Biography
Mario Sironi (*1885 Sassari IT | †1961 Milan IT) was an Italian painter, sculptor, designer, caricaturist and writer. His work draws upon an eclectic range of influences such including fragmented forms of futurism, the tranquil atmosphere of the Pittura Metafisica and the revival of classical Italian images of the Novecento group. In all of his works, Sironi seeks out the relationship of the individual with the masses, as well as the tension between the ambiguous and unambiguous image.
Mario Sironi was born on May 12, 1885 in Sassari, Sardinia. The following year his father decided that the family would move back to Rome and Sironi thus grew up in the city. After graduating from the Technical School in Rome, he enrolled at the University of Rome for an engineering degree. However, he dropped out after only a year. In 1903, he started training at the Scuola Libera del Nudo, where he got to know the artists Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni and Gino Severini. In the summer of 1908, he shared an apartment with Boccioni, who became one of his closest friends and his artistic mentor. The music of Richard Wagner and the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche also had a great influence on him.
At the end of 1914, Sironi not only followed his friend Boccioni to Milan, but in the adventure of futurism. The futurists saw the brilliance of modern progress reflected in the speed of shiny cars and mechanical movement, and they translated it into simultanism and dynamism. Time was an imperturbable optical given to them, an infinite sequence of moments interrupting the continuity of space. Nevertheless, despite his efforts to capture the fleetingness of movement in his work, Sironi remained on the sidelines of Futurism. He did not sign any of their manifestos and did not desire to be part of their success de scandale. He chose the Futurists not because he shared their fanatical beliefs about progress, but because he believed that their dynamism could free Italian art from the prison of provincialism. Their technical rendering of time did not match his desire for spiritual steadfastness. In a world obsessed with speed, Sironi longed for de-acceleration.
During the First World War, Sironi served in the Italian army, with, among others, Filippo Marinetti, Antonio Sant'Elia and his friend Boccioni. After the war, he completely broke with Futurism and became involved in the Pittura Metafisica movement. These metaphysical artists attempted to distil a poetic dream-world within their surreal paintings. Color was stripped of physical mass, space was distorted, and perspective altered, resulting in what would have otherwise been an ordinary scene becoming mysterious and strange. Inspired by the work of artists such as Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà, Sironi made hundreds of drawings of empty streets and mannequins. As with futurism, Sironi opts for a slightly different path, including texture and visible brushstrokes that were invisible in other metaphysical works. He exchanged the metaphysical, as it were, for the earthly, and the immaterial areas of color for images of the deserted periphery of the city and inhospitable industrial landscapes that were elevated to an archaic monumentality. Working in this manner, Sironi became one of the founders of the Sette pittori del Novecento group in 1923.
In the late 1920s, Sironi decided that easel painting was an anachronism, an outdated idea of the bourgeoisie still wallowing in individualism. He turned his attention to making didactic murals and work with a propagandistic character. He became one of the most important caricaturists of the newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia, the newspaper of Mussolini's party, and La Rivista illustrata del popolo d'Italia. With Giovanni Muzia, he designed the Italian Pavilion during international exhibitions in Cologne (1928) and Barcelona (1929). After the Second World War, he started painting again and even the easel came back into favor . In 1959, he was invited to become a member of the Accademia di San Luca, an honorable recognition. He died on August 13, 1961. The following year, the Venice Biennale showed a major retrospective of his work.
Public collections holding works by Sironi include Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna in the Palazzo Massari, Ferrara; Galleria Civica di Modena in Palazzo Santa Margherita; Civico Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Milan; Museo del Novecento, Milan; Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan; Galleria Comunale d'Arte Moderna, Rome; Revoltella Museum, Trieste; Ca' Pesaro, Venice; Guggenheim Collection, Venice; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; Tate Gallery, London; the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris; the Vatican Museums; and the Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich.