Silvano Bozzolini

Silvano Bozzolini was born on 3 November 1911 in Fiesole, near Florence. He started to take an interest in painting in 1927, when he decided to move to Milan to study at the Accademia di Brera. A few years later, from 1933 onwards, he travelled to Switzerland, Vienna and Sofia, in Bulgaria, the home of his friend the painter Vera Nedkova. In December 1934 and January 1935 he staged his first solo exhibition at the Casa degli italiani in Sofia. When he returned to Florence in 1935 he enrolled in the Scuola Libera del Nudo at the Accademia di Belle Arti, where he studied under the painter Felice Carena. Four years later, in 1939, he participated in the third Quadriennale d’arte nazionale in Rome, where he exhibited a still life. When the Second World War broke out, he was sent to fight in the Balkans, where he remained from 1949 to 1943. During the difficult years of the war, Bozzolini continued to draw, as is demonstrated by a number of his works, including Uno scorcio di Tirana (A View of Tirana), Pastore albanese (Albanian Shepherd) and Paese del Montenegro (A Village in Montenegro), displayed in 1942 in his solo exhibition at the Lyceum in Florence. In 1944 Bozzolini married the painter Marta Pieraccini, whom he had met when he was at the academy; the following year they returned to Florence, where he had a studio in Piazza Donatello. Together with Ferdinando [Vinicio?] Berti, Mario Calderai, Arrigo Dreoni and Angelo Maria Landi, he founded the Centro d'Arte Contemporanea ‘La Porta’, in Via Cavour, which sought to ‘promote a vast movement in the field of the figurative arts, with the development of profitable exchanges between artists from all over the world’. The group’s aim was to ‘encourage the presentation to the public of all those artists who prove to be worthy of this’, found an annual painting and sculpture prize and ‘organize the publication of a monthly bulletin’. The following year, Bozzolini had a solo exhibition on the premises of La porta, with a critical essay by Antony de Witt. Bozzolini took an active part in the cultural debate that was a feature of postwar Florence, but wanted to go further — to experiment with new forms of painting and engage with art at a national level, without withdrawing into what Adriano Seroni described as ‘provincialisms’ or ‘regionalisms’. In his catalogue essay for the exhibition of the four Florentine painters Silvano Bozzolini, Enzo Faraoni, Renzo Grazzini and Osvaldo Tordi at the Galleria San Bernardo in Rome in March 1947, Seroni, after having described the situation in Florence, in which ‘the good new artists’ were not able to emerge, continued thus: Only recently have things started to change at an organizational level. It is no coincidence that all four of these artists who are now exhibiting their works in Rome are on the editorial staff of and contribute to Posizioni, the new progressive Florentine periodical that is intended to activate the truly innovative cultural forces that Florence can offer as part of the revival of Italian culture. Although each of them, as we shall see, follows his own path, they have in common at least one element, even if it has a negative character: that of the enormous effort they have made or are making to free themselves of various influences. These are two in particular, even if not for them all: on a more general level, close adherence to the style of Giorgio Morandi; on a local level, Rosai and, with him, ‘regionalism’…. With reference to all four of these artists… we certainly cannot speak of provincialism or regionalism. Their work is very much part of the avant-garde area of the new Italian painting.’ In 1947 the cultural bimonthly Posizioni was launched; in addition to Bozzolini, Faraoni, Grazzini and Tordi, the editorial staff included Alfiero Cappellini, Giulio Cattaneo, Bruno Schacherl and Seroni himself, who stated very clearly what the objectives of the journal were in the essay quoted above. In the spring of the same year, an exhibition entitled ‘Contenuto e forma della nuova realtà’ was held at the Galleria Firenze. This was the first show of the Arte d’oggi group, founded after the amalgamation of the various movements that had formed in Florence in the postwar period with La Porta group, which comprised Tordi, Grazzini and Faraoni, the group close to the journal Torrente — Vinicio Berti, Fernando Farulli, Bruno Brunetti and Gualtiero Nativi — and lastly a small group of foreign artists, including Enrico Steiner, Eduard Bargheer and Slavko Kopač. Tristan Sauvage (the pseudonym of art historian Arturo Schwarz), wrote: ‘Aware of the provincial limits of their paintings, which this first exhibition had highlighted, firstly Bozzolini, then [Vinicio?] Berti and [Alvaro] Monnini, left for Paris.’ In April, in fact, Bozzolini was awarded a study grant by the Italian Communist Party, as a result of which he was able to pay his first visit to Paris; this was a decisive experience for the future developments of his painting. In an interview with Alain Bilot and Jean-Claude Cheval, Bozzolini recounted: In April 1947, through an organization based in Rome, Florence and Venice, there was an exchange with Paris of eighty young artists, painters, sculptors and also architects. Thus I had an opportunity to go to Paris, which was my first visit to France. It wasn’t the Paris of today, but a city where rationing was still in existence. Nevertheless, for us it was paradise. In short, for a fortnight we did nothing but rush around here, there and everywhere. At the Galerie Creuze, in Avenue de Messine, a painting was on display that was totally white! It was by [Serge] Charchoune, who later became one of my closest friends. This white painting really amazed me.’ Although as early as 1944 Bozzolini had painted a number of abstract works, his output continued to display a certain post-Cubist influence, as on the occasion of the first exhibition Arte d’oggi group in 1947, showing ‘traces of the presence in Florence of the exhibition of French modern art, which was then reconfirmed by his visit to Paris’. This style of his was only to last for a short while because, in the same year, when he decided to move to Paris, he abandoned figurative art in order to devote himself exclusively to abstraction. As Bozzolini himself recounted, his non-figurative art originated from his desire to paint another reality that is not the visible one, but rather the one that surrounds us that we can neither see nor touch: the air, in which there is life — and it is this void that allows us to live. In November 1947 the artist and his wife moved to Paris; at first they stayed in George Dayez’s studio, then they rented a mansard flat in Rue Mazarine, where Bozzolini also had his studio. He participated actively in the cultural life of Paris of the period, making many friends such as Édouard Pignon, Jean Dewasne, Jean Deyrolle, Emilio Gilioli, Robert Jacobsen and Serge Poliakoff. Bozzolini recounts, in fact, that, as soon as he arrived in Paris, he started to contact the group of artists associated with the Galerie Denise René. The encounter and friendship with the Tuscan painter Alberto Magnelli were important for Bozzolini, especially for the development of his artistic style, which, oriented towards geometric abstraction, increasingly emerged — also thanks to wood-engraving, a technique he adopted around 1949. Initially, Magnelli had an important influence on his work and, as Carla Esposito wrote, it was in him that he found ‘a synthesis of the plastic and spiritual values in complete harmony with his culture’ and ‘ it was only thanks to the practice of wood-engraving… and the artisanal aspect this involved, that Bozzolini found his way.’ It was through wood-engraving, therefore, that the artist understood the fundamental elements of creation — that is, physical and artisanal reality: Another form of expression that is equally important for me is wood-engraving. Thanks to this, I was able to definitively find the right way for me; this technique confirmed one of the fundamental elements of creativity that always lies in its physical and artisanal reality. In the same year Bozzolini collaborated with Jean Arp on the creation of a number of linocuts to illustrate Arp’s poem entitled Quatre Piraine, published by J. Pons. Bozzolini continued to keep in touch with the Arte d’oggi group and exhibited both at their second international exhibition in 1948 and at their third one in 1949 in the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, which also featured artists supported by the Galerie Denise René, including Victor Vasarely, Richard Mortensen, Jean Piaubert and Marie Raymond, whose presence is probably linked to that of Bozzolini, who was subsequently a contact in the Groupe Espace for the Italian artists. In 1950 he displayed his works at the Salon de Mai in Paris — he continued to do so until the 1980s — and also had solo exhibitions in Rome, Zurich and in Milan, at the Galleria Salto, which had been the venue, in December 1948, of a show by artists of the MAC (Movimento per l’arte concreta), with whom Bozzolini was in touch. In 1951 he signed a contract with the Galerie Denise René and, together with Étienne Béothy, Sonia Delaunay, Cicero Dias, Pierre Faucheux, Jean Fayeton and Marcel Roux, became a member of the committee of the Groupe Espace. Its manifesto was signed not only by Bozzolini and Berto Lardera, who lived in Paris, but also by Piero Dorazio; as mentioned above, Bozzolini was the contact for the Italian artists. In 1952 he started to experiment with collage, a technique with which he obtained ‘great freedom’ and ‘to open the imagination to new forms’, and moved his studio to Place de Clichy, leaving it only to spend the summer in his house on the island of Elba. In the January issue of the periodical Art d’aujourd’hui, which was founded in 1949 by André Bloc, president of the Group Espace, the critic Léon Degand published an article on the Italians in Paris, including Bozzolini, to whom he devoted a short article on the occasion of his solo exhibition at the Librairie La Hune, in Paris, in the July 1953 issue. Degand stated that Bozzolini was one of the most interesting artists of the new generation in Italy, as his gouaches and wood-engravings — which were of outstanding quality —demonstrated. He added: This broad composition, in which the breaks are as marked as the harmonies, this lack of confusion in the complexity of the rhythms, this discreet, yet vivid and solid refinement of the colour, and this subtlety expressed with rigour are the result of the painter’s desire to do what he does to the best of his ability. The structure of his work is, at the same time, physical and spiritual. In 1954 Bozzolini participated in ‘Espace. Architecture Formes Couleur’, a major exhibition that the Group Espace held in the village of Biot, in the south of France, from 10 July to 10 September. He displayed two works: a painting in the open air, 4.56 metres in height, and a wall panel on a sheet of steel (1.46 x 1.36 metres). The following year he left the Galerie Denise René. Bozzolini stated that, in the 1950s, he received moral support from Alberto Magnelli, Sonia Delaunay and, in particular, Léon Degand; this was a period that was culturally rich, but, at a certain moment, the artist began to face moral and spiritual difficulties caused by the premature death in 1958 of his friend Degand, an advocate of Constructivist art, and by the advent of Tachisme that led him towards a stage in his life that, albeit somewhat eventful, was important for the definition of his style: As far as I was concerned, I felt the need to be in tune with my times, to be totally involved in them. For my feelings, my culture and my inner needs I chose non-figurative art in order to express myself in a space consisting of dynamic contrasts. Finally, ‘truth’ was to be found in the quality and authenticity of some workers, in this case the artists, and, once again, truth lay in the modest way in which these silent poets devised and created their works. In this period Bozzolini produced works characterized by freer forms that were not enclosed by rigorously geometric spaces. However, as Carla Esposito noted: ‘This receptiveness to gestural painting did not lead to much.’ In 1963 he created the mosaic Omaggio ai cosmonauti (Homage to the Cosmonauts) in the Parco Museo Pagani in Castellanza, in Lombardy, and he was invited to participate in the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, in Paris, which he continued to do for many years, becoming a member of its committee from 1973 to 1978. In 1965 he executed twenty-four stained-glass windows entitled La Jérusalemme Celeste (Heavenly Jerusalem) for the church of Saint-Maximin in Boust (department of Moselle), where he collaborated with the architect Georges-Henri Pingusson. In this period Bozzolini was also in contact with a number of artists associated with the Galleria Pagani, especially with Enrico Castellani. It was in 1965, in fact, that he accompanied the painter Walter Fusi, a friend of his, to Sesto San Giovanni, near Milan, where, at the time, they shared a studio. Two years later, in 1967, a portfolio of wood-engravings entitled Bozzolini. Legni incisi (1950–1966), with an essay by Franco Russoli, was published on the occasion of Bozzolini’s solo exhibition ‘Legni incisi 1950–1966’, held at the Galleria Cavour in Milan, in collaboration with the Galerie George Bongers in Paris. In his essay, Russoli recalled that he had discussed the artist’s work in the 1950s with Degand, who ‘was one of the first to recognize the special tone of Bozzolini’s Tuscan voice in the chorus of abstract art.’ Around the middle of the 1960s there was a change in his work, with the dynamic contrasts becoming more noticeable, and this was even more evident in the following decade. He began to slim down some of his forms to such an extent that they became mere lines, others were only indicated by their outlines; in a harmony of pure geometry and colour, Bozzolini skilfully sought to reconcile intuition with reason, as he wrote on the occasion of his solo exhibition at the Galleria dei Mille in Bergamo in 1972: I would like to explain how, in painting, an action or feelings can be expressed by an artist who is by his nature detached, as I personally regard myself: first I receive and listen to certain inner vibrations that permit me to feel the need to immediately fix the emotion on the paper, canvas, wood or other material; later on I will not have the same urgent intuitive power. Thus reason must intervene in order to coordinate and give form to lines, colours and the thought guiding the ultimate answer to what I must express in a specific synthesis of the account. The dynamic, rhythmic character of his work was also noticeable in another monumental commission that he received in 1971 from the curator and critic Pierre Gaudibert, who asked him to execute the painting Jeux Époxy (Epoxy Games), covering 176 square metres of the floor of the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris on the occasion of his solo exhibition [?]. In 1973 he had exhibitions at the Galleria La Piramide in Florence and at the Galerie de Seine in Paris, and, in the following year at the Galleria Ciak in Rome, the Galleria Vismara in Milan and the Galleria Il Vertice in Palermo. In 1976, as well as having a show at the Galerie Sapone in Nice, the municipality of Poggibonsi, in Tuscany, where Bozzolini spent the latter part of the Second World War, devoted an exhibition to him entitled ‘Silvano Bozzolini – 33 anni di pittura – 1943–1976’. In the following decades the artist had numerous solo and group exhibitions; his activity was very intense and his work was now highly regarded both at home and abroad. In 1988 he participated in the fifth Biennale della xilografia (Biennale of Wood-Engraving) in Carpi, during which his work was honoured, as was that of Luigi Servolini. In 1990 he donated 120 wood-engravings to the Département des Estampes et de la Photographie at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris; these related to the whole of his output from the time he moved to Paris. On the occasion of his eightieth birthday, when a monograph edited by Françoise Monnin was devoted to him, Bozzolini wrote: Throughout my life, my artistic activity has been dedicated with love to painting. Artists, whether they be poets, musicians, sculptors or painters, are free agents who listen to and observe everything regarding nature and people and their physical and spiritual environment. Their individual perception of things in all their complexity enriches their imagination and fantasy and the realization of their work! It is up to the spectators to see, understand and judge. Three years later, as the result of a serious illness, Bozzolini decided to return to Italy and live in Poggibonsi, where he died on 11 February 1998.

Sara Meloni

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