Mario Sironi

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Mario Sironi (May 12, 1885 – August 13, 1961) was an Italian modernist painter.

[edit] Biography

Born in Sassari on the island of Sardinia, Sironi spent his childhood in Rome. Brief study of engineering at the University of Rome was ended by a nervous breakdown in 1903, one of many severe depressions that would recur throughout his life. Thereafter he dedicated himself to painting, attending the Scuola Libera del Nudo and meeting Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini and Umberto Boccioni. These artists, who would later become the leading Futurists, were then painting in a Neo-Impressionist style. Sironi's development closely tracked theirs, and he adopted the Futurist style by 1913.

After service in World War I, Sironi's version of Futurism gave way to an art of massive, immobile forms. Like many artists in the period following the war, Sironi looked to the art af the past for inspiration, and produced works such as Venere of 1921-1923 (Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna, Turin) and Solitudine (Solitude) (Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome) which bear some kinship to the neoclassicism evident in works produced at the same time by Picasso. In paintings such as La Lampada of 1919 (Pinateca di Brera, Milan), mannequins substitute for figures, as in the metaphysical paintings of Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà. Through all of his stylistic developments, Sironi's was always a somber and dramatic vision, characterized by blocky forms, stark oppositions of light and shadow, and a generally pessimistic air.

A supporter of Mussolini, he contributed cartoons to Il Popolo d'Italia, the Fascist newspaper. Although his esthetic of brutal monumentality represented the dominant style of Italian Fascism, his work was attacked by right-wing critics for its lack of overt ideological content. Nevertheless he was commissioned by the state for several large-scale decorative works in the 1930s, such as the mural L'Italia fra le arti e le scienze (Italy Between the Arts and Sciences) of 1935.

As an artist closely identified with Fascism, his reputation declined dramatically in the post-World War II period. Embittered by the course of events, he also suffered the loss of his daughter Rossana by suicide in 1948. The paintings of his later years sometimes approach abstraction, resembling assemblages of archaeological fragments, or juxtaposed sketches. He continued working until shortly before his death in 1961 in Milan.

[edit] References

• Benzi, Fabio, et al. (1989). Mario Sironi. Milan and New York: Edizioni Philippe Daverio.
• Cowling, Elizabeth; Mundy, Jennifer (1990). On Classic Ground: Picasso, Léger, de Chirico and the New Classicism 1910-1930. London: Tate Gallery. ISBN 1-85437-043-X