[Encyclios]

Italy

In Italy, Expressionism represented a rather marginal reality, although it was known to many artists. The frantic futuristic experimentation on one side, the divisionist symbolism and the academic classicism on the other, divided the attention of intellectuals and experts, leaving little room for a figurative culture so little in tune with local traditions.

Nevertheless, in some painters, a particular attention towards certain aspects of the language or the most disturbing themes of expressionism is evident. First of all, Umberto Boccioni, whose works between 1908 and 1910 show clear signs of a strong interest in the painting of an Ensor or Munch (The Mourning 1910: private collection).

On a completely different side, Gino Rossi appropriated, in the years 1908-14, some of the most exquisitely pictorial features of the German movement, namely that reduction of volumes to harsh chromatic syntheses.

Lorenzo Viani’s expressionism, on the other hand, is based on a vocation of social commitment to which the strong aggressiveness of the Nordic models offers a more suitable opportunity for expression.

In the artistic biographies of other artists it is still possible to identify moments of reflection on what expressionism had elaborated, but it is never a question of adhesion to any current of the movement.