Antonio Donghi

 Antonio Donghi, Self-Portrait, 1942

Antonio Donghi (1897-1963) was born in Rome. He studied painting at the Istituto di Belle Arti in Rome (1908–16) before military service in France. Donghi soon established himself as one of Italy's leading figures in the neoclassical movement that arose in the 1920s. In the post-World War I "return to tradition" of the Scuola Romana he shared an interest in 17th- and 18th-century painting with Francesco Trombadori and Carlo Socrate, with whom he exhibited at the Rome Biennale of 1923.  

 Antonio Donghi, Giocoliere (Juggler), 1926

The following year Donghi was exhibited in Milano's Galleria Pesaro together with Felice Casorati, de Chirico, Ubaldo Oppi and Mario Tozzi. He also participated in the important 1925 New Objectivity exhibition in Mannheim (Germany), and had solo shows in Paris, New York and Buenos Aires. Donghi also cooperated with the Novecento Italiano group, participating in their second exhibit in 1929.

 Antonio Donghi, Circo equestre, 1927

Possessed of an extremely refined technique, Donghi favored strong composition and spatial clarity. The critic Ugo Ojetti saw his clear realism and choice of subject-matter (people, still-lifes and cityscapes) as egalitarian and related to Caravaggio's influences. The disconcerting immobility of his figures (e.g. Woman at the Window) also drew comparisons with the work of Seurat and of Henri Rousseau, and it was identified as Magic Realism by Franz Roh (Expressionismus, magischer Realismus, Leipzig, 1925).

 Antonio Donghi, Canzone, 1934

By the 1940s, Donghi's work was far outside the mainstream of modernism, and his reputation declined, although he continued to exhibit regularly. In his last years he concentrated mainly on landscapes, painted in a style that emphasizes linear patterns. He died in Rome in 1963. Most of Donghi's works are in Italian collections, notably the Museo di Roma. You can see more of his paintings here in my Flickr set.

Mario Sironi

  Mario Sironi, Il camion giallo, 1918

Mario Sironi (1885-1961) was born in Sassari on the island of Sardinia, but spent his childhood in Rome. He embarked on the study of engineering at the University of Rome but quit after a nervous breakdown in 1903, one of many severe depressions that would recur throughout his life. Thereafter he dedicated himself to painting, and attended the Scuola Libera del Nudo, where he met Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini and Umberto Boccioni. These artists, who would later become the leading Futurists, were then painting in a Neo-Impressionist style. Sironi's development closely tracked theirs, and he adopted the Futurist style by 1913.

 Mario Sironi, La Lampada, 1919

After service in World War I, Sironi's version of Futurism gave way to an art of massive, immobile forms. In paintings such as La Lampada of 1919 (above), mannequins substitute for figures, as in the metaphysical paintings of Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà. Like many artists in the period following the war, Sironi looked to the art of the past for inspiration, and works such as Solitudine (Solitude) of 1926 (below) with their contained, geometric forms, bear some kinship to the neoclassicism evident in works produced at the same time by Picasso. 

  Mario Sironi, Solitude, 1926

In 1922, together with Ubaldo Oppi, Achille Funi and others, Sironi founded the artist group Novecento Italiano. Toward the end of the 1920s, Sironi's style became more painterly. Through all of his stylistic developments, Sironi's was always a somber and dramatic vision, characterized by blocky forms, stark oppositions of light and shadow, and a generally pessimistic air.

Mario Sironi, Urban Landscape, 1923

A supporter of Mussolini, he contributed a large number of cartoons - over 1700 in all - to Il Popolo d'Italia and La Rivista Illustrata del Popola d'Italia, the Fascist newspapers. Rejecting the art market and the concept of the easel painting, he became committed to the ideal of a fusion of decoration and architecture, as exemplified by Gothic cathedrals. He felt that the mural was the proper basis of a popular national art. 

 Mario Sironi, Italy Between the Arts and Sciences, 1935

The state commissioned from him several large-scale decorative works in the 1930s, such as the mural L'Italia fra le arti e le scienze (Italy Between the Arts and Sciences) of 1935, (above) and he also contributed to the Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution in 1932. Although his esthetic of brutal monumentality represented the dominant style of Italian Fascism, his work was attacked by right-wing critics for its lack of overt ideological content. 

Mario Sironi, The Motorcyclist, 1920s

As an artist closely identified with Fascism, his reputation declined dramatically in the post-World War II period. Embittered by the course of events, he also suffered the loss of his daughter Rossana by suicide in 1948. He had returned to easel painting in 1943, and worked now in relative isolation. The paintings of his later years sometimes approach abstraction, resembling assemblages of archaeological fragments, or juxtaposed sketches. He continued working until shortly before his death in 1961 in Milan.

 Mario Sironi,  Composizione con treno e figura, c. 1930

You can see more works of Sironi here in my Flickr set.

Christian Schad

 Christian Schad, Self-Portrait, 1930s

Christian Schad (1894-1982) was born in Miesbach, Bavaria as the son of a wealthy lawyer family. He studied at the Art Academy in Munich in 1913, but quit after a couple of months because he rejected any examinations. A pacifist, he fled to Switzerland in 1915 to avoid service in World War I, settling first in Zurich and then in Geneva. Both cities were centers of the Dada movement, and Schad became a Dadaist and witnessed the foundation of the famous Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. 

Christian Schad, Imperial Countess Triangi-Taglioni, 1926

In this period he developed a close friendship with the writer and dadaist Walter Serner. Beginning in 1918, Schad created his own version of the Photogram (which later was named "Schadographs" by Tristan Tzara) where a contour picture is developed on light-sensitive platters. Schad's descriptions of his techniques were eventually used by both Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy in their more extensive explorations.

 Christian Schad, Amourette, 1918 (Schadography)

Schad's paintings of 1915–1916 show the influence of Cubism and Futurism. Schad's most famous oil painting of that period, Kreuzabnahme (Cross-Decrease), was painted in grayish tones with Walter Serner as the model:

 Christian Schad, Kreuzabnahme, 1916

From 1920 to 1925, Schad spent some years in Rome and Naples, where he studied the Italian painters and was influenced by the new Italian Realism, notably by Ubaldo Oppi, Felice Casorati and the artistic group Novecento Italiano. In 1921 he started to paint in a sober, realistic style later referred to as Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), displaying  his interest in the relationship of the individual to society and conveying a sense of isolation and alienation. Schad married a lady from Rome, Marcella Arcangeli,  in 1923.  A wondeful portrait of Marcella was painted three years later:

 Christian Schad, Marcella, 1926

In 1927 the family emigrated to Vienna where Christian and Marcella separated (she died 1931 in a bathing accident). Schad went to Berlin in 1928 and settled there, now painting some of the most significant works of the New Objectivity. He led a dandyesque life visiting salons, dance and night bars. He was involved with some drawings in a "Guide to the vicious Berlin". His figures and motifs reflect the "golden" glamorous side of the Twenties.

Christian Schad, Self-Portrait with Model,1927

Also in 1927 Christian Schad painted his above "Self-Portrait with Model", which today has become the best known and most reproduced work of the artist and the New Objectivity. As the "painter with a scalpel," he dissects himself and his lover with cool objectivity. His eyes are wary, the atmosphere of the picture is cool, almost icy. The people depicted have nothing to say. Schad reported later that the woman's face was that of a stranger he saw as a customer in a stationery shop. The "sfregio", the facial scar, is a kind of "proof of love": the women in Naples wore these scars with pride to show that they had a jealous husband or lover.

 Christian Schad, Loving Boys, 1929

After the Nazis had seized power in 1933, Schad's art was not condemned in the way that the work of Otto Dix, George Grosz, Max Beckmann, and many other artists of the New Objectivity movement was, and in 1934 he was even able to submit some works to the" Great German Art Exhibition". This may have been because of his lack of commercial success and because the paintings of that time no longer possessed the cool sharpness of his earlier work. Also, Schad withdrew into a sort of "internal exile", reducing his painting to a only a few works. 

Christian Schad, Dr. Haustein, 1928. Dr. Haustein was a dermatologist with a specialist interest in syphilis who serviced the prostitutes on Berlin's Kurfürstendamm. In the late 1920s his home became a fashionable salon where many of the distinguished artistic and literary figures of the time would meet. Schad described the unique atmosphere there as being one of "extreme intellectual and erotic freedom where writers, artists, and politicians would mingle with a plethora of scientists, physicians and beautiful women:"

In 1935 Schad took over the management of a brewery operation (the family fortune had vanished in the 1929 stock market crash) and developped an intense interest in  East Asian mysticism. In 1936 the Museum of Modern Art in New York displayed some of his  early Schadography - without his knowledge. In search of a model Schad met the young actress Bettina Mittelstadt whom he portrayed in 1942. She became his second wife in 1947.

 Christian Schad, Bettina, 1942

After the destruction of his Berlin studio during a 1943 bombing raid Schad moved to Aschaffenburg, Bavaria. The city commissioned him to copy Grünewald's Virgin, a project on which he worked until 1947. Schad continued to paint in the 1950s in a softened, almost kitschy style. He died in Stuttgart on February 25, 1982.