Renato Guttuso

Renato Guttuso (26 December 1911 – 18 January 1987) was an Italian painter and politician.

In the early part of the 1930s, Guttuso was a frequent visitor to the studio of one of the most prolific Futuristic painters, Pippo Rizzo.

His works opened doors for him in Milan and to further travel throughout Europe.

As Guttuso's expressionism became stronger he painted more scenes of nature in flowers, lemon trees, saracen olive trees, all in an environment suspended between myth and island insularity, so that, when sent to the Quadriennale expo of 1931, he joined a collective of six Sicilian painters, acclaimed by the critic Franco Grasso as a "disclosure, a Sicilian affirmation".

Back in Palermo Guttuso opened a studio in Pisani street and together with the painter Lia Pasqualino and the sculptors Barbera and Nino Franchina, formed the Gruppo dei Quattro (The Group of Four).

Guttuso became a member of an artistic movement named "Corrente".

The movement stood for free and open attitudes, in opposition to the official culture, and chose a strong anti-fascist position in thematic choices through the years of the Spanish Civil War.

In Milan, where he stayed for three years, Guttoso was part of Corrente di Vita.

He was born in Bagheria, near Palermo in Sicily, but from 1937 lived and worked largely in Rome.

In his youth he joined the Gruppo universitario fascista, but later he became an anti-fascist and atheist.

His best-known works include Flight from Etna (1938–39), Crucifixion (1941) and La Vucciria (1974).

Here he developed his "social" art, his moral and political commitment being visible in paintings such as Fucilazione in Campagna (1938), dedicated to the writer García Lorca, and Escape from Etna.

Moving to Rome, Guttuso opened a study in Via Margutta where, because of his exuberance, his friend Marino Mazzacurati nicknamed him "Unbridled".

He lived close to significant artists of the time: Mario Mafai, Corrado Cagli, Antonello Trombadori, keeping also in contact with the group from Milan of Giacomo Manzù and Aligi Sassu.

"Crocifissione" ("Crucifixion") is the painting for which he is best remembered.

At the time it was derided by the clergy, who labelled Guttuso a "pictor diabolicus" ("a devilish painter").

The fascists also denounced it for depicting the horrors of war under a religious cover.

Guttuso wrote in his diary: "it is the symbol of all those who endure insults, jail, torture for their ideas".

Guttuso also spoke publicly about "The Crocifissione", saying "this is a time of war. I wish to paint the torment of Christ as a contemporary scene... as a symbol of all those who, because of their ideas, endure outrage, imprisonment and torment".

He did not stop working during the years of World War II, his work ranging from landscape glimpses of the Gulf of Palermo to a collection of drawings entitled Massacri (Massacres), that clandestinely denounced slaughters such as the Fosse Ardeatine.

In 1938 Guttuso met Mimise Dotti, whom he married in 1956.

Poet Pablo Neruda was a witness at their wedding.

Mimise would become his confidant and model.

Guttuso also designed for the theatre (including sets and costumes for Histoire du Soldat, Rome, 1940) and did illustrations for books.

He joined the banned Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1940 and left Rome to become an active participant in the partisan struggle from 1943.

He was also an opponent of the Mafia.

In 1945 Guttuso, along with artists Birolli, Marchiori, Vedova and others, founded the "Fronte Nuovo delle Arti' (New Arts Front) as a vessel for the promotion of the work of those artists who had previously been bound by fascist rule. During this time, he also met and befriended Pablo Picasso. Their friendship would last until Picasso's death in 1973. Socio-political themes dominated Guttuso's work during this area, depicting the day-to-day lives of peasants and blue-collar workers. In 1950, he was given the World Council of Peace Prize in Warsaw. Guttuso later received the Lenin Peace Prize in 1972.

After the liberation of Italy from Nazi Germans he finished "Muratori in riposo" ("Workers resting"), an artwork in china ink and watercolour of 1945, a symbol of rebirth of which Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote in 1962:

The shapes of ten workers

Those for Elizabeth David’s Italian Food (1954), introduced him to many in the English-speaking world.

A fierce anti-Fascist, "he developed out of Expressionism and the harsh light of his native land to paint landscapes and social commentary".

In 1972 Guttuso was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize.

In 1976 he was elected to the Italian Senate as a PCI representative for the Sicilian constituency of Sciacca.

Renato Guttuso's father, Gioacchino Guttuso, was a land surveyor and amateur watercolourist.

There are a number of portraits of Gioacchino in the collection donated to the mayor of Bagheria.

Renato Guttuso began signing and dating his works at the age of thirteen.

Guttuso lived close to a house amongst the Valguarnera villas and Palagonia, which he would soon represent in paintings inspired by the cliffs of Aspra.

In Palermo and in Bagheria Guttuso observed the dereliction of the 18th-century villas of the nobility, abandoned to decay as a consequence of political infighting within the municipal chambers.

At the same time, his family suffered a period of economic stress because of the hostility shown by Fascists and clergy towards his father.

Guttuso went to Palermo for high school studies, and then to the University, where his development was modelled on the European figurative trends of the day, from Courbet to Van Gogh and to Picasso.