Aligi Sassu

aligi sassu

catalogue of the works
Natalia Sassu Suarez Ferri
Fondazione Aligi Sassu
Lugano

PRESENTATION

Critical essay

catalogue of the works

Information

La strada, 1934

ALIGI SASSU
1934 is the year of Sassu's first trip to Paris, when he studies the great artists of the French Nineteenth century and meets a variety of personalities of the European culture of those years.
We can find a renewal of the themes, of the colours and the style, the city is not melancholic and desolated anymore, but it becomes the place for social and daily life.
Women and men are represented in Caffès or on the street, wearing the typical clothes of the period and with a new interest for details, with much more interaction among characters than in Uomini rossi. It is the beginning of realism, which will soon become social realism with Corrente.

Gli argonauti, 1936

In 1936 Aligi Sassu had already started his realist period but he suggests the subject of the argonauts again. It is clear how in a few years there has been an important artistic maturation, encouraged by the study of Delacroix and Gericault in the Parisian museums. Despite the fact that the theme, the background and the idea of Uomini rossi are the same of the previous years, here we are in front of a completely different type of painting, in which shapes are not just posed on the background but begin to fuse in a harmony of colours and shapes. The scenes become more articulate and the characters start to have some interaction.

Cavalieri antichi, 1942

This is the first painting on display with the most recognizable horses by Sassu.
"The horses by De Chirico are the symbol of an antique primitiveness, where they represent instinct. The horses by Sassu are, on the other hand, romantic. They represent the ideal impulse, the human request for fighting any interior or exterior adversity. The horse and the horsemen here represented by Sassu, this couple of antique horsemen, vibrate frenetically in a stormy and fiery environment. They fight adversities with the heroism of the strong." (Barletta, 1980)