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- Lorenzo Viani
- Also known as
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Lorenzo Viani
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primary name: Viani, Lorenzo
- Details
- individual; printmaker; journalist/critic; Italian; Male
- Life dates
- 1882-1936
- Biography
- Born in Viareggio, Viani was encouraged to study at the Istituto di Belle Arti in Lucca by Plinio Nomellini, running into trouble with the police for his anarchist activities. In 1904 he moved on to the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, where he was taught by Fattori and Adolfo De Carolis. Viani established friendships with Antony De Witt, Moses Levy, Armando Spadini and Giovanni Papini. Nomellini, with whom he studied at Torre del Lago, introduced him to the surviving Macchiaioli painters. He developed a strong interest in satire and caricature which was first shown in the drawings that he exhibited at the 1907 Venice Biennale. Very significant for his future development was his encounter with the work of the Belgian sculptor Constantin Meunier and the Belgian painter and etcher Eugène Laermans, who were exhibiting works in Venice that year. Viani travelled to Paris in 1908 where he experienced extreme poverty and met Jean Richepin, the song writer and poet of tramps, and Octave Mirbeau, the naturalist writer and anarchist art critic. He associated with other political and social activists. The following year Viani met Meunier in Brussels. In 1910 he began to write as an art critic and polemicist for Luigi Salvatori's weekly Versilia. Viani's paintings were in a style influenced by the Fauves and the German Expressionists, whose pictures were readily visible in Paris.
After another visit to Paris in the winter of 1911, Viani settled in Viareggio, and published a little book, ironically titled 'Alla Gloria della Guerra', attacking the Italian government's invasion of Libya, which led to his arrest and imprisonment. He was also involved in the creation of Manipolo d'Apua, a political and literary association centered on the radical socialist poet Ceccardo Roccatagliata Ceccardi.
Viani's earliest woodcuts made c.1913 show that he had studied the woodcuts of the Fauves, particularly the work of Derain. His subject matter in both paintings and prints was Steinlenesque, poverty stricken sailors, widows and tramps untouched by sentimentality. Viani's enthusiasm for Italy's entry into the First World War led him to travel the country making speeches in favour of it. 54 of his woodcuts were shown alongside his paintings and drawings in a huge exhibition of 624 works at the Palazzo delle Aste in Milan in 1915. The following year he published 'Il Martirio', a collection of 10 woodcuts, in Viareggio. After service in the Italian forces Viani devoted a major part of the rest of his life to literature, while continuing to paint and make woodcuts. Most of his prints were individual blocks, but in 1921 he illustrated 'Vogliamo vivere', a collection of letters by Gabriele D'Annunzio, with eight woodcuts, published in Pescia by Benedetti and Nicolai. He had met the writer for the first time over 20 years before. Viani also used 12 woodcuts to illustrate his own 'Gli Ubriaci', published by Alpes in Milan in 1923. Other prints of his were used for posthumous publications. In all he is known to have made over 200 woodcuts. Viani's paintings of the 1920s are indebted to the Nabis, especially to Maurice Denis. From 1924 to 1927 he was teaching at the Istituto di Belle Arti in Lucca. By then he had left the anarcho-socialists and become a fascist, even establishing a personal friendship with Mussolini. However, he still continued to paint the poor and those on the fringes of society. Viani collaborated with the sculptor Domenico Rambelli on the design of the Monument to the Fallen in Viareggio. Although he had given up his membership of the Fascist party in 1932, four years later he was awarded a commission for a series of frescoes for the Collegio IV Novembre in Ostia, but collapsed and died with the project barely begun.
Viani published poetry, short stories, several novels and autobiographical reminiscences. In his writings he was inspired by his experiences in Paris and the war and the life of seafarers and coastal folk. Viani also wrote regularly for the Corriere della Sera and edited the journal Rivista Versiliese.
(Text by Martin Hopkinson)
- Bibliography
- There is no catalogue raisonné of Viani's prints. The prime sources for his art are Rodolfo Fini, 'Lorenzo Viani xilografo', Milan, 1975; Ida Cardellini Signorini, 'Lorenzo Viani', Florence, 1978; and the exhibition catalogue edited by Gianfranco Bruno and Enrico Dei, 'Lorenzo Viani un maestro del Novecento europeo', Palazzo Mediceo, Seravezza, 2000. The recent exhibition 'Lorenzo Viani: opere grafiche e legni xilografi', Palazzo Paolina, Viareggio, 2002 catalogues 17 of his wood blocks.
