Scuola romana or Scuola di via Cavour was a 20th-century art movement defined by a group of painters within Expressionism and active in Rome between 1928 and 1945, and with a second phase in the mid-1950s.
Scuola romana or Scuola di via Cavour was a 20th-century art movement defined by a group of painters within Expressionism and active in Rome between 1928 and 1945, and with a second phase in the mid-1950s.
In November 1927, artists Antonietta Raphaël and Mario Mafai [1] moved to No. 325 of Roman street via Cavour , in a Savoyan palace subsequently demolished in 1930 in order to allow the fascist construction of the New Empire Way (currently the via dei Fori Imperiali). The apartment's larger room was transformed into a studio.
Within a short time, this studio became a meeting point for literati such as Enrico Falqui, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Libero de Libero, Leonardo Sinisgalli, as well as young artists Scipione, Renato Marino Mazzacurati, [2] and Corrado Cagli.
The spontaneous confluence of artists at the via Cavour studio does not appear to have been led by true and proper programmes or manifestos, but rather by friendship, cultural syntheses and a singular pictorial cohesion. With their firm approach to European expressionism, they formally contraposed the solid and orderly painting of neoclassic character, promoted by the Return to order current in the 1920s, which was particularly strong in the Italian sensibility of post-World War I.
The first identification of this artistic group should be attributed to Roberto Longhi, who wrote: [3]
From its very address, I'd call this the Scuola di via Cavour, where Mafai and Raphaël used to work...
and added:
An eccentric and anarchoid art that could hardly be accepted by us, but it's all the same a notable sign of today's mores.
Longhi used this definition to indicate the special work he perceived these artists to be performing within the expressionist universe, breaking off from official art movements. [4]
During those years, painter Corrado Cagli too used the appellative of Scuola romana. [5] His critique does not linger on name identification for the "nuovi pittori romani (new Roman painters)" animating this new movement. Cagli described a spreading sensitivity and spoke of an Astro di Roma (Roman Star), affirming that was the real poetic basis of the "new Romans" :
In a primordial dawn all has to be reconsidered, and Imagination relives all wonders and trembles for all mysteries.
thus highlighting the complex and articulated Roman situation, as opposed to what Cagli called the imperating Neoclassicism of the Novecento Italiano. The Scuola romana offered a wild painting style, expressive and disorderly, violent and with warm ochre and maroon tones. The formal rigour was replaced by a distinctly expressionist visionariness. [6]
Scipione, for instance, brought to life a sort of Roman baroque expressionism , where often decadent landscapes appear of Rome's historical baroque centre, populated by priests and cardinals, seen with a vigorously expressive and hallucinated eye. Similar themes were present in Raffaele Frumenti's paintings in the second season of the Scuola, with vivid red hues and soft brush strokes.
After 1930, instead of dying out, the Scuola Romana continued with various other artists of a "second season", which developed during the 1930s and matured soon after World War II. Among them were Roberto Melli, Giovanni Stradone, Renato Marino Mazzacurati, Guglielmo Janni, Renzo Vespignani and the so-called tonalists led by Corrado Cagli, Carlo Levi, Emanuele Cavalli and Capogrossi, all gravitating around the activities of the "Galleria della Cometa”. [7] [8]
Later members included personalities such as Fausto Pirandello (son of Nobel Prize Luigi), [9] Renato Guttuso, the brothers Afro and Mirko Basaldella, [10] Leoncillo Leonardi, Raffaele Frumenti, Sante Monachesi, Giovanni Omiccioli and Toti Scialoja. [11]
The Villa Torlonia in Rome hosts, in its classic "Casino Nobile", the renowned Museums of Villa Torlonia, [12] part of the Museum System of the Comune di Roma: on its 2nd floor one can visit the Museum of the Scuola Romana, offering a comprehensive view of this art movement.
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Post-expressionism is a term coined by the German art critic Franz Roh to describe a variety of movements in the post-war art world which were influenced by expressionism but defined themselves through rejecting its aesthetic. Roh first used the term in an essay in 1925, "Magic Realism: Post-Expressionism", to contrast to Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub's "New Objectivity", which more narrowly characterized these developments within German art. Though Roh saw "post-expressionism" and "magic realism" as synonymous, later critics characterized distinctions between magic realism and other artists initially identified by Hartlaub and have also pointed out other artists in Europe who had different stylistic tendencies but were working within the same trend.
Corrado Cagli (1910–1976) was an Italian painter of Jewish heritage, who lived in the United States during World War II.
Gino Bonichi, known as Scipione, was an Italian painter and writer.
Giovanni Stradone or Giovanni Stradóne was an Italian painter. He was a figurative painter who worked in a personal expressionist style. His work was part of the painting event in the art competition at the 1948 Summer Olympics, where he won a silver medal. He is not to be confused with Giovanni Stradano or Jan Van der Straet (1523–1605), a Flanders-born artist active mainly in 16th-century Florence.
Antonio Cardile (1914–1986) was an Italian painter belonging to the modern movement of the Scuola romana .
Sante Monachesi (1910–1991), was an Italian painter belonging to the modern movement of the Scuola romana and founder in 1932 of the Movimento Futurista nelle Marche .
Antonietta Raphaël was an Italian sculptor and painter of Jewish heritage and Lithuanian birth, who founded the Scuola Romana movement together with her husband Mario Mafai. She was an artist characterised by a profound anti-academic conviction, also affirmed by her sculptures which, especially after World War II, dominated her output. They highlighted the tender and vibrant carnality present in stone, with works such as Miriam dormiente and Nemesis.
Mario Mafai was an Italian painter. With his wife Antonietta Raphaël he founded the modern art movement called the Scuola Romana, or Roman school.
Giovanni Omiccioli, was an Italian painter belonging to the modern movement of the Scuola romana , with a dynamic paintwork representing soccer games and sports scenes.
Alberto Ziveri, was an Italian painter belonging to the modern movement of the Scuola Romana , author of urban landscapes and realist narrative scenes. Also using a chiaroscuro recalling the Settecento style.
Renato Marino Mazzacurati was an Italian painter and sculptor belonging to the modern movement of the Scuola romana , of eclectic styles and able within his career span to represent the artistic currents of Cubism, Expressionism, and Realism. He believed that art could sustain social functions.
Corrente di Vita was a biweekly Italian culture magazine published between 1938 and 1940.
Guglielmo Janni, was an Italian painter belonging to the modern movement of the Scuola romana .
Emanuele Cavalli (1904–1981) was an Italian painter belonging to the modern movement of the Scuola Romana. He was also a renowned photographer, who experimented with new techniques since the 1930s.
Fausto Calogero Pirandello was an Italian painter belonging to the modern movement of the Scuola romana . He was the son of Nobel laureate Luigi Pirandello.
Enrico Coleman was an Italian painter of British nationality. He was the son of the English painter Charles Coleman and brother of the less well-known Italian painter Francesco Coleman. He painted, in oils and in watercolours, the landscapes of the Campagna Romana and the Agro Pontino; he was a collector, grower and painter of orchids. Because of his supposedly Oriental air, he was known to his friends as "Il Birmano", the Burmese.
Armando Spadini was an Italian painter and one of the representatives of the so-called Scuola Romana.
Giuseppe Capogrossi was an Italian painter.
Adriana Pincherle was an Italian painter.
Leoncillo Leonardi, commonly known as Leoncillo, was an Italian sculptor who worked principally in glazed ceramics, often large-scale, and often using vivid colours. Until the mid-1950s his work was mostly figurative, but became more abstract thereafter. In 1946 he was among the founding members of the Nuova Secessione Artistica Italiana, which soon became the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti. He received the Premio Faenza in 1954 and again in 1964, and won the sculpture prize at the Biennale di Venezia of 1968. His work was also part of the sculpture event in the art competition at the 1948 Summer Olympics.
