Franz Borghese (1941-2005) - Pugni nudi

Author: Franz Borghese

Technique: Color engraving

Print run: XIV / XXV

Size: 100 cm x 50 cm

Nude Fists


FRANZ BORGHESE (1941-2005)

Painter, sculptor, and writer, Franz Borghese was born in Rome on January 21, 1941.

He has been painting since he was a boy, during his years at the Via Ripetta art high school, where he was fortunate to have excellent teachers such as Domenico Purificato, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Umberto Maganzini, and Giulio Turcato.
At the end of the 1950s, he frequented via Margutta and in 1961 opened a studio with Sebastiano Sanguigni. The following year, he moved the studio to via Pompeo Magno, in the Prati district, where he remained for ten years.

In 1964, he founded the group and the eponymous magazine Il ferro di cavallo, which involved intellectuals and artists of the era.

In 1967, with some of them, such as Daniela Romano and Giorgio Fasan, he made the experimental film-painting La grande mela, which, in a neo-expressionist key, depicts consumer society, its alienations, and possible alternatives. The film was screened at the XI Festival dei due Mondi di Spoleto.

In 1968, he held his first solo exhibition on Via Margutta in Rome, in a gallery he opened himself with the help of friends. He exhibited the large painting In Memory of Luther King. This first show was not a success, but on the closing evening, sports journalist Ennio Viero entered, who would become his first collector. Another of his early supporters was the printer Bruno Fogar, and American gallerist T.W. Burger organized a solo exhibition for him in Chicago.
The painting Le ombre is exhibited at the VI Exhibition of Figurative Arts of Rome and Lazio at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, while the Municipal Art Gallery of Rome acquires one of his works.
In the late 1960s, he introduced satire and sarcasm into his poetry, abandoning dark and profound tones to begin depicting characters from the early twentieth-century petty bourgeoisie. He thus developed a new language, evoking parallels with George Grosz, Otto Dix, James Ensor, Mino Maccari, and Heinrich Hoerle. In 1970, at the Il Calibro gallery in Rome, he presented a series of paintings on the theme 'Trial of the Bourgeoisie.'

He begins to frequent Caffè Fassi, where he meets Agostino Agostini and other chess players like him, who will become the protagonists of many of his works.
Debuts at Milan at the Il Cannocchiale gallery in via Brera. On this occasion, Dino Buzzati dedicates a review to him in Il Corriere della Sera.
In these years, he is deeply influenced by Bosch and Brueghel, but also by Jaques Callot, from whom he draws inspiration for some original perspective solutions. In 'The Dukes,' we find Piero della Francesca; he is also interested in Goya for his large choral compositions and his raw portrayal of violence, as well as Grosz and Dix, certainly, for their tragic and biting depiction of society. Among contemporaries, he appreciates Longanesi and Maccari.

In 1974, at the Palmieri gallery in Milan, he exhibited his first Nave dei folli. There, he met Salvatore Fiume (link to Fiume's page), who purchased two of his works and with whom, the following year in Canzo, in the province of Como, he created a large four-handed painting (La condanna di Cristo), intended for the Vatican Museums, which was also exhibited for a month at the L’Isola gallery in Milan. During that period, Franz Borghese moved to live on Via della Scrofa, right in the historic center of Rome, which would become the backdrop for several of his works. In 1976, he created around a hundred satirical drawings on militarism, collected in the book W la Guerra, presented in a traveling exhibition that visited Perugia, Milan, Rome, Naples, Avellino, and Bari.
In the years, exhibitions continue in Italy and abroad, and in 1986 a large public exhibition was held at the National Museum of Castel Sant’Angelo, curated by Carmine Benincasa, featuring works created between 1969 and 1986. A monograph published by Giorgio Mondadori, with a preface by Giorgio Bocca, was presented at Brerarte's venue in Milan.
The following year, Franz Borghese designed the cover of February's Arte with the work 'Lighter Than Air' and resumed studies for the series of paintings 'The Career of the Libertine,' revisiting the famous series by William Hogarth.

In 1989, in homage to the French Revolution, he exhibited at Arte Fiera di Bologna twenty watercolors titled History of the Great Army.

In 1990, he wrote and illustrated Waterloo, an imaginary battle.
It is this year's first solo exhibition at the Artesanterasmo gallery in Milan, with which
He will collaborate regularly for 15 years, until his passing.