Ennio Morlotti (1910-1992) - Le rose

Lithograph on paper in 11 colors - Hand-signed artwork at the bottom right and numbered at the bottom left - 50x70 cm - year 1991 - Limited edition - specimen to be shipped with a certificate of guarantee 61/100 - unframed - excellent condition - private collection - purchase and provenance Italy - shipping via UPS - SDA - TNT - DHL - BRT.
Biography
Ennio Morlotti, one of the leading figures in the Italian and European art scene of the second half of the 20th century, was born in Lecco, on Lake Como, on September 21, 1910, into a family where the father was a war invalid and the mother was a teacher.
After a first school-age childhood in a boarding school, where he excelled in his studies, in 1923 he began working as an accountant in a oil mill, then until 1936 as a clerk in a paint factory and a worker in a mechanical factory.
Despite the harsh living conditions of those years, he devoted himself to the study of old art in churches and museums, also taking an interest in contemporary art, until he earned the artistic maturity as a private student at Brera.
Having resigned from the factory, he moved to Florence and enrolled in the Academy, where, supervised by Felice Carena, he graduated with a thesis on Giotto, obtaining the highest marks.
In 1937, thanks to the income from the sale of three paintings exhibited for a competition for the Lecco landscape, he made a trip to Paris where he saw the original works of his beloved Cézanne and Picasso.
In 1940 he joined the Corrente group, which drew inspiration from the university magazine "Corrente di vita giovanile", directed by Ernesto Treccani, following its French expressive orientation, from Van Gogh to the Fauves.
In 1945 he married Anna and the following year he joined the Communist Party, which he remained with for six months; this was a difficult year economically but fruitful culturally, as he signed the Manifesto of Realism, joined the Front of the Arts, and held his first solo show at the II Camino gallery in Milan. That year, thanks to a scholarship obtained from Lionello Venturi, he could have resided in Paris for two years with Renato Birolli, but after two months he returned to Milan because he could not paint; nevertheless he had met Picasso's studio, had met Braque, Dominguez, De Staël, Sartre and Camus.
Then, just after the 24th Venice Biennale (1948), where he exhibited with all the artists of the Front of the Arts, Morlotti’s stance was defined, and along with Birolli he broke away from the members of the 'realist' segment of the group.
It is precisely in the 1950s that he produced some of the capital works of informal art, not only Italian but also European, certainly linked to the experiences of artists such as Wols, Fautrier, De Staël, but also Pollock and De Kooning.
The Biennale hosted his works numerous times, in 1950, in 1952 with the Group of Eight, in 1954 with a room presented by Giovanni Testori (destroying the works exhibited shortly after), in 1962 winning the prize (joint with Capogrossi) reserved for an Italian artist, in 1964 within the section "Art of today in museums", in 1972 with a personal room, in 1988 with another solo show in the pavilion dedicated to Italy and in the section dedicated to the review "The Front of the Arts at the 1948 Biennale".
In 1986 and 1992 he was invited to the National Quadriennale of Art in Rome.
The most important overall exhibitions of the last decade are those in 1987 in Locarno and Milan, and in 1994 in Ferrara, held after his death, which occurred on December 15, 1992 in Milan.