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 frame - historically dated / 1930s

Signed and with certificate of authenticity in accordance with the law

Museum author - his works are collected in national and foreign museums - * His works are also exhibited in the Pinacotecas of Ferrara, Forlì and Bari.

Measurements: 79 x 64 cm in an era frame
Canvas: 64 x 50 cm (canvas mounted on panel for conservation purposes)

Biography

Alfredo Soressi was born on March 30, 1897 in Mucinasso di San Lazzaro, a suburb at the gates of Piacenza, the youngest of four brothers, 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 after finishing school he regularly attended the parish priest’s house where Don Pietro Leoni (himself endowed with a certain artistic ability) gave drawing lessons to a few especially gifted students. After completing elementary school, following a brief period as a cartman’s apprentice (which, however, was important for his artistic formation, making him familiar with saddles and harnesses of animals that would play a major role in his painting), he enrolled at the Gazzola Art Institute of Piacenza, with Francesco Ghittoni as his painting and sculpture teacher: here he devoted himself mainly to the study of drawing which he always considered (as his master reminded him) the basis 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 he lost a foot due to the explosion of a shell. After his convalescence in the hospital, he joined a special section of the Brera Academy in Milan that had been established for the mutilated and war disabled and here he obtained the diploma of professor of drawing and architecture. He remained within the Academy and in 1921 he participated 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 vocational schools.
He returned to Piacenza where in 1925 he won the competition for the chair of Ornamentation at the Gazzola Institute, of which he had been a pupil, and where he would teach until 1958, forming numerous artists including Cinello Losi. Soon he built his house-studio on Via San Sepolcro, of which he himself designed the facade and where he would live for the rest of his life. His earliest painting evidence dates from 1923 (Capriccio, Vecchi ulivi) in which a strong impressionistic imprint is evident, but he waited until 1926 to present himself to his city by exhibiting to the Amici dell'Arte to which he earned good public and critical reception, and already at that time it was noted that in his art “abundant imagination does not cross the boundary of good sense and honest decor which is too often violated by the sentinels of the Twentieth Century.”
This was followed by other exhibitions in which Soressi participated: two years later in 1928 again with the Amici dell’arte di Piacenza and at the ex Corradi Gallery 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, which was not a given far from his usual market and with a painting genre distant from any modernist impulse. In fact the painter used to say that “informal, abstract is nothing... When something cannot be measured, read, understood, it means nothing. Art is always something beautiful, harmonious, educational.” He also exhibited in Milan at the Micheli Gallery with Luigi Mantovani and nearly annually in his city, either with the Amici dell’Arte, the Bottega degli Artisti, or the Palazzo Gotico.
In 1932 Alfredo Soressi married Giuseppina Bracchi, also a watercolorist who, however, renounced her career after marriage by her husband’s wishes.[8]. Active also as an engraver, he provided illustrations for the volume Fantasie teatrali by Fulvio Provasi. As an architect he won in 1938 the project for the Casa del Mutilato of Piacenza, which would be built between 1939 and 1941. In 1937 he was named director of the Civic Museum, whose collections were at that time housed at the Gazzola Institute, a position he would 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 a show in the rooms of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna Ricci Oddi, empty of works that had been evacuated to the province to remove them from wartime danger, then the following year a show in the hall of the Filodrammatica and then in 1954 in the one held in Palazzo Gotico. He also resumed showing outside Piacenza, in Milan, Venice, Bari, at the Maschio Angioino in Naples in 1957, at the Roma Antibiennale held in August 1958 at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, curated by the association of pure figurative art, receiving certificates and prizes (Gold Medal at the Naples Pure Art Exhibition and at the Roma Antibiennale).
In 1956 he sought to realize a “village for artists” at Bosconure, near Ferriere in the upper Nure valley, the birthplace of his wife; however none of his colleagues welcomed the invitation to move there and thus only a small church, a hostel and a couple of houses were built. “A beautiful idea, but a bit eccentric,” commented critic Ferdinando Arisi in 1984 in his book I Soressi della Ricci Oddi.
He would continue his work in his studio until his death on March 1, 1982. By the painter’s will, twenty paintings were donated to the Ricci Oddi Pinacoteca in Piacenza which dedicated a retrospective to him. His works are also in the pinacotecas of Ferrara, Forlì and Bari.

In good preservation condition

The frame shown in the photo will be included as a courtesy / it is not part of the sale but will be shipped as a courtesy

insured shipping