of investigation that Guttuso pursues in his work owes much to Cubism, which, however, the Sicilian painter recomposes in a more sober atmosphere of return to order.

Renato Guttuso, born in Bagheria in 1911 and died in Rome in 1987, was a painter deeply involved in politics and social issues. His artistic commitment stemmed from his socialist ideals and his outrage over social injustice and abuses of power. He participated in the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti group, developing a Realist-Expressionist style of painting, developing his "social art." Guttuso's most important works, expressing his Neorealist art, were masterpieces such as Ficilazione in Campagna (Fucilation in the Countryside) and Fuga dall'Etna (Escape from Etna). He was also elected senator twice, in 1976 and 1979, for the Italian Communist Party.

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