Alfredo Soressi (1897–1982) - Pastorelle con gregge

Pastorals with a Flock

Alfredo Soressi
(Piacenza, March 30, 1897 – Piacenza, March 1, 1982)

Oil on canvas in a frame - antiqued / 1930s

Signed and with an authenticity certificate in accordance with the law.

Museum author - his/her works are collected in national and foreign museums - * His/her works are also on display in the pinacotecas of Ferrara, Forlì and Bari.

Dimensions: 79 x 64 cm in a contemporaneous frame
Canvas: 64 x 50 cm (canvas mounted on a panel for conservation purposes)

Biography

Alfredo Soressi was born on March 30, 1897, in Mucinasso di San Lazzaro, a suburb on the outskirts of Piacenza. He was the youngest of four brothers, born to Emilio Soressi, a small farmer who supplemented his meager income by working as a boiler maker, and Palmira Civardi, a housewife.
Already as a child he showed a marked aptitude for drawing, and upon finishing school he would attend the parish priest’s residence, where Don Pietro Leoni (himself endowed with a certain artistic capacity) gave drawing lessons to some pupils who were especially gifted. After completing elementary school, following a short period as a cart-driver’s apprentice (which, however, was important for his artistic formation, making him familiar with the yokes and harnesses of animals that would play a large part in his painting), he enrolled at the Gazzola Institute of Art in Piacenza, with Francesco Ghittoni as his painting and sculpture teacher: here he devoted himself especially to the study of drawing, which he always regarded (as his master would remind him) as the foundation of the figurative arts and of perspective.
In 1915 Italy entered World War I, and in September 1916 Soressi had to interrupt his studies to go to the front: he was in the trenches at Bainsizza and fought on Monte Grappa where his foot was maimed due to the explosion of a grenade. As a result, after his hospital convalescence, he entered a special section of the Brera Academy in Milan that had been established for war maimed and disabled, and there he earned the diploma of professor of drawing and architecture. He remained within the Academy's milieu, and in 1921 he took part in the competition for the master plan of Isola Comacina and, the following year, went to Val Camonica with the assignment to reorganize the local professional schools.
He returns to Piacenza where, in 1925, he wins the competition for the chair in Ornamentation at the Istituto Gazzola, of which he had been a pupil, and where he will teach until 1958, shaping numerous artists including Cinello Losi. Soon after, he builds his studio-house on Via San Sepolcro, for which he himself designs the façade, and in which he will live for the rest of his life. His earliest artistic proofs are from 1923 (Capriccio, Vecchi ulivi), in which a strong impressionist imprint is evident, but he waits until 1926 to present himself to his city, exhibiting to the Amici dell'Arte some paintings that receive a good reception from the public and critics, and already on that occasion it was noted that in his art “abundant imagination does not cross the line of good sense and honest decor which is too often violated by the sentinels of the Twentieth Century.”
This is followed by other exhibitions in which Soressi participates: two years later, in 1928, again with the Amici dell'Arte of Piacenza and at the Galleria ex Corradi in Milan, in pair with the Livornese Mario Menichetti[6], and then the following year in Rome at the Casa d'Arte Baldi: both had a good reception and many works were sold, something not taken for granted far from his usual market and with a painting genre that was distant from any impulse of modernity. In fact the painter repeated that “the informal, the abstract is nothing... When something cannot be measured, read, understood, it means nothing. Art is always something beautiful, harmonious, instructive.” He also exhibited again in Milan at the Galleria Micheli together with Luigi Mantovani and, nearly annually, in his city, now at the Amici dell'Arte, now at the Bottega degli Artisti, now at the Palazzo Gotico.
In 1932 Alfredo Soressi marries Giuseppina Bracchi, also an aquarellist who will, however, renounce her career after marriage at her husband's wish.[8]. He is also active as an etcher and oversees the illustrations of the volume Fantasie teatrali by Fulvio Provasi. As an architect, he wins the project for the Casa del Mutilato of Piacenza in 1938, which will be built between 1939 and 1941. In 1937 he is appointed director of the Civic Museum, whose collections are at that time kept at the Istituto Gazzola, a position he will hold until 1950.
After World War II, in February 1945 he participated with other Piacenza artists, including Luciano Ricchetti, Luigi Arrigoni, and Sergio Belloni, in an exhibition at the Ricci Oddi Modern Art Gallery, which was emptied of works that had been evacuated to the province to safeguard them from the perils of war, then the following year at the exhibition in the hall of the Filodrammatica and then in 1954 at the one held in the Palazzo Gotico. He also resumed exhibiting outside Piacenza, in Milan, Venice, Bari, at the Maschio Angioino in Naples in 1957, at the Antibiennale in Rome held in August 1958 at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, organized by the Pure Figurative Art Union, receiving attestations and prizes (Gold Medal at the Naples Pure Art Exhibition and at the Antibiennale of Rome).
In 1956, he attempted to create an 'artists' village' in Bosconure, near Ferriere in the upper Val Nure, the birthplace of his wife; however, none of his colleagues accepted the invitation to move there, and only a small church, a hostel, and a couple of cottages were built. 'A good idea, but a bit quirky,' commented critic Ferdinando Arisi in 1984 in his book The Soressi of Ricci Oddi.
He would thus continue his work in his studio until his death, which occurred on March 1, 1982. By the painter's will, twenty paintings were donated to the Pinacoteca Ricci Oddi in Piacenza, which dedicated a retrospective exhibition to him. His works are also in the pinacothecas of Ferrara, Forlì, and Bari.

In good condition

The frame shown in the photo will be included as a courtesy gift and is not part of the sale; it will be shipped as a courtesy.

Insured shipment