ORAZI

ORAZI (who wrote his name in capital letters), was born in 1906 and died in 1979.

He was a painter of the French School (École Française), mentioned as a member of the School of Paris (École de Paris or nouvelle École de Paris).

He regularly participated in different artistic groups in Paris.

His works evolved from figurative art to abstract art, which was often characterised by matter in relief rising from the canvas surface.

He called this phase: Painture en Relief (Painting in Relief).

He returned to figurative painting in his latest phase.

Towards the end of the 1920s he was in Venice.

He was well integrated in that artistic milieu; Leonardo Dudreville considered him as a pupil, in 1927 drew a portrait of him, and in 1934, when ORAZI had his first solo exhibition, held at the art gallery ‘Pesaro’, Dudreville wrote the foreword to the catalogue.

In Paris, ORAZI participated in the intellectual life which saw the district of Montparnasse, from the Twenties onwards, as the meeting place as well as the starting point of new artistic theories and experiences.

Throughout his career, from 1932 until his death in 1979, he participated in a long series of exhibitions, including many solo exhibitions, mostly in Paris, but also elsewhere in France, Italy and Europe, America, and Japan.

In Paris, he set up his studio (his atelier) in Boulevard du Montparnasse since 1934.

At time, the district of Montparnasse had replaced Montmartre as the artistic centre of Paris.

His paintings (Paulette; Wally; Young woman dressed in blue) were exhibited in 1934 and 1936 at the ‘Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte di Venezia’, the ‘Venice Biennale’, an international cultural event increasingly important, and in 1935 at the ‘Quadriennale d’Arte Nazionale’, in Rome (Jasmine;Young woman resting with her cat).

In 1937 the Parisian art gallery ‘Galerie de Paris’ organised his solo exhibition.

In 1937 and 1938, he exhibited at the First and Second Salon des Jeunes Artistes in Paris.

He was again in Italy.

They were often cited or reproduced by the influential French journal of culture and art, ‘Les lettres Françaises‘, at that time directed by Claude Morgan: it had been founded in clandestinity, in Paris, in the years of the resistance, by Jacques Decour shot by the Germans in 1942, and whose memory remained intense in the intellectual life of Paris.

After the Second World War, in 1946–1947, he moved to another atelier - in a quiet street of Montparnasse - and he maintained the same address until his death.

The works of those years, until approximately 1946, were essentially portraits, still lives, landscapes, compositions.

They highlight the distinctive elements of ORAZI's painting, which was characterized not only by its ties with the historic French Avant-gardes, but also the great names of the French Post-impressionist art.

The research on colour, in the physical representation of objects and characters, takes in all those works a predominant place.

At that time, amongst the artists he met in the entourage of nouvelle École de Paris, he formed deep friendship, documented since 1946 and destined to last a lifetime, with the painter, lithographer, etcher, ceramist and designer Édouard Pignon.

The French art critic Jean-Pierre Pietri called ORAZI's new style Peinture du Mouvement (Painting the Movement), for his search for dynamic and plastic effects of human gesture and animal movement, together with the strength of colours.

ORAZI's paintings caused remarkable interest in the press.

He steadily exhibited his works, for over three decades from 1947 until the year of his death, at the Salon de Mai, of which he became a “historic member”: this was the art association founded in Paris in 1943 (declared in 1944) in opposition to Nazi ideology, whose annual exhibitions were an important artistic event from 1945 onwards.

In the years following the war, from approximately 1947, ORAZI developed an autonomous and very original style.

It was noticed ever since he exhibited, in Paris, at the third Salon de Mai, which was organized in 1947.

For example, art critic Jean-Pierre (Pietri) published, in 1949, an article entitled “L'oeuvre d'ORAZI exprime la vie” (ORAZI's works express life) in which he made very favourable comments about two ORAZI's large compositions: Corrida (on horseback), that was exhibited at the Salon de Mai of 1949, and Bagarre à la sortie de l'usine, representing police on horseback charge at protesters outside a factory, that was to be exhibited at the Salon d'Automne of 1949.

Some passages of this article must be cited: “[...] through a construction based on spirals[...] thanks to a rational repartition of the colours[...] ORAZI forces the glance to follow on the painting a path to eternity that is the path to the creation and development of movement[...] the movement means passion for him[...] the painting moves.”.

Other paintings - Charge des Carabiniers (Police on horseback charge at protesters), of 1949, Bagarre à la sortie de l'usine (Scuffle outside the factory), of 1950 L’enfant blessé (The injured child) of 1951 - represented workers' riots so frequent in Europe at that time.

In 1952 he was appointed member (Sociétaire), for the Painting Section, of the Salon d'Automne Society, the Parisian art institution founded in 1903 with the aim to encourage the development of the fine arts and organize the annual art exhibition the Salon d'Automne.

In the introductory note to the 1979 Catalogue of the Salon de Mai, “La volonté de Continuer” (the will to continue), his death was remembered by Gaston Diehl, Founding President, with these words: “I care to remember those who have recently left us [...] and most especially two painters who were for so long faithful companions in our artistic path: ORAZI and BURTIN.”.

There have also been some solo exhibitions after his death, from 1980 to 2006.

Subsequently, in 2009, the American photographer and artist Peter Beard reproduced four paintings by ORAZI - from his Peintures en Relief (Paintings in Relief) - in the Pirelli Calendar.

The name he adopted along his artistic career was ORAZI (pron. ORASI'), deriving from the Roman antiquity and represented in the artistic field - since the 17th century - by a series of artists of the same family tree, active in France but who were originally from the Bologna area and central Italy.

From his early youth, even before completing his Classical studies, in particular in the fields of literature, philosophy and history, ancient Greek and Roman aesthetics, ORAZI devoted himself to the study of painting and painting techniques.

For many years he also studied piano.

When he was about sixteen he had already found his true calling.

Painting would become his vocation and passion

ORAZI was always travelling in search of new artistic experiences.