Background

Carlo Carrà was born on February 11, 1881, in Quargnento, Province of Alessandria, Piedmont, Italy.

Education

At the age of twelve, Carlo Carrà worked as a mural decorator. In 1899 – 1900, he was in Paris decorating pavilions at the Exposition Universelle, where he became acquainted with contemporary French art. He then spent a few months in London in contact with exiled Italian anarchists, and returned to Milan in 1901. In 1906, Carlo Carrà enrolled at the Brera Academy (Accademia di Brera) there and studied under Cesare Tallone.

Career

Carlo Carrà met Boccioni and Russolo in 1908 with whom he signed the Manifesto of Futurist Painters, and the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting. His radical political and artistic interests were combined in the monumental painting Funeral of the Anarchist Galli, which he reworked after a trip to Paris in the fall of 1911, when he came into direct contact with Cubism. With Ardengo Soffici, he contributed to the Futurist periodical Lacerba.

In 1914, Carrà came back in Paris where he met Apollinaire and Picasso. At that time, he started to work in the medium of collage and words-in-freedom, and endorsed the Italian Interventionist movement in his book Guerrapittura of 1915. By 1916, Carrà had rejected many of the nihilistic premises of Futurism. In 1917, he met Giorgio de Chirico in Ferrara and adapted his metaphysical iconography and compositional techniques to a series of still lifes and interiors.

In 1918, Carrà, de Chirico, and his brother Alberto Savinio joined the magazine Valori Plastici. The following year, he published his book Pittura metafisica, which celebrated the transcendent properties of pure form and commonplace objects.

Carrà theoretical position, grounded in a post-war "return to order," signaled his break with the classicism of de Chirico. After a short-lived phase of Magic Realism, by the mid-twenties, Carrà had evolved his mature style that combined archaizing figures with an atmospheric brushwork, redolent of nineteenth-century Impressionist Naturalism. In the 1920s, he participated in the two exhibitions of the Novecento italiano, and signed Mario Sironi's Manifesto of Mural Painting in 1933. In 1941 he was appointed a professor of painting at the Accademia di Brera. In 1945 he published his autobiography La mia vita.

Achievements

• Carlo Carrà was a highly influential Italian painter of the early 20th century. He was also known as a master of figurative painting. He was a respected teacher and a prolific art writer, who influenced generations of realist artists. He is best known for his futurist work, which is called The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli (1911).

Works

More photos

• book

  • La mia vita

    (Autobiography)

• painting

  • The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli

    (The subject of the work is the funeral of Italian anarchi...)

    1911

  • Foce del Cinquale

    1928

  • Il mulino di Sant'Anna

    1921

  • The Red Horseman

    1913

  • Fiasco e Bicchiere

  • Armtrain

  • Concert Cafe

    1912

  • Western Horseman

    1917

  • La casa dell'amore

    1922

  • Omaggio a Betuda Futurista

    1915

  • San-Giacomo-di-Varallo

    1924

  • Pursuit

    1915

  • Lagoon

    1932

  • La Musa Metafisica

    1917

  • Partita di calcio

  • Natura morta

  • Interior

    1924

  • L'attesa

    1926

  • Pioggia al mare

  • Pagliai

  • Costruttori

  • The Tram

  • Pescatori

    1935

  • Giustiniano libera lo schiavo

  • La composizione TA

    1916

  • The Enchanted Chamber

    1917

  • I Romantici

  • Swimmers

  • Still Life with Syphon Soda Water

    1914

  • Natura morta con la squadra

    1917

  • Piazza Del Duomo

  • Ritratto di Papini

    1913

  • L'attrice futurista

    1915

  • Woman on the Balcony

    1912

  • Il Figlio del Costruttore

    1921

  • Fiumetto

    1941

  • I nuotatori

    1932

  • Autunno. Ritratto di Emilio Colombo

    1909

  • Donna sulla spiaggia

  • The Horsemen of the Apocalypse

    1908

  • L'ovale delle apparizioni

    1918

  • The Drunken Gentleman

    1916

  • Le figlie di Loth

    1919

  • Giudizio Universale

    1938

  • Portrait Of Marinetti

  • Paesaggio

    1904

  • Still Life

    1944

  • Il pescatore

  • Galleria In Milan

  • L'idolo ermafrodita

    1917

  • La casa abbandonata

    1930

  • Stazione a Milano

    1909

  • Meriggio

    1927

  • Leaving the Theatre

    1910

  • Paesaggio

    1909

  • El Faro

    1928

  • The Red House

    1927

  • Night At Piazza Beccaria In Milan

  • Untitled

  • Madre e figlio

    1917

  • Il fiasco

    1915

  • Composizione con figura femminile

    1915

  • Lo squero di San Trovaso

    1938

  • Vele nel porto

  • Il Fanciullo Prodigio

    1914

  • A Pine by the Sea

    1921

  • Quirinal Stables

  • Interventionist Demonstration (Patriotic Holiday-Freeword Painting) 1914

    1914

  • Jolts of a Cab

    1911

  • La strada di casa

    1900

  • Ritmi di oggetti

    1911

  • Venere anadiomene II

    1944

  • The Engineer's Lover

    1921

  • Il bersaglio

    1928

  • Ritmi Plastici

    1911

  • Le acciughe

    1948

Interests

• Artists

  Giotto di Bondone

References

• Carlo Carra (I Maestri Del Colore 52)
• Carlo Carra: Metaphysical Spaces
• Carlo Carra: Pittore