Ugo Tapparini - The Lobster

The subjects created by Ugo Tapparini fall into the category of genre scenes, that is, the depiction of an episode of everyday life that, apparently, lacks any significant element. These types of domestic subjects were long considered minor and only began to spread in Western art starting in the 17th century. Only with the development of 19th-century realism did everyday subjects become considered equally important as historical or religious ones. In his artistic production, the artist Ugo Tapparini reworked the genre scene in a grotesque and caricatural vein. He invented a world populated by peasants and wealthy bourgeois, depicted in a wide variety of poses and situations. The subjects, with great narrative flair and ironic wit, are rendered in caricatural and simplified forms.

Ugo Tapparini's depiction of everyday life has an ironic, grotesque quality, likely with various allegorical and satirical interpretations. The language used has strong connections to the German New Objectivity artistic movement. The same simplified and infantile interpretation of a realism based on caricature is evident. We find the same cynical nature of painters like George Grosz or Otto Dix in lashing out at their own society with lucid irony. Another important reference for Tapparini is the Colombian Fernando Botero, with whom he shares a penchant for inflating the forms of his subjects. However, compared to both the Germans and Botero, Tapparini eschews the latter's marked plasticity in favor of a different expressive modality. Formally, we can fully admire the expressive power of the bold, vibrant black line that synthesizes the subjects with just a few strokes. Tapparini's palette, moreover, focuses on pure shades, of a primary brilliance, which generate balanced contrasts.

Ugo Tapparini was born in Lecce in 1933 to a Veronese family and passed away in 2016. From a very young age, Tapparini lived in an environment closely linked to culture and art. His mother was a writer and painter, and his uncle was a poet. He initially moved to Rome to pursue a career as a journalist. In Lecce, he played a significant role in the launch of the first local private television channel in the 1970s, alongside director Angelo Barbano. Paolo Rizzi, Pietro Marino, Marco Ramperti, Giulio Carlo Argan, Giorgio Mascherpa, Mario Soldati, Mario Monteverdi, and Bolaffi Arte have written about him.

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