Renzo Vespignani - Dedicated to Raffaele Gandolfi

The etching has no real subject, but rather a stylistic exercise intended as a gift to a friend, as evidenced by the dedication. In this case, the presence of insects and Vespignani's extraordinary technical expertise give this card the character of an ancient manual, a sampler of insects with highly detailed illustrations. Even in these small drawings, we can recognize Vespignani's remarkable technical skill in drawing from life. This small sample reveals both a miniaturist expertise, in the desire to capture every detail as precisely as possible and achieve a completely naturalistic rendering. On the other hand, however, Vespignani's mastery of line is so profound that he manages to combine this precision with a capacity for synthesis and a speed, especially in delineating shadows, which convey the impression of movement, freeing these images from the status of mere illustrations. Lorenzo Vespignani, known as Renzo, was a painter, illustrator, and set designer. His greatest talent was his skill in life drawing, which in his paintings is combined with a masterful use of color. In Vespignani's paintings, the precision and hyperrealism of the drawing are tempered by a fluid color, a milky consistency that brings everything to a more dreamlike dimension.

DESCRIPTION

He was born in Rome on February 19, 1924, to Guido Vespignani and Ester Molinari, great-grandson of Virginio Vespignani , a famous architect. After the death of his father, a respected surgeon and cardiologist, he was forced, at a very young age, to move with his mother to the working-class area of ​​Portonaccio, adjacent to the San Lorenzo neighborhood, where he grew up. Here, during the Nazi occupation of the capital, in hiding like many of his peers, he began to draw, trying to represent the cruel, dirty and pathetic reality around him: the squalor of the urban landscape of the suburbs , the ruins and rubble caused by the bombings , the drama of the marginalized and the poverty of everyday life. His art was not limited to painting alone; he was the illustrator of numerous masterpieces. His work as a set designer was also important: he worked on “The Numbered Days” and “The Assassin” by Elio Petri , “Dance Marathon” and “The Bassarids” by Hans Werner Henze , “The Seven Deadly Sins” and “The Mother” by Bertolt Brecht , and “Jenufa” by Leoš Janáček . As an engraver, he produced over four hundred titles in etching , soft varnish , and lithography . He began painting during the Nazi occupation, hiding with the engraver Lino Bianchi Barriviera , his first teacher. Other important points of reference, who influenced his artistic beginnings, were Alberto Ziveri and Luigi Bartolini, while, especially in his early paintings, the influence of expressionists such as George Grosz and Otto Dix seems evident. In 1945 he exhibited his first solo exhibition and began contributing to various political-literary magazines ( Domenica , Folla , Mercurio , La Fiera Letteraria ) with satirical writings, illustrations and drawings. His work, between 1944 and 1948, describes the attempt to resurrect an Italy destroyed by war . In 1956 , together with other intellectuals, he founded the magazine Città Aperta , which focused on the problems of urban culture. In 1961 he was among the winners of the Spoleto Prize ; the chosen artists were dedicated an essay accompanied by large format reproductions (black and white and four-colour) of the exhibited works. ^[1] In 1963 one of his works was exhibited at the Contemporary Italian Paintings exhibition, set up in some Australian cities ^[2] . In 1963-64 he exhibited at the Peintures italiennes d'aujourd'hui exhibition, organised in the Middle East and North Africa ^[3] . Among the artists close to him we remember Giuseppe Zigaina (and the so-called Portonaccio School ^[4] ) and, after '63 , those of the group called Il pro e il contro ^[5] , founded by him together with Ugo Attardi , Fernando Farulli , Ennio Calabria , Piero Guccione and Alberto Gianquinto . Since 1969 , Vespignani has been working on large pictorial cycles dedicated to the crisis of the affluent society: Embarkation for Cythera ( 1969 ), concerning the intellectual class involved in '68; Family Album ( 1971 ), a polemical look at his personal daily life; Between Two Wars ( 1973 – 1975 ), an inflexible analysis of petty bourgeois respectability and authoritarianism in Italy; Like Flies in Honey ( 1984 ), dedicated to Pier Paolo Pasolini . In 1991 he exhibited 124 works in Rome, among which the Manhattan Transfert cycle ^[6] , a criticism of the unsustainable existential delirium of the American way of life . His relationship with literature was very close. Vespignani illustrated Boccaccio 's Decameron , Leopardi 's poems and prose, Mayakovsky 's Complete Works , Eliot 's Four Quartets , Kafka 's Stories , Belli 's Sonnets , Porta 's Poems , Villon 's Testament and Alleg 's La Question . In 1999 he was elected President of the National Academy of San Luca and appointed Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic .

Works in museums

• Regional Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Aosta Valley at the Gamba Castle in Cret de Breil di Châtillon with the work: Madonnaro ( 1962 )
• Uffizi Gallery in Florence with the work Self-Portrait on deposit and the drawing Self-Portrait (Uffizi Prints and Drawings Cabinet).
• Civic Gallery of the Suzzara Prize of Suzzara with the works: Terezin ( 1982 ) and West Broadway ( 1988 ).
• MAGA museum of modern and contemporary art in Gallarate with the work: Rottame ( 1966 ).
• Correggio Civic Museum of Correggio
• Carandente Museum, Palazzo Collicola – Visual Arts of Spoleto
• Avellino Art Museum with the work: Marta ( 1982 ).
• Palazzo de'Mayo Art Museum in Chieti
• Costantino Barbella Art Museum in Chieti
• Museum of the Imperial Contrada of the Giraffe of Siena with a banner or palio.
• Museum of the “Tito Balestra” Foundation of Longiano
• Museum of the Roman School in Villa Torlonia in Rome
• Civic Art Gallery of Sulmona

Personal exhibitions

• 1945 Rome, “La Margherita” Gallery.
• 1946 Rome, “L'Obelisco” Gallery.
• 1947 Milan, “Il Naviglio” Gallery.
• 1949 Turin, “La Bussola” Gallery.
• 1953 London, headquarters of the British Council
• 1955 Boston, “Museum of Fine Arts”.
• 1957 Munich, “Haus der Kunst”.
• 1958 Los Angeles, “Landau Gallery”.
• 1964 Rome, “Il Knave di Spade” Gallery.
• 1965 Rome, “Il Torcoliere” Gallery. Graphic art exhibition.
• 1966 Milan, “Bergamini” Gallery.
• 1967 Rome, “Il Knave di Spade” Gallery.
• 1969 Ferrara, Palazzo dei Diamanti. He exhibits the series "Embarkation for Cythera."
• 1975 Bologna, Galleria D'Arte Moderna. Exhibition of the series "Between Two Wars," curated by Franco Solmi.
• 1979 Toronto, Madison Gallery. Presentation by James Purdy .
• 1982 Rome, Castel Sant'Angelo, anthology.
• 1984 Rome, French Academy of Villa Medici, “Like Flies in Honey” in homage to Pasolini. The catalogue includes texts by Jean Marie Drot, Laura Betti , Lorenza Trucchi, Pier Paolo Pasolini , and Renzo Vespignani.
• 1986 Prague, National Gallery. Exhibits the cycle “Between Two Wars.”
• 1990 Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni. Anthology
• 1999 Cagliari, ExMa, Municipal Center of Art and Culture.

Post-mortem exhibitions

• 2011 Cagliari, 2+1 Exhibition Space, Superpositions Renzo Vespignani_Angelo Liberati (on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his death).
• 2011 Rome Edarcom Europa Gallery (on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his death).
• 2012 Villa Torlonia Casino dei Principi (on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his death).

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