Mario Sironi - part 1

Mario Sironi was born in 1885 in Sassari, Sardinia. In 1902 he enrolled in the engineering school at the University of Rome, but soon abandoned his studies. At the Scuola Libera del Nudo, which he began attending in 1903, Sironi met Balla, Boccioni, and Severini. He exhibited at the “Esposizione della Società degli Amatori e Cultori” in 1905, and contributed illustrations to the Socialist journal L’Avanti della Domenica. He travelled to Paris in 1906, Munich in 1908, and Frankfurt in 1910. Suffering from depression, he spent long periods of his youth in seclusion and destroyed most of his early, Divisionist work. He adhere to Futurism late in 1913, participating in the “Esposizione Libera Futurista” at the Galleria Sprovieri in 1914.

By 1915 Sironi had moved to Milan, where he took the place of Ardengo Soffici in the core Futurist group. That same year he signed the Futurist’ interventionist manifesto L’orgoglio italiano (Italian Pride). He served at the front with Marinetti, Boccioni, Russolo, and Antonio Sant’Elia. In 1919 Sironi participated in the “Grande Mostra Futurista” in Milan, organised by Marinetti as a show of the movement’s strength in the immediate post-war period. That same year he held his first one-man show at the Casa d’Arte Bragaglia in Rome. In 1920 he signed Contro tutti i ritorni in pittura (Against All Revivals in Painting) with Russolo and other former Futurists. From 1919-21 he painted his famous series of paesaggi urbani, urban landscapes, which transformed De Chirico’s haunting Italian piazze d’Italia, city-squares, into contemporary scenes of the Milanese industrial periphery.

In 1922 he was one of the founding members of the Sette di Novecento in Milan and became the leading exponent of the Novecento italiano. Sironi was the chief political caricaturist and illustrator for Mussolini’s official press, Il Popolo d’Italia (1927–33) and La Rivista Illustrata del Popolo d’Italia (1934–39). He was also the leading theorist and practitioner of mural painting and received prominent commissions from the regime. He authored the influential Manifesto of Mural Painting in 1933. After World War II he returned to easel painting in a style consistent with the abstract Informel movement. In 1956 he was elected member of the Accademia di San Luca. Sironi died in Milan on 13 August 1961.

This is part 1 of a 5-part series on the works of Mario Sironi:

c1906 Woman's Face
pencil on paper (size not given)

c1913 Futurist Composition
 ink on paper 22.4 x 14.7 cm

c1913 Futurist Figure
pencil on paper 22 x 13.5 cm

1914 Futurist City Estorick
Collection of Modern Italian Art, London

1914 Nude (Standing Figure)
Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London

c1914 Plasticity of a Head
ink and tempera on paper 19 x 13.4 cm

1915 Composition
mixed media on paper (size not given)

1915 Untitled (Woman, Horse and Cat)
size not given
Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London

1915 The Metaphysical Robot Arant
(sie not given)
Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London

1915-15 Soldier
crayon on paper 26.9 x 18.5 cm
MoMA, New York

c1915 Composition
tempera and mixed media on paper laid on canvas 20.9 x 19.7 cm

c1915 Futurist Composition
ink on paper 22.4 x 14.7 cm

1916 Figure of a man
pencil and charcoal on paper laid down on canvas 32 x 22 cm

1916 The Cyclist
oil on canvas (size not given)
Gaetani collection, Rome

1916 The Cyclist
oil on canvas 96 x 71 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York

1916 Sketch for the cover of Gli Avvenimenti (The Events) magazine
tempera and mixed media on paper laid on canvas 47.4 x 36 cm

1916 Townscape with Horse
pencil on paper 31 x 21 cm

1916 Urban landscape, aeroplane and seated woman
(size not given)
Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London

c1916 Sketch for Illustration
tempera and mixed media on paper on canvas
(size not given)

1917 Horse and Carriage in a Street
(size not given)
Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London

1918 Figure on a balcony
tempera on paper laid on canvas 26.8 x 19.8 cm

c1918-19 Composition
pencil on paper 23.9 x 19.6 cm

c1918 Mannequin
 ink on graph paper 21 x 15 cm
MoMA, New York

1919 Venus of Harbours
tempera on canvas 98 x 73.5 cm

c1919 Composition with Knight and mannequins
mixed media on cardboard 53.8 x 36.8 cm

c1919 Female figure, houses and studies of heads
pencil on paper 35.5 x 26.5 cm

c1919 Figure
graphite on paper 34.4 x 22.8 cm

1920 Suburbs with Truck
oil on canvas 67 x 55.5 cm
Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto

1920 The Tramway
oil on cardboard 72 x 99 cm

1920 Towards the goal
(illustration published in 'Le industrie italiane illustrate' July edition

c1920 Boat and Fisherman
ink on paper 13 x 21.5 cm

c1920 Bridge
pencil on paper 14 x 19 cm

c1920 Composition with bottle and inkwell
tempera and pencil on cardboard laid on canvas

c1920 Harbour, urban landscape and figure
tempera and collage on paper laid down on canvas 33 x 28 cm

c1920 Urban landscape with tram
ink on paper 21.7 x 27.8 cm

1920s Composition
pencil and tempera on paper laid on canvas 14 x 18 cm

1921-22 Periphery
oil on paper 54 x 54 cm
Museo Nacionale de Bellas Arts, Buenos Aires, Argentina

c1921 Urban landscape
ink on paper 13.6 x 10.4 cm

1922-23 Portrait (illustration for publication)
pencil and China ink on paper 29 x 22.5 cm

1922-26 Athlete
tempera and collage on canvassed paper 68 x 60 cm

1923 Semi-nude with fruit bowl
oil on canvas 100 x 75.5 cm
Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin

1924 Maximum Patriots
ink, tempera, tempera, charcoal, pencil and collage on cardboard 20.1 x 23.8 cm

1924 probably a design for a stage set
tempera and mixed media on paper 32.8 x 29.5 cm

1924 Sketch for the cover of the Encyclopedic Almanac of the People of Italy
pencil on card

1924 Urban Landscape
oil on canvas (size not given)
Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia

c1924 Horse with geometric rider
(size not given)
Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London

c1924 Ice Hockey
tempera and pencil on paper 25.5 x 22.4 cm

c1924 Landscape with mountains, houses, tower and dome
tempera and mixed media on paper 24.2 x 32.7 cm

Eugène Delacroix - part 6

Poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire described his hero Eugène Delacroix as "a volcanic crater artistically concealed beneath bouquets of flowers." Beneath the surface of Delacroix's polished elegance and charm roiled turbulent interior emotions. In 1822 Delacroix took the Salon by storm. Although the French artistic establishment considered him a wild man and a rebel, the French government, bought his paintings and commissioned murals throughout Paris. Though Delacroix aimed to balance classicism and Romanticism, his art cenreed on a revolutionary idea born with the Romantics: that art should be created out of sincerity, that it should express the artist's true feelings and convictions. Educated firmly in the classics, Delacroix often depicted mythological subjects, themes encouraged by the reigning Neoclassical artists at the Académie des Beaux-Arts. But Delacroix's brilliant colors and passionate brushwork frightened them; their watchwords were "noble simplicity and calm grandeur." They barred him from academy membership until 1857, and even then he was prohibited from teaching in the École des Beaux-Arts. For those very reasons, he was an inspiration to the Impressionists and other young artists. Paul Cézanne once said, "We are all in Delacroix." Intensely private, Delacroix kept a journal that is renowned as a profoundly moving record of the artistic experience.

This is part 6 of of a 6-part series on the works of Eugène Delacroix:

1851 The Agony in the Garden
oil on canvas 34 x 42 cm
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

1852 Hercules and Antaeus
lithograph on wove paper 44.2 x 29.2 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1852 Study for Marphise and the Mistress of Pinabel
graphite on tan wove paper, tipped onto board 25 x 19.7 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1852 Marphise and the Mistress of Pinabel
oil on canvas 82 x 101 cm
The Walters Museum, Baltimore, MD

1852 The Good Samaritan
oil on canvas 34 x 42 cm
Victoria & Albert Museun, London

c1852 Desdemona cursed by her Father 
oil on cradled panel 40.6 x 32.1 cm 
Brooklyn Museum, New York

1853 Christ on the Cross
 oil on canvas 73.5 x 59.7 cm
The National Gallery, London

1853 Christ on the Sea of Galilee

This scene is based on an incident recounted in three Gospels of the New Testament: a furious storm breaks out while Jesus and his disciples sail across the Sea of Galilee to spread Christ's message. To the disciples' amazement, Jesus calms the wind and the storm, dramatizing the power of Christian belief.

Delacroix produced multiple variations on this theme in 1853 and 1854, when this particular biblical subject became popular with French Catholics during the reign of Louis-Napoléon (r. 1852-70).

1853 Christ on the Sea of Galilee
oil on composition board 47.6 x 58.1 cm
Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA

1854 Christ on the Sea of Galilee
oil on canvas  59.8 x 73.3 cm
The Walters Museum, Baltimore, MD

1853 The Disciples at Emmaus
oil on canvas 55.2 x 47 cm
Brooklyn Museum, New York

c1853 Christ Asleep during the Tempest 

The Met note: Delacroix painted at least six versions of this New Testament lesson in faith: when awakened by his terrified disciples, Christ scolded them for their lack of trust in Providence. In the earlier works, the seascape is more prominent; in the later ones, as here, Christ’s bark occupies a more significant place. After Vincent van Gogh saw this version in Paris in 1886, he wrote, "Christ’s boat—I’m talking about the blue and green sketch with touches of purple and red and a little lemon yellow for the halo, the aureole—speaks a symbolic language through colour itself.”

c1853 Christ asleep during the Tempest
oil on canvas 50.8 x 61 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1854 Lion hunting
oil on canvas 90 x 116.7 cm
© RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay) / Franck Raux

1854 Tiger hunting
oil on canvas 73 x 92.5 cm
© Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt

1854 Tiger stopped
cliché-verre on wove paper 16.7 x 19.9 cm (plate)

c1854 Arab Rider
oil on panel 35 x 26.5 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

1855 Arab saddling his horse
oil on canvas 56 x 47 cm
The Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia

1855 Lion hunt in Morocco
oil on canvas 74 x 92 cm
The Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia

1858 Crossing a ford in Morocco
oil on canvas 60.5 x 74 cm
© RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay) / Stéphane Maréchalle

1858 Forest
pencil on paper 26 x 40.4 cm
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

1858 Lion Hunt
oil on canvas 91.7 x 117.5 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

1858 Lion Hunt
detail

1858 Lion Hunt
detail

1858 St. Sebastian with St. Irene and attendant
oil on panel 38.1 x 50.8 cm
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

1859 The Puma
 oil on wood panel 41.2 x 30.7 cm
© RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum) / Sylvie Chan-Liat

1859 Ovid among the Scythians
oil on canvas 87.6 x 130.2 cm
The National Gallery, London

1862 Ovid among the Scythians

The Met note: This is the final work Delacroix devoted to a theme that had first attracted him in 1835. It depicts the exiled poet Ovid, who in A.D. 8 was banished from Rome to the coast of the Black Sea, at present-day Constantsa, Romania. He was treated with kindness by the Scythians, who are shown feeding him and expressing mare’s milk for him to drink. This painting reprises a larger composition that Delacroix exhibited at the Salon of 1859 (now National Gallery, London). Reviews were mixed, but its admirers included Edgar Degas and the critic Charles Baudelaire, who wrote "The mind sinks into it with a slow and appreciative rapture…”

1862 Ovid among the Scythians
oil on paper, laid down on wood 32.1 x 50.2 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1862 Ovid among the Scythians
detail

1862 Ovid among the Scythians
detail

1860 Arabian horses fighting in a stable
oil on canvas 65.5 x 81 cm
© RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay) / Franck Raux

1860-61 Lion Hunt
oil on canvas  76.5 x 98.5 cm
Potter Palmer Collection, Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1860-61 Lion Hunt
detail

1860-61 Lion Hunt
detail

1862 The Miraculous Draught of Fishes
brown ink on paper 12.8 x 20.6 cm
Kunsthalle, Bremen

n.d. The Miraculous Draught of Fishes
pen, brown ink, and washes on paper 20.6 x 26.7 cm (sheet)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

1862 Tiger and Snake
oil on canvas 33 x 41.2 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

1863 (August 29) La Pietà, from “L'Illustration"

Published just two weeks after the death of Delacroix, this print is described as the artist's "last drawing on wood." Customarily, to make a wood engraving, an artist would supply a drawing on paper to be translated by another hand onto the wood block, before being engraved by yet another practitioner. By drawing directly onto the wood himself, Delacroix believed the medium could serve as an outlet for the direct expression of his thought. This composition corresponds more closely with Delacroix's first oil sketch (private collection) for his Pietà than the final mural executed in Saint-Denys-du-Saint-Sacrement, which does not include the angels and reverses the figural group.

1863 (August 29) La Pietà, from "L'Illustration"
wood engraving 36.1 x 51.9 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

n.d. Armed riders and figure on the ground
pen and brown ink, black and red chalk with graphite, on ivory wove paper 34.2 x 21.7 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

n.d. Charioteers (recto)
pen and purple-black ink on wove paper 17.3 x 37 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

n.d. Charioteers (verso)
pen and purple-black ink on wove paper 17.3 x 37 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

n.d. Man at Arms
etching and drypoint 23.4 x 20.5 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

n.d. Portrait of a Child
graphite on paper 13.3 x 14.1 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

n.d. Studies of a sleeping lioness
black crayon on oatmeal paper 13.2 x 20 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

n.d. Study of Arabs
watercolour and graphite on laid paper 21.1 x 28.9 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

n.d. The assassinated man
lithograph on paper
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

n.d. Tiger Ready to Spring
cliché verre on cream wove paper 15.8 x 19.1 cm (image)
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

n.d. Two sketches of a sitting cleric
pen and ink on paper 20.6 x 25.7 cm
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam