Ennio Morlotti (1910-1992) - Le rose

Lithograph on paper in 11 colors - Work signed by hand in the bottom right and numbered in the bottom left - 50 x 70 cm - year 1991 - Limited edition - specimen to be shipped with certificate of guarantee 50/100 - without frame - excellent condition - private collection - purchase and provenance Italy - shipping via UPS - SDA - TNT - DHL - BRT.
Biography
Ennio Morlotti, one of the major figures in the Italian and European art scene of the second half of the twentieth 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 spending his early school years in a boarding school, where he excelled in his studies, he began in 1923 to work as an accountant in a cellulose factory, then until 1936 as an employee in a paint factory and a worker in a mechanical plant.
Despite the harsh living conditions of those years, he devoted himself to studying ancient art in churches and museums, also taking an interest in contemporary art, until he obtained his artistic maturity privately at Brera.
Having left the factory, he moved to Florence and enrolled in the Academy, where, under the guidance of Felice Carena, he graduated with a thesis on Giotto, achieving the highest marks.
In 1937, thanks to the income from the sale of three paintings exhibited for a competition for the Lecchese landscape, he took a trip to Paris where he saw the original works of his beloved Cézanne and Picasso.
In 1940 he joined the Corrente group, inspired by the university magazine "Corrente di vita giovanile", directed by Ernesto Treccani, following its French Expressionist 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 Fronte Nuovo delle Arti and held his first solo show at the II Camino gallery in Milan. In that year, thanks to the scholarship arranged by Lionello Venturi, he could have resided in Paris for two years along with Renato Birolli, but after two months he returned to Milan because he could not paint; nevertheless he had met and visited Picasso’s studio, had encountered Braque, Dominguez, De Staël, Sartre and Camus.
Then, just after the XXIV Venice Biennale (1948), where he exhibited with all the artists of the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti, Morlotti’s position was defined, as he, together with Birolli, separated from the “realist” components of the group.
It is precisely in the 1950s that he produced some of the pivotal works of informal art, not only Italian but also European, surely connected to the experiences of authors such as Wols, Fautrier, De Staël, but also Pollock and de Kooning.
The Biennale hosted his works many times: in 1950, in 1952 together with the Gruppo degli Otto, in 1954 with a room presented by Giovanni Testori (destroying the works exhibited immediately afterward), in 1962 winning the prize (jointly with Capogrosso) 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 personal in the Italy pavilion and in the section dedicated to the review "The Fronte nuovo delle Arti at the 1948 Biennale".
In 1986 and 1992 he was invited to the National Quadriennale of Art in Rome.
The most important comprehensive 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.