Renato Guttuso was an Italian painter and politician.
19 Facts About Renato Guttuso
2.
Renato Guttuso was born in Bagheria, near Palermo in Sicily, but from 1937 lived and worked largely in Rome.
3.
Renato Guttuso joined the banned Italian Communist Party in 1940 and left Rome to become an active participant in the partisan struggle from 1943.
4.
Renato Guttuso's father, Gioacchino Guttuso, was a land surveyor and amateur watercolourist.
5.
Renato Guttuso began signing and dating his works at the age of thirteen.
6.
Renato Guttuso lived close to a house amongst the Valguarnera villas and Palagonia, which he would soon represent in paintings inspired by the cliffs of Aspra.
7.
In Palermo and in Bagheria Renato Guttuso observed the dereliction of the 18th-century villas of the nobility, abandoned to decay as a consequence of political infighting within the municipal chambers.
8.
Renato Guttuso went to Palermo for high school studies, and then to the University, where his development was modelled on the European figurative trends of the day, from Courbet to Van Gogh and to Picasso.
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Renato Guttuso's works opened doors for him in Milan and to further travel throughout Europe.
10.
Back in Palermo Renato Guttuso opened a studio in Pisani street and together with the painter Lia Pasqualino and the sculptors Barbera and Nino Franchina, formed the Gruppo dei Quattro.
11.
Renato Guttuso became a member of an artistic movement named "Corrente".
12.
Renato Guttuso lived close by to significant artists of the time: Mario Mafai, Corrado Cagli, Antonello Trombadori, keeping in contact with the group from Milan of Giacomo Manzu and Aligi Sassu.
13.
Renato Guttuso wrote in his diary: "it is the symbol of all those who endure insults, jail, torture for their ideas".
14.
Renato Guttuso did not stop working during the years of World War II, his work ranging from landscape glimpses of the Gulf of Palermo to a collection of drawings entitled Massacri, that clandestinely denounced slaughters such as the Fosse Ardeatine.
15.
In 1938 Renato Guttuso met Mimise Dotti, whom he married in 1956.
16.
Renato Guttuso wrote that those were preparatory sketches for "Occupation of uncultivated lands of Sicily", exhibited in the Venice Biennale in 1950, asserting:.
17.
Renato Guttuso painted a series from life about the fight of the peasants for the occupation of lands, the zolfatari, or glimpses of landscape between cactus and prickly pears, as well as portraits of men of culture like Nino Garajo and Bruno Caruso.
18.
Renato Guttuso died in Rome of lung cancer at the age of 75 on 18 January 1987.
19.
Renato Guttuso donated many of his works to his hometown Bagheria, which are now housed in the museum of the Villa Cattolica.