Biography

 

Fausto Pirandello was born in Rome on 17 June 1899 by Luigi Pirandello and Antonietta Portolano.

Around 1923 dates the first known paintings. In 1926 he exhibited for the first time at the Venice Biennale.

In 1927 he was in Paris, where he held his first solo exhibition in 1929. The following year he exhibited in Vienna, then he was in Rome,

where in 1931 he had his first Italian solo show, and where he lived and worked until his death. He was in the early thirties, close to the Comet group, and therefore to the most advanced positions of the Roman artistic environment, but at the same time he had no relation with the official cultural hegemony.

 

The second and third Quadriennale ('35 and '39) gave him two important personal exhibitions, while in 1932 he resumed his participation in the Venetian Biennales; in 1938 at the Comet Gallery, the first personal exhibition of drawings. It is customary to consider his painting of that time - now present in the main Italian and foreign museums - as an integral part of that wide and, all in all, uneven movement that is the Roman School. Pirandello shares with his main protagonists a warm palette, restricted to earthy colours, and tuned in tones; and participates with them in overcoming Spadini's post-Impressionist painting - which still made countless proselytes - and in the erosion of monumentalism and classical academicism. But, compared to Scipione, Mafai, Raphael, Mazzacurati or shortly afterwards to the young Guttuso, his position is markedly autonomous, and his formal universe also differs from that of his closest associates, such as Emanuele Cavalli or Giuseppe Capogrossi.

 

In the post-war period he is present at almost all the Biennales and Quadrennials, while the problematic relationship with Lionello Venturi opens up, which leads him to question his "figurative" choice, and urges him to adopt abstract forms. After a brief moment of disbandment Pirandello, however, knows how to recover what he had, at the end of the 1920s, in Paris, already elaborated on Cubist spatial syntax and opens a late season - still little known - of certain value. He lived progressively more and more secluded during the Sixties and the early Seventies, in which, however, his industriousness was intense and particularly focused on pastels.

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He died in Rome on 30 November 1975. A year later the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome dedicated the first important retrospective to him.

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Fondazione Fausto Pirandello

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Bibliography

 

 

G. Appella, Fausto Pirandello. Vita, opere, fortuna critica, in Fausto Pirandello 1899-1975, exhibition catalogue edited by G. Appella, G. Giuffré, De Luca Edizioni, Rome 1990, pp. 165-210.

 

C. Gian Ferrari, Fausto Pirandello, De Luca Editore, Rome 1991.

 

M.L. Aguirre D'Amico, Album Pirandello, Mondadori, Milan 1992.

 

F.R. Morelli, Guttuso Pirandello Ziveri, 1938-1943. Realismo a Roma, 1938-1943, exhibition catalogue edited by F. D'Amico, Edizioni Netta Vespignani, Rome 1995, pp. 85-127.

 

F. Matitti, "La vita attuale e la favola eterna". Regesto 1925-1944. Appendix: unpublished writings, critical anthology, in Fausto Pirandello. "La vita attuale e la favola eterna". Mostra del centenario, exhibition catalogue edited by M. Fagiolo dell'Arco, with the collaboration of C. Gian Ferrari, Edizioni Charta, Milan 1999, pp. 39-101.

 

V. Rivosecchi, "E' proprio dell'arte, e da sempre, astrarre". From the post-war period to the 1970s, in Fausto Pirandello. "La vita attuale e la favola eterna". Mostra del centenario, cit., pp. 103-113.

 

A. Camilleri, Biography of the changed son. Il romanzo della vita di Luigi Pirandello, RCS, Milano 2000.

 

The Pirandellos return to Chaos. La pittura passione artistica della famiglia, exhibition catalogue edited by A. Perniciaro, F. Capobianco, C.A. Iacono, Salvatore Sciascia Editore, Caltanissetta 2003, pp. 23-25.

 

E. Providenti, Colloqui con [Luigi] Pirandello, Polistampa, Florence 2005.

 

P. Bonani, Fausto Pirandello. La vita, le opere e la fortuna critica, in Pirandello. Le nature morte, exhibition catalogue edited by F. D'Amico, M. Goldin, Linea d'Ombra Libri, Treviso 2007, pp. 96-210.

 

F. Matitti, Fausto Pirandello. Gli anni di Parigi 1928-1930, Artemide, Rome 2009.

 

E. Camesasca, Fausto Pirandello 1899-1975. Biography, in C. Gian Ferrari, Fausto Pirandello. General catalogue, Electa, Milan 2009, pp. 237-244.

 

Exhibition Catalogue, Fausto Pirandello: I nudi palazzo Grimani, Venice, 2011

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F. Matitti, Luigi Pirandello e le arti figurative, in Legami e corrispondenze. Immagini e parole attraverso il 900 romano, exhibition catalogue edited by F. Pirani, G. Raimondi, Palombi Editori, Rome 2013, pp. 303-319.

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Exhibition catalogue: Cézanne e gli artisti italiani del '900, curated by M.T. Benedetti, ed SKIRA, Milan, 2013

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Exhibition catalogue: Pittura Italiana... e altre storie minori ed. Castelvecchi, Rome 2015

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Exhibition Catalogue: Fausto Pirandello: 1889-1975, Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, July 2015

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Exhibition Catalogue: Angelo Mosca, "Me e Pirandello" in collaboration with  Fondazione Fausto Pirandello. Galleria Six,  from  April to 20 May 2017 Essay by  Michele Tocca. Curated by Chiara Bertoni and Angelo Mosca

 

Exhibition Catalogue: Museo della follia curated by Vittorio Sgarbi, and Sara Parravicini, 2017

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Exhibition catalogue: Fausto Pirandello e il cenacolo di Anticoli Corrado, in memory of Pierluigi Pirandello, 2018

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Exhibition catalogue: Fausto Pirandello " Corpi" Galleria Six , Milano 2020

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Exhibition catalogue: Fausto Pirandello Il Dramma Della Pittura  MART, Rovereto, 2023

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