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- Carlo Carrà
- Also known as
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Carlo Carrà
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primary name: Carrà, Carlo
- Details
- individual; painter/draughtsman; printmaker; academic/intellectual; Italian; Male
- Life dates
- 1881-1966
- Biography
- Text from Martin Hopkinson, 'Italian Prints 1875-1975', BMP, 2007
Born in Piedmont at Quargnento, north of Alessandria, Carrà was apprenticed to a team of decorators whose work took him to Milan, London, Switzerland, and to the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle. In London, he was introduced to the writings of Marx and Bakunin by a group of exiled Italian anarchists. Carrà had visited many European museums before he enrolled first in 1904 at the Scuola serale d'arte applicata in Milan, and two years later at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera. His paintings initially were divisionist in style. In the course of organizing exhibitions for La Famiglia Artistica in Milan, Carrà became friends in 1908 with Boccioni and Russolo. The three artists met Marinetti in 1910, and together published the 'Manifesto dei pittori futuristi'. The following year, a trip to Paris led to Carrà's discovery of Cubism, and to his establishment of contacts with Apollinaire, Modigliani and Picasso. This visit encouraged Carrà to radically rework his divisionist 'Funeral of the Anarchist Galli' in a Futurist style. Two further visits in 1912 and 1914 strengthened his relationship with French artists. Carrà was deeply involved with Giovanni Papini and Ardengo Soffici's Florentine periodical, 'Lacerba', for which he both wrote and provided drawings. Following the example of the Cubists, he also experimented with collage.
During the war, Carrà studied Florentine early Renaissance painting, in particular, the works of Giotto and Uccello, on both of whom he published. Their aesthetic and other 'primitive' art, such as the paintings of Henri Rousseau and African sculpture, were to be fundamental for the post - war development of his paintings. When Carrà was called up into the Italian army in 1917, he met De Chirico, Savinio, and De Pisis in Ferrara. With De Chirico he developed Pittura Metafisica. However, although Carrà painted mannequins akin to De Chirico's, his colours were more restrained, his constructions more akin to Cubist sculpture, and his interior perspectives related to the art of the Trecento. He experienced a psychological crisis between 1918 and 1920, and largely abandoned painting, although he continued to draw and write, in particular, for the journal, 'Valori Plastici', as well as publishing a book, 'Pittura Metafisica'. Carrà was one of the most significant art critics of the 1920s and 1930s, particularly in the pages of the Milan newspaper, 'L'ambrosiano', for which he wrote for 17 years.
Carrà took up etching with enthusiasm in 1922, having received instruction from the ceramicist, Giuseppe Guidi (1861-1931), who had just opened a print workshop in Milan. He made 45 etchings in the three years 1922 to 1924. Carrà made his first lithograph for the Bauhaus portfolio of prints by Italian and Russian artists in 1922, and a further five lithographs and an aquatint in 1927 and 1928. He only returned to printmaking in 1944, when 22 lithographs were published in the portfolio, 'Segreti', published by Edizioni della Colomba. The same year, Carrà he made a further 12 lithographs as illustrations to Rimbaud's 'Versi e Prose', for another Milan publisher, Edizioni della Conchiglia. Segreti included Carrà’s only Cubist print. Three years later, Carrà illustrated Mallarmé's 'Monologue d'un Faune' for the Milanese publisher, 'Il Balcone', with five more lithographs. His later prints all drew on his earlier styles. Eight of his lithographs in the 1949 portfolio, 'Carrà 1912 -1921', were based on drawings from the years of 'Pittura Metafisica', the other two being Futurist designs. Carrà used colour in prints for the first time in 1952, and 15 of his last 18 prints were colour lithographs. Most of these, as well as his two final etchings of 1964, recapitulate works of the 1920s.
From that period onwards, his landscapes and seascapes owed much to the example of Cézanne. In 1933, Carrà was a signatory with Sironi, Campigli and Achille Funi to the 'Manifesto della pittura murale'. His frescoes for the Milan Triennale that year, and for the Palazzo di Giustizia in Milan in 1938, demonstrated his capacity for monumental work. Carrà became Professor of Painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in 1941. In the post -war period he continued to paint the themes of the 1920s, tranquil Ligurian coastal subjects and landscapes, to which repertoire he added views of Venice, in all of which the human figure was absent.
- Bibliography
- Massimo Carrà, 'Carlo Carrà, Opera grafica', Neri Pozza, Vicenza 1976
Elena Pontiggia, 'CC I miei ricordi, l'opera grafica 1922-1964', Milan 2004 (an exhibition of all 111 prints at the Fondazione Stelline, Milan)