Renato Guttuso - Still Life with Demijohn

The "Still Life" genre emerged in the early 17th century. It consisted of compositions of inanimate subjects, most often flowers or fruit. While initially it was an opportunity for painters to experiment with naturalistic or photographic reproductions 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 study of objects was aimed at a conceptual representation, taken beyond the mere sensory element. For an artist like Renato Guttuso, the study of the "Still Life" was fundamental to developing, along with his poetics of realism, a profound investigation of the structure of objects.

The lithograph demonstrates how Guttuso's style always straddles the object's phenomenal reality (what we can experience through our senses) and its noumenal reality (what we can explore through our intellect). Indeed, his drawing structure is extremely solid, anchored to the perceptible world before his eyes. However, his interpretation of this bottle and the other objects around it demonstrates that his perception of the object, and especially of the object in space, goes beyond the phenomenon. Indeed, the representation is conducted along multiple directional lines, according to a non-univocal perspective. In this way, the structures of things are explored more deeply, breaking them down within the complex space created by the artist. Renato Guttuso's investigative process continues through his pictorial layering, emphasizing areas of volume and highlighting the object's relationships with the space in which it interacts. Furthermore, Renato Guttuso employs an elaborate pictorial style that imbues the objects with existential vibrations. As for the palette, the Sicilian painter typically uses a range of warm, brown colors, in line with his realist poetics.

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 and 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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