Mario Sironi was an Italian painter sculptor and illustrator who represented the Novecento Italiano art movement and Futurism. He created his often dark-coloured paintings with giant and motionless forms in a metaphysical art style.
Background
Ethnicity:
Mario Sironi’s father came from Italian Como and his mother came from Florence, the capital of Tuscany region.
Mario Sironi was born on May 12, 1885, in the city of Sassari on Sardinia island, Italy. He was the second of six children in the family of Enrico Sironi, engineer and architect, and Giulia Villa, whose father, Ignazio Villa, was an architect and sculptor. Sironi was raised in Rome where his family relocated a year after his birth. At the age of thirteen, Mario lost his father.
Education
Mario Sironi began his higher education at the University of Rome where he had studied engineering from 1896. In 1902, Sironi left the institution because of the serious nervous depression which accompanied the artist throughout his life.
Later, Mario enrolled at the School of Nude Academy of the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome.
Career
Mario Sironi created his early paintings among which were the portraits of himself and of his family in the Divisionist style influenced by the tutelage of Giacomo Balla.
From 1913, the artist shifted to the newly appeared Futurism which he had used for some time. The first exhibition at which the artist took part along with the Futurists was organized in 1914 at the Galleria Sprovieri in Rome. One of the typical works of this time was the tempera series Composizione futurist (1915).
At the outbreak of the First World War, Sironi joined the Lombard Volunteer Cyclists and Drivers.
The first solo show of the artist took place after the war, in Rome, at the Bragaglia gallery in 1919, the only futurist art gallery in Italy. Since this time, Sironi changed again his style. He began to incorporate in his paintings large and immobile forms such as in creations La Lampada (1919), Venere (1921-1923) and Solitudine (1925).
Close to the end of the 1920s, Mario Sironi started to depict in his paintings - which became more picturesque - nudes, countrymen and landscapes with mountains.
During the Second World War, the artist worked as an illustrator and decorator. So, he produced about 1700 vignettes, book covers and caricatures for the Fascist periodicals Il Popolo d'Italia and La Rivista Illustrata del Popola d'Italia. He also had several commissions from the state to create murals for different architectural buildings, including cathedrals. Such projects included the mural L'Italia fra le arti e le scienze (Italy Between the Arts and Sciences) of 1935, the window of the Ministry of Corporations in Rome, the frescoes of the University of Rome, Venice and Milan at V Triennale, the great mosaic of the VI Triennale, Universal Exposition in Paris in 1937, the mosaics of the Palace of Justice in Milan and bas-reliefs for the Palazzo dei Giornali in Milan. The artist also took part as a decorator at the Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution in 1932.
In the post-war period, Mario Sironi came back to easel painting. Because of his early collaboration with Fascism, the artist was obliged to work in isolation. However, he took part in several international exhibitions, such as at Centre Pompidou in Paris, Quadrennial of Rome, three Documenta (1955, 1959) and Venice Biennale. Mario Sironi presented his artworks receiving prizes and awards at solo shows in Europe and America, as well.
Politics
At the beginning of his artistic journey, Mario Sironi supported Benito Mussolini and took an active part in the cultural politics of facism.
Views
Quotations:
"Art doesn’t need to be sympathetic but requires greatness."
Personality
While a youngster, Mario Sironi loved to read the books by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heine, Leopardi and the French novelists. The boy also explored the music, in particular, by Wagner.
