Francesco Messina (1900-1995) - Cavalli

Lithograph on paper in four colors - Work signed by hand in the bottom right and numbered in the bottom left - 50x70 cm - year 1988 - Limited edition - specimen that will be shipped with a certificate of guarantee 86/100 - unframed - excellent condition - private collection - purchase and provenance Italy - shipping via UPS - SDA - TNT - DHL - BRT .
Biography
Francesco Messina was born on December 15, 1900, in Linguaglossa, a small town at the foot of Etna, to Angelo Messina and Ignazia Cristaldi. His family is very humble: to escape poverty, in 1901 his parents decide to emigrate to America. After reaching Genoa, the Messina family does not board the ship because they are too poor to afford the journey and settle in vico Fosse Del Colle, in the heart of one of the city’s more popular districts, where the future artist spends a solitary childhood among narrow streets, the port wharfs, and the rocks. He is soon drawn to sculpture: by day Messina works in the workshops of marble workers, where he is trained; by night he attends lessons to complete elementary school and drawing courses. In the marble workers’ shops that gravitate around Staglieno Cemetery, Messina becomes aware of the materials of sculpture (especially marble and bronze) and learns the techniques of workmanship: the relationship with the material and knowledge of traditional sculpture techniques will be indispensable starting points and references for his artistic practice. After fighting in World War I, he returns to Genoa, attends courses at the Ligurean Academy of Fine Arts, and forms relationships with various writers and intellectuals, including Eugenio Montale, who introduces him to poetry, and Salvatore Quasimodo. In 1921 he exhibits at the I Biennale di Napoli and from 1922 begins to participate in the Venice Biennale, where he is present in all editions until 1942, the year he wins the First Prize, and where he meets artists such as Carlo Carrà and Adolfo Wildt. In 1922 he meets Bianca Fochessati Clerici, a wealthy married woman with a daughter, who will become his wife only in 1943. One of the couple’s few friends is Montale: together with him Messina undertakes one of his early journeys for artistic instruction, visiting the major Tuscan cities. In 1926 he first exhibits in Milan, at the Italian Novecento show, where he presents a Self-Portrait and meets colleague Arturo Martini, a friend and rival. In 1929 he holds his first solo show in Milan, curated by Carlo Carrà, and begins to exhibit more frequently abroad as well. At thirty-two he moves to the Lombard capital, which he had already frequented for cultural initiatives and foundries, where he comes into contact with figures of culture such as Alfonso Gatto and Giorgio Morandi. During this period he undertakes study trips to major European museums and to Greece, where he comes into direct contact with the great classical statuary. On these occasions, Messina has the opportunity to see, and often touch, ancient works from which he draws lessons and which for him represent the perfection toward which the artist must strive. His interest in the antique and the need for direct contact with works of the past also materialize in the creation of a small archaeological collection, consisting of about seventy pieces of Greek, Roman, and Etruscan production, and artifacts of Egyptian, Chinese, and Mesoamerican origin. The artist keeps it exhibited in the living room of his Milanese home, intending to donate it later to Milan, his city of adoptive home. The collection’s most substantial core consists of terracotta figurines of Greek and Magna Graecian production, depicting foal-like animals, draped female figures, and nudes – all subjects dear to the artist and still preserving traces of vivid colors in some cases. The polychromy, typical of classical art, is found in many of Messina’s works, who pays great attention to color in his sculptures in terracotta, plaster, and bronze. His reflection on classical art and tradition intertwines with continuous experimentation and with research open to the stimuli of his time. At the end of the 1920s he becomes a nationally renowned artist and becomes one of the leading representatives of Italian art. In 1934 he obtains, by competition, the chair of sculpture at the Brera Academy as successor to Adolfo Wildt; two years later he is also appointed director of all art schools at the Academy. Due to his proximity to the fascist regime, evident in the commissions and numerous portraits of the government’s top figures that he executed during the Fascist era, at the end of World War II he is dismissed from teaching. Already in 1947, however, he regains the chair at Brera, aided by the intervention of some anti-fascist friends, including Renato Guttuso and Sirio Musso. In the same year he receives international critical and public recognitions, exhibiting in Buenos Aires, at the urging of his friend Lucio Fontana, and in Philadelphia. In the 1950s the sculptor is very active in exhibitions in Italy and abroad and is in high demand for both public and monumental works and private pieces. Among his most famous public works, created from the late 1950s to the 1960s, are the busts of Giacomo Puccini and Pietro Mascagni for La Scala, the Monument to Santa Caterina at Castel Sant’Angelo, the Monument to Pius XII for St. Peter’s Basilica, the Dying Horse for RAI, which makes him famous to a broad public. Public interviews and appearances become frequent as his abilities as a draughtsman, sculptor, painter, and even poet are praised. Even in these years he pursues his figurative, classical-derived research, which meets approvals but also resistances and oppositions. Messina remains faithful to this choice of tradition and realism even when colleagues and friends take different paths. With these premises, the sculptor addresses the themes that most concern his artistic research: portraiture; representation of the body and movement; the taste for the fragment, typical of the Twentieth Century, but for Messina also a call back to archaeology in the ruins, useful to express the transience of things. His creative process starts from study from life, from drawing, followed by a terracotta model to be translated, i.e., realized, in bronze or marble. In the early 1970s, after retirement, Francesco Messina establishes his studio in the former Church of San Sisto, granted to him by the Municipality in exchange for a complete restoration of the building. In this space Messina creates not only his new workshop but also his monographic museum, thanks mainly to a selection of works donated to the City of Milan and forming the first core of the Studio Museo collection. Simultaneously, Messina chooses to donate some of his works to important Italian museums, such as the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence, and to foreign ones, such as the Munich Gallery of Modern Art, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. In 1994 he receives the Sculpture Award from the Presidency of the Council of Ministers. He passes away on September 13, 1995, in Milan, the city that welcomed and hosted him for a large part of his life and that had conferred honorary citizenship to him years earlier. The Presidency of the Republic posthumously awards him the Culture Prize.