Renato Guttuso (Bagheria 1912 - Roma 1987)

Moving to Rome from his native Palermo, with the painters of the "Roman School" he developed the first stylistic elements of an anti-Novecento reaction. Later in Milan he came into contact with all those artists who carried out the same positions of the Roman phase, adding on them anti-fascist political grounds and, turning towards a realist art that feeds on various examples (the Picasso of Guernica, the pre-expressionism by Van Gogh, popular art, Sicilian life, the French realists of the nineteenth century), between 1940 and 1942 he took part in the Corrente movement, becoming one of the most famous exponents. In the post-war period he was involved in the New Front of the Arts with works of rupture, of strong post-Cubist influence, and when in 1948 the Front dissolved, Guttuso was one of the realist movement’s animator. From 1958, he reacted to the realist movement’s crisis by accepting expressionist influences and elements of formal rupture, keeping his art open to many different cultural contributions (including the German New Objectivity). Guttuso is a beloved and acclaimed artist in life, probably because of his choice to be a witness of his time, not to renounce his social commitment and to know how to wisely combine it with the profession of an artist.

Renato Guttuso has had close relations with the Gallery, esteeming work and friendship, so much so that he exhibited his works also on the occasion of the new headquarters’ inauguration in Via Roma, Livorno. Over the years, Guastalla Centro Arte gallery has organized several Guttuso’s personal exhibitions: in 1972, showing part of the paintings returning from the great exhibition in Moscow; in 1975 with an exhibition of the great painting La Vucciria. Another important exhibition dates back to 2004, with a presentation in the catalog by Giorgio Guastalla; the last, in 2011, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth. In 1982 our gallery published the important volume Omaggio a Guttuso, the Italian edition of the Hommage à Guttuso of the famous XXeme Siècle editions of Paris, on the occasion of the artist's seventieth birthday. On that occasion, an album was published for the Graphis Arte editions, entitled Omaggio a Guttuso, with ten original color lithographs printed in our press in Livorno. Another important album with ten original lithographs is published by us in 1984. A work Omaggio a Modigliani, original color lithograph, is made by Guttuso specifically for the centenary of the birth of Amedeo Modigliani and is exhibited in the Birthplace of Amedeo Modigliani in Livorno.