Giovanni Colacicchi, “Fine d’ Estate”, (End of Summer), 1932, Oil on Canvas, Gallery of Modern Art, Florence, Italy

Born in 1900 at the ancient town of Anagni, Giovanni Colacicchi was an influential figurative painter of Italy’s Novecento artistic movement. Launched in 1923 at an exhibition in Milan, Novecento’s members rejected Europeanavant-garde art and wished to revive the tradition of large format history painting in the classical Italian manner. The group wished to create an art that was associated with the nationalistic rhetoric of Italy’s fascist regime. 

The son of Roberto Colacicchi and Pia Vannutelli, Colacicchi completed his classical studies in Rome. He arrived in Florence in 1916 and worked as an assistant at the Scolopi school. Colacicchi volunteered for military service after the defeat of the Italian army at Caporetto in 1917; however, hostilities had ceased before his military train reached the front lines in 1918. He enrolled in 1920 at the University of Florence’s Faculty of Letters and Philosophy. Colacicchi studied painting under Francesco Franchetti and would later write one of the few contemporary biographic works on Franchetti’s life. 

While at the University of Florence, Colacicchi frequented the Giubbe Rosse Cafe, an important meeting place for Florentine artists and intellectuals among whom were sculptor Giuseppe Graziosi and writers Alessandro Bonsanti, Alberto Carocci and Elio Vittorini. In 1922, he set up his first studio in the Borgo San Jacopo district of Florence. Colacicchi was a co-founder of the political and literary newspaper “La Rivista di Firenze” in 1924;  he contributed an article “Sulle Arti del Disegno (On the Art of Drawing)” and two poems for the paper. 

In September of 1924, Giovanni Colacicchi married Amalia Zanotti, a daughter of a noble family from Biella who introduced him to the landscapes of the Calabrian region. This marriage would later be annulled and he would marry painter Flavia Arlotta who would remain with him until his death. In October, Colacicchi exhibited his “Malinconia (Melancholy)” at the Palazzo della Esposizioni held at the Parterre di San Gallo; through this important work, he would be introduced to the Novecneto movement. In 1926, Colacicchi presented his work to positive reviews at the “Novecento Italiano” exhibition in Milan which also included works by Carlo Carrà, Giorgio de Chirico, Filippo de Pisis, and Giorgio Morandi.

From 1928 to 1948, Colacicchi exhibited his work regularly at the Biennale of Venice and participated in all the other major exhibitions. In 1930, he had his first solo exhibition at the Saletta Fantini in Piazza Santa Trinita. After designing stage sets for the Scala in Milan in 1931, Colacicchi painted his 1932 “Fine d’Estate (End of Summer)”, later purchased in 1992 by Milan’s Gallery of Modern Art, and began his “Giacobbe e l’Angelo (Jacob and the Angel)”. After two more solo shows, he exhibited his “Jacob and the Angel” at the nineteenth Venice Biennial. In June of 1936, Colacicchi had a major exhibition of work, including paintings done during a year stay in South Africa, at the Galleria Fantechi.

In 1940, Colacicchi became a professor at Florence’s Accademia di Bella Arti, a position he would hold until 1970. Evacuated with his family to the Florence subdivision of Vallombrosa in 1943, Colacicchi and his family were guests of art historian Bernard Berenson at the Casa al Dono. While residing there, he posed his model Guido Fabiani tied to a tree and painted his 1943 “San Sebastian”. During these war years, Colacicchi and his family took into their home both Allied soldiers who escaped from German prison camps and Jewish families in danger of being caught.

After the liberation of Florence in August of 1944, Colacicchi became the Rector of the Accademia de Bell Arts and was called to join the Urban Commission for the Reconstruction of Florence to oversee historic conservation of both its urban landscape and monuments. Besides his portraits, landscapes, and monumental figure studies, he created numerous decorations for public buildings in Italy. On the twenty-second of January in 1947, Colacicchi exhibited his work in a group show entitled “Nuevo Umanesimo (New Humanism)” that cited its opposition  to the new wave of abstraction and supported objectivity in  the subject’s representation, both pictorial and sculptural. He continued to exhibit in solo and group exhibitions through the rest of his years primarily in Italy but also in Germany, Sweden, and Spain. 

In 1991, a retrospective entitled “Giovanni Colacicchi” was published by Idea Books in Milan. On the twenty-seventh of December in 1992, Giovanni Colacicchi, still at work on his paintings, died in his family’s home in Florence’s Via dell’Osservatorio. The private archive of Giovanni Colacicchi and his second wife Flavia Arlotta, deposited by their children Piero and Francesco in 2011, is preserved at the Archivio Contemporaneo “Alessandro Bonsanti” of the Gabinetto Vieusseux in Florence.  

Notes:  The official Giovanni Colacicchi website, which contains a year by year biography and multiple galleries of his work, is located at: http://www.giovannicolacicchi.com

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Giovanni Colacicchi”, circa 1920s, Vintage Print

Second Insert Image: Giovanni Colacicchi, “Landscape, 1941, Oil on Canvas, 60.5 x 76 cm, Private Collection

Third Insert Image:Giovanni Colacicchi, “La Via Lattea con Spirale (The Milky Way with Spiral)”, 1980, Oil on Canvas, 50 x 60 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Giovanni Colacicchi and Flavia Arlotta”, circa 1935-40, Vintage Print