Giuseppe Viviani (San Giuliani Terme 1898-Pisa 1965)

His first artistic phase (1916-1940) was a long season of practice and study. To his early works with ceramolle, he soon joined puntesecche and etchings, and as the years went by he increased the sign weave and the refinement of chiaroscuro passages. Around the mid-1930s, having achieved a certain confidence in his technical means, the dominant naturalism of his earlier work was replaced, in both etching and painting, by a personal fabulist tone. After the first experiments with drypoint, research in the field of graphic arts led Viviani to prefer, in the 1930s, etching, which allowed him a more careful calibration of blacks and chiaroscuro. The first particularly popular plates preceded World War II; in these years the artist presented mainly still lifes. In the postwar period he achieved fame and for the artist began a period of success with participation in important exhibitions and international engraving competitions. Viviani chose in the 1950s not to leave Marina di Pisa and not to join groups or movements, preferring to conduct solitary research on recurring themes. He depicted everyday places crowded with common objects, in settings that often had little respect for canonical dimensional ratios or regular perspectives. It was not until the 1950s that Viviani practiced lithography systematically, once again on subjects that often echoed those of previous years. In 1952 he won the international prize at the Mostra del Bianco e Nero in Lugano and later participated in the VI Quadriennale in Rome. Important prizes followed in the next decade as well, with prominence for intaglio at the 5th Biennale dell'Incisione Contemporanea in Venice in 1964.