Francesco Messina (1900-1995) - Nudo

Lithography on paper in 3 colors - Work signed by hand at the bottom right and numbered bottom left - 50x70 cm - year 1989 - Limited edition - specimen to be shipped with certificate of guarantee 54/100 - without frame - excellent condition - private collection - purchase and provenance Italy - shipping via UPS - SDA - DHL - TNT - BRT.
Biography
Francesco Messina was born on December 15, 1900 in Linguaglossa, a small town at the slopes of Mount Etna, to Angelo Messina and Ignazia Cristaldi. His family is very humble: to escape poverty, in 1901 his parents decide to emigrate to America. Reaching Genoa, the Messina family does not embark because they cannot afford the journey and settles in vico Fosse Del Colle, in the heart of one of the city's most popular areas, where the future artist spends a solitary childhood among narrow streets, the port wharves 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 classes to complete primary school and drawing courses. In the workshops of marble workers around Staglieno Cemetery, Messina becomes aware of the materials of sculpture (especially marble and bronze) and learns the techniques of working: the relationship with matter and knowledge of the traditional techniques of sculpture 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 Accademia Ligustica di Belle Arti 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 participating in the Venice Biennale, where he is present in all editions until 1942, the year in which 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 makes one of his first journeys of artistic education visiting the main Tuscan cities. In 1926 he exhibits for the first time in Milan, at the Novecento Italiano exhibition, where he presents a Self-Portrait and meets colleague Arturo Martini, friend and rival. In 1929 he holds his first solo show in Milan presented by Carlo Carrà and begins to exhibit more frequently abroad as well. At thirty-two he moves to the Lombard capital, which he already frequented for cultural initiatives and foundries, where he comes into contact with cultural figures such as Alfonso Gatto and Giorgio Morandi. During this period he undertakes study trips to the major European museums and to Greece, where he comes into direct contact with the great classical sculpture. On these occasions, Messina has the opportunity to see, and often touch, ancient works from which to learn and which for him represent the perfection to which the artist must aspire. The interest in the ancient and the need for direct contact with works of the past are realized also 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 on display in the living room of his Milanese home, intending to later donate it to Milan, his city of adoption. The most substantial core of the collection is formed by terracotta statuettes of Greek and Magna Graecian production, depicting little horses, draped female figures, 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 will devote great attention to color in his terracotta, plaster and bronze sculptures. His reflection on classical art and tradition intertwines with continuous experiments and an open search for stimuli of his time. By the end of the 1920s he becomes a nationally renowned artist and one of the major representatives of Italian art. In 1934 he obtains by competitive examination the chair of sculpture at Brera Academy as successor to Adolfo Wildt; two years later he is also named director of all the art schools of the Academy. Because of his proximity to the fascist regime, evident in commissions and the numerous portraits of top government figures that he executes during the Twenty Years, at the end of World War II he is dismissed from teaching. Already in 1947, however, he regains the chair at Brera, also thanks to the intervention of some antifascist friends, including Renato Guttuso and Sirio Musso. In the same year he obtains international critical and public recognitions, exhibiting in Buenos Aires, at the encouragement of his friend Lucio Fontana, and in Philadelphia. In the fifties the sculptor is very involved in exhibitions in Italy and abroad and is in high demand for both public and monumental works as well as private pieces. Among his most famous public works, realized between the late fifties and the sixties, 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 the general public. Public interviews and appearances become frequent, where his skill as draftsman, sculptor, painter and even poet is praised. Also in these years he continues his figurative and classical-derived research, which receives both praise and resistance and opposition. Messina remains faithful to this choice of tradition and realism even when colleagues and friends take different paths. With these premises, the sculptor tackles the themes that most interest his artistic research: portraiture; representation of the body and movement; the taste for the fragment, typical of the Twentieth Century, but which for Messina is also a call to archaeology of ruins, useful to express the transience of things. His creative process starts from life study, from drawing, followed by the terracotta model to be translated, i.e., realized, in bronze or marble. In the early seventies, 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 largely to a selection of works donated to the City of Milan and forming the first nucleus of the Studio Museo collection. At the same time, Messina chooses to donate some of his works to important Italian museums, such as the National Museum of the Bargello in Florence, and to foreign ones, such as the Bavarian State Painting Collections in Munich, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg. In 1994 he receives the Sculpture Prize from the Presidency of the Council of Ministers. He passes away on September 13, 1995 in Milan, the city that had welcomed and hosted him for much of his life and that had conferred honorary citizenship to him years earlier. The Presidency of the Republic posthumously awards him the Culture Prize.