MAN presents for the first time in Sardinia an important exhibition dedicated to the figure of Aligi Sassu. An anthological journey which, since the 1920s, marks the most relevant and significant stages of his artistic trajectory through around ninety works from prestigious public and private collections: the Museum of Lugano, the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, the Museum of ‘Modern Art of Genoa, the Museum of Udine, the Municipal Gallery of Cagliari, the Aligi Sassu and Helenita de Olivares Foundation of Lugano.
The sections of the exhibition include works relating to Futurism, Primitivism, the Red Men series, historical, religious, mythological, social themes, Cafés, Maison Tellier, Hispanidad and Majorcan Landscapes.
Aligi Sassu faced the complex and intricate artistic scene of the avant-garde as a protagonist without ever losing sight, despite the evolution and renewal of his own language, of the primary and essential objective of direct comparison with reality. Seen from the perspective that the new century and the death of the artist a few years ago now allow, Sassu’s painting appears as a great act of absolutely modern individual freedom, and this not only in terms of morality and expressive quality but also in its intimate root within the art of our time. Sassu claimed, practiced and maintained his poetic universe in the daily flow of existence as well as in the historical dimension of the crucial junctions of the era to which he was confronted. […] He followed his very singular paths through enthusiastic outbursts, periods of reflection, necessary returns and sudden ignitions, to free himself from time to time from those aesthetic filters that could have excessively conditioned his spontaneously enthusiastic immersion in the spiral of life , in the expanded dimension of memory and consciousness.
Aligi Sassu was born in Milan on 17 July 1912. Between 1926 and 1927 he met Bruno Munari, enrolled in the evening courses at the Brera Academy, showed up at the meeting with the artists called by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who in 1928 invited him to exhibit at the XVI International Art Exhibition of Venice. In 1929 he progressively distanced himself from the futurist movement, moving closer to primitivism. Between 1930 and 1933 he started the series of Red men . The dominant red that characterizes the cycle represents a significant turning point for Italian painting of the 1930s. In 1933 he created the series of Argonauts and that of the begins Coffee . Between 1934-1940 he went to Paris. Returning to Italy he is confronted with the debate on the role of the artist, to which Sassu claims a social solution; in the same period he began his clandestine activity together with De Grada, Grosso and Guttuso. In 1935 he created the Shooting in Asturias , a sort of manifesto of European opposition to fascism, and makes his second trip to Paris. The following year he exhibited at the Venice Biennale.
In 1937 he took part in the Italian Art Exhibition in New York. On 6 April of the same year he was arrested by the OVRA police (Opera di Vigilanza e Repressione Antifascista). Aligi Sassu accused of conspiracy, is tried and sentenced to ten years in prison. In July 1938 King Vittorio Emanuele III granted him a pardon. He continues to paint oppositional works in which the political metaphor emerges clearly. Participate in Corrente’s activities. In 1942 the series of Councils . Work around the Deposition which ends the following year. He stays in Albissola dedicating himself to the activity of ceramist. In 1944 he dedicated himself to the cycle Maison Tellier inspired by a short story by Guy De Maupassant. Shaken by the episode of the shooting of the martyrs of Piazzale Loreto, which he witnessed, he painted the work of the same name in just two days. After the war it was active and continued its presence in the most important exhibitions in Italy and abroad. He took part in the Venice Biennale in 1948, 1952 and 1954. In Albissola he met the Colombian opera singer Helenita Olivares who he married in 1972. In 1963 he opened an atelier in Cala San Vicente (Mallorca).
The series is born Bullfighting . In 1965 he was appointed member of the Italian UNESCO committee for the plastic arts. The Gallery of Modern Art in the Vatican dedicated a room to him in 1973. Important museums and galleries of an international level organize exhibitions on the work of Aligi Sassu. He was made an honorary citizen of Palma de Mallorca in 1987; in the same year a large anthology was held at the Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst in Munich with works created between 1927 and 1985. Celebrate sixty years of work with a major exhibition at Castello di Rivoli. In Florence, in 1990, he was awarded the Lorenzo il Magnifico prize. In 1992, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, eighty works created between 1927 and 1990 were hosted by various South American museums. In 1993, after two years of work, he completed the large ceramic mural entitled The myths of the Mediterranean for the new headquarters of the European Parliament in Brussels. In 1995 the exhibition opened at the Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bergamo. Aligi Sassu from 1930 to Corrente . The same year, together with his wife Helenita Olivares, Aligi Sassu donated 362 works created between 1927 and 1996 to the city of Lugano; in 1997 the Aligi Sassu and Helenita Olivares Foundation was established in Lugano, with the aim of valorising the artist’s work and spreading his art internationally. In March 2000 the Aligi Sassu and Helenita Olivares Foundation of Mallorca was born.
Aligi Sassu passed away in Pollensa (Mallorca) in 2000, on his eighty-eighth birthday.
By Rudy Chiappini, director of the City of Lugano Museums.
