FAUSTO PIRANDELLO
Rome, 1899 - 1975

Characters, 1931
Sepia ink on beige paper, 30 x 23 cm
BIOGRAPHY: Son of the famous playwright and of Maria Antonietta Portulano, he begins to take an interest in painting in the family environment (his father and brother Stefano are also amateur painters).Fausto undertakes classical studies, interrupting them in 1916 for the call to arms.
After 1918, at the suggestion of his father, he frequented the studio of the sculptor Sigismund Lipinski for a certain period. In 1920 he attended the free school of the nude. The first known works of him are some drawings made around 1920 in a vaguely secessionist style and some engravings dated 1921, the year in which he begins to frequent Felice Carena, who also follows him to Anticoli. His first dated paintings are from 1923.
He made his debut in 1925 at the III Roman Biennale. In 1926 he exhibited for the first time at the Venice Biennale. By the time Pirandello moved to Paris (1927) his pictorial character was already widely formed. However, contacts with the group of Italians from Paris (Severini, Tozzi, de Chirico, Savinio, Campigli, Paresce, Magnelli, De Pisis) and direct knowledge of the works of Cèzanne and the Cubists are important. In 1929 he held his first solo show at the Galerie Vildrac in Paris.
In early 1931, after a stop in Berlin and an exhibition in Vienna (Galleria Bakum), Pirandello is back in Rome. In 1931, the personal exhibition at the Galleria di Roma was noteworthy, inaugurating an intense exhibition season. In the following years he participated in the Roman trade unions (1932, 1936, 1937) at the Venice Biennale, at the Quadrennial.
At the Quadriennale of 1935 he has a solo show of 17 works, which he presents in the catalog with a theoretical writing. Pirandello's most mature period began in the mid-thirties, marked by a strong existential drama and a memorable series of works, characterized by a strong material component and a highly original layout of the scenes, which reflects his experience of the European avant-gardes and his love for the ancients. His main exhibitions in recent years were held at the III Quadrennial (1939), as part of the Pittsburgh Prize (1939). Between the late thirties and early forties, Pirandello, with his strong realist and expressionist streak, is certainly among the most listened to voices in the panorama of young Italian painting. In this context, his participation in the activity of "Corrente" is remarkable.
In 1938 he held a personal exhibition of drawings at the "Galleria della Cometa", presented by Corrado Alvaro; in 1942 he exhibited at the Galleria in Rome and at the gallery of Ettore Gian Ferrari in Milan, starting a collaborative relationship that would last for a lifetime. Another important exhibition is the one at the "Galleria del Secolo" in Rome in 1944.
After 1945 Pirandello also went through the difficult phase of labor that involved all of Italian painting, between "realism" and "neocubism". His painting goes in search of a new definition in which there is a very strong reference to a "cubist" syntax in the tessellations of color and in the compositions in which the narrative datum gradually loses importance. Among the postwar exhibition occasions we can mention the vast anthology at the Ente Premi Roma in 1951, the one-man show of '55 at the Catherine Viviano Gallery in New York and the one-man show at the "Nuova Pesa" in Rome in 1968.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: "Fausto Pirandello 1899-1975", exhibition catalog edited by G. Appella and G. Giuffrè, Macerata 1990 (with previous bibliography);
C. Gian Ferrari, "Fausto Pirandello", Rome 1991;
Guttuso, "Pirandello, Ziveri, Realism in Rome 1938-1943", exhibition catalog edited by F. D'Amico, critical apparatus by F.R. Morelli, Rome 1995;
"Fausto Pirandello", exhibition catalog edited by G. Gian Ferrari, texts by. M. Fagiolo, F. Matitti, F. Gualdoni, M. Quesada, Milan 1995.

Good condition
Frame, glass, passepartout