Born in Verona on 10 December 1905, Renato Birolli has been a major figure in Italian painting and cultural debate from the 1930s to the 1960s. A painter, but also an essayist, critic and politically engaged thinker, Birolli spanned three decades of artistic history, developing a body of work at once diverse and remarkably coherent, driven by an exploration of the infinite lyrical possibilities of colour and of the painterly gesture as an act of poetic as well as political freedom.

As a young painter in Milan in the early 1930s, Birolli became close to the critic Edoardo Persico, who championed the lessons of Impressionism and Primitivism in opposition to the established conventions of the Novecento Italiano. These were the years of the gatherings at the Craja bar and the Caffè Mokador, as well as of the exhibitions at the Galleria del Milione, where Birolli first exhibited in November 1930.

His Milanese years left behind numerous articles and works such as San Zeno Pescatore (1931) and Il taxi rosso (1932), products of a maniera chiara from which he would soon move away, transforming the chromatic sensibility of his native Veneto into an incandescent lyrical Expressionism, as in Caos (1937).

During the second half of the 1930s, his association with the Hermetic poets and his first stay in Paris in 1936, where he studied Delacroix, Renoir, Matisse, Van Gogh and Cézanne, transformed both his way of “dreaming reality” and his understanding of colour.In 1938, he was among the founders of the group and journal “Corrente”, a “monthly review of art, literature and politics” whose activities brought together philosophers, writers, critics and artists including De Grada, Anceschi, Bo, Carrà, Guttuso and Fontana.
The journal was suppressed by the Fascist authorities in June 1940, but Corrente continued its activities through the Bottega di Corrente gallery, which opened in December 1939 with a solo exhibition devoted to Birolli.

In 1940, he was awarded second prize at the Premio Bergamo. Two years later, he exhibited at the XXIII Venice Biennale from June to September 1942 and held a solo exhibition at the Galleria della Spiga.

During the war, he and his family were displaced to a farmhouse in Cologno di Melegnano, where he worked on subjects drawn from rural life. His participation in the Resistance in the Lombard countryside is documented by the series of drawings Italia ’44, published by La Conchiglia in 1952.

Following the end of the war, he became one of the leading figures behind the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti and returned to Paris in 1947, where he met Picasso and associated with abstract painters of the Nouvelle École de Paris, including Domínguez, Adam and Hartung.
During this period, he held several solo exhibitions in Venice, at the Galleria del Cavallino in 1947, and in Milan, at the Galleria del Milione and the Galleria dell’Annunciata in 1949, presenting the results of his highly personal exploration of French post-Cubist syntax.
Following the dissolution of the Fronte, he joined the Gruppo degli Otto, presented by Lionello Venturi at the XXVI Venice Biennale in 1952.

At the beginning of the 1950s, Birolli met the American gallerist Catherine Viviano. On 2 January 1951, his first solo exhibition in New York opened at her gallery, followed by two further solo exhibitions at the Catherine Viviano Gallery in 1955 and 1958.

Frustrated by the ideological provincialism of the debate surrounding Neorealism, in which he nevertheless played a prominent part, Birolli spent long periods during the 1950s working in coastal locations including Fosso Sejore in 1953 and 1954, Isola di Porto Buso in 1951, Bocca di Magra in 1952, Manarola in 1955 and 1958, Tellaro in 1956, and Antwerp (Belgium) in 1957.
These periods of “immersion in nature”, genuine “physical trials of imaginative escape”, gave rise to the Taccuini delle Marche, the celebrated series of Incendi and Vendemmie delle Cinque Terre (1955-1958), and the Antwerp series I Canti (1957), works in which physical space dissolves into the emotional intensity of colour.

In 1954, he produced a monumental mural decoration for the X Milan Triennale and participated in the XXVII Venice Biennale.

The following year, he took part in the inaugural edition of documenta in Kassel, held from July to September 1955. In 1957, more than one hundred works dating from 1946 to 1957 were included in the exhibition of the Cavellini Collection at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome in May, and subsequently at La Chaux-de-Fonds (Switzerland), in January 1958.

He died of a heart attack on 3 May 1959.

Only a few days later, a solo exhibition opened at the Haus am Waldsee in Berlin, before travelling to numerous German cities between 1959 and early 1960. During the same period, the LIV Biennale di Verona, held from May to June 1959, and the VIII Quadriennale di Roma, held from December 1959 to April 1960, each devoted an individual gallery to his work.

The following year, his Taccuini were published under the editorship of Enrico Emanuelli, while the XXX Venice Biennale devoted a monographic gallery to his work from June to September 1960.

Renato Birolli was born in Verona on 10 December 1905 into a working-class family: “As the son of a baker, at the age of six I was living in Verona’s Municipal Bakery, in the Campofiore district” (ACGV/FB).

In accordance with his father’s wishes, he completed a diploma in accounting before entering the artillery corps as an officer cadet. In 1925, he enrolled at the “C. B. Cignaroli” Academy of Fine Arts in Verona, where he attended painting classes taught by Trentini, Nardi and Girelli.

During his third year, he was expelled from the Verona Academy for “indiscipline and excesses in singing”.

In 1928, Birolli moved to Milan, where he initially lived with his sister on Corso di Porta Vittoria; the following year, he established a studio in via Solferino.

After working in a variety of occupations, including as a sports reporter and insurance agent, he found employment as a proofreader at L’Ambrosiano, where he met Carlo Carrà. In 1930, he made his debut at the XVII Venice Biennale, exhibiting two landscapes.

While in Milan he met and became friends with the critic Edoardo Persico, who introduced a younger generation of artists in Milan, including Guttuso, Manzù and Sassu, to the lessons of Impressionism and Primitivism, in deliberate opposition to the conventions of the Novecento Italiano. These were the years of the gatherings at the Bar Craja and the Caffè Mokador, as well as of the exhibitions at the Galleria del Milione, where Birolli first showed his work in November 1930.

During these years, Birolli wrote reviews and articles for numerous newspapers and journals, including L’Ambrosiano, Il Brennero, L’Italia vivente, the Bollettino della Galleria del Milione, Quadrante and Il Ventuno. He also exhibited widely: at Pier Maria Bardi’s gallery in Rome in 1932, in the group exhibition Dieci Pittori, at the VI Sindacale Lombarda, at the Franco-Italian painting exhibition in London, and at an exhibition of contemporary Italian painting in San Francisco. From 1932 onwards, he lived and worked in Piazzale Susa.

Among the works dating from his early Milanese years are San Zeno pescatore (1931) and Il taxi rosso (1932), both expressions of a maniera chiara from which he soon departed, transforming the chromatic sensibility of his native Veneto into a renewed form of lyrical Expressionism, as exemplified by Il caos (1937).

By the mid-1930s, Renato Birolli had grown close to Salvatore Quasimodo and the Hermetic poets. “They changed my way of dreaming reality,” he would later recall in his Taccuini. 

In 1936, he travelled to Paris for the first time, where he met Lionello Venturi, then living in exile, and studied the work of Corot, Manet, Delacroix, Braque, Renoir, Matisse, Van Gogh and Cézanne.

The same period saw the development of an important intellectual friendship with the critic Sandro Bini, who in 1937 wrote the introduction to the 46 disegni delle Metamorfosi, published by Campografico. Birolli was arrested for political reasons and subsequently dismissed from his position at L’Ambrosiano.

In 1938, he married Rosa Rossi, known as Rò, with whom he had two sons, Zeno and Marco.

During the same period, Renato Birolli was among the founders of the group and journal “Corrente”, formerly Vita Giovanile, a “monthly review of art, literature and politics” founded by Ernesto Treccani on 1^st January 1938 with a programme of intellectual renewal and a commitment to opening Italian art more fully to European culture.

The journal, published from 10 January 1938 to 31 May 1940, was suppressed in June 1940 by the Fascist authorities. Corrente nevertheless continued its activities, thanks in part to the support of the collector Alberto della Ragione, through the Bottega di Corrente gallery, which opened in December 1939 with a solo exhibition devoted to Birolli, held from 12 to 24 December.

Birolli contributed numerous articles to Corrente, including a series of writings devoted to the city and Aspetti non privati dell’artista (“Non-Private Aspects of the Artist”), published on 31 May 1940.

In 1940, he was awarded second prize at the Premio Bergamo. The following year, he spent time in Valpolicella and became the subject of his first monograph, written by Sandro Bini and published by the Corrente press.

In 1942, Birolli exhibited an extensive selection of works at the XXIII Venice Biennale, held from June to September, and presented a solo exhibition at the Galleria della Spiga, formerly the Bottega di Corrente, accompanied by an introductory text by Salvatore Quasimodo.

During the war, Renato Birolli was forced to leave Milan with his family and take refuge in a farmhouse at Cologno di Melegnano, where he turned his attention to subjects drawn from rural life.

Birolli’s participation in the Resistance is powerfully documented in the series of drawings Italia ’44, exhibited in Milan in May 1945 in a solo exhibition at the Galleria Santa Radegonda. In 1943, he published Sedici Taccuini, the first edition of his writings and notes on painting.

During these years, he devoted himself to drawing and photography while continuing to paint works such as Ritratto di Ro’ (1940), Elegia per un paese felice (1942) and Girasoli (1943). These works bear witness to a profound engagement with lived reality which, beyond the horrors of war, found expression on canvas in a renewed sense of joy through colour.

In 1946, Birolli was among the promoters of the Nuova Secessione Artistica, subsequently renamed the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti, which was granted a dedicated gallery at the XXIV Venice Biennale in 1948, featuring works by Birolli, Guttuso, Corpora, Santomaso, Morlotti and Vedova, among others.

In 1947, he spent an extended period in Paris with Morlotti as a recipient of a French government scholarship.

There, he met Pablo Picasso and associated with painters linked to the abstract current of the Nouvelle École de Paris, including Óscar Domínguez, Henri-Georges Adam, Nicolas de Staël, Édouard Pignon, Jean Bazaine and Hans Hartung.

It was also in 1947 that Birolli met Achille Cavellini, who acquired Donna e luna, Le cupole di San Marco and the series of drawings Italia ’44, and soon became the artist’s foremost collector. In August and November of that year, Birolli exhibited at the Galleria del Cavallino in Venice and the Galleria dell’Annunciata in Milan, where he presented the results of his highly personal exploration of French post-Cubist syntax. Following the dissolution of the Fronte, he joined the Gruppo degli Otto, presented by Lionello Venturi at the XXVI Venice Biennale in 1952.

In 1948, Birolli exhibited at the Galleria Sandri in Venice and at the Prima Mostra Nazionale d’Arte Contemporanea in Bologna, an exhibition that drew the scorn of Palmiro Togliatti. Shortly afterwards, amid internal disputes and the hardening of the Italian Communist Party’s position in favour of Neorealist art, the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti fractured, although it formally continued its activities until 1950.

In 1949, Birolli held two solo exhibitions in Milan, at the Galleria del Milione and the Galleria dell’Annunciata, and spent several months in France and Brittany, particularly at La Trinité-sur-Mer, which inspired works such as Pescivendola bretone.

From the beginning of the 1950s, Birolli spent extended periods of solitude and work in a number of coastal locations: on Isola di Porto Buso, near Grado, in 1951; at Bocca di Magra in 1952; and at Fosso Sejore in 1950, 1953 and 1954.

These periods of “immersion in nature”, genuine “physical trials of imaginative escape”, gave rise to the Taccuini delle Marche and to works marked by a vibrant graphic energy, such as Necropoli etrusca.

During these same years, he took an active part in the debate surrounding Neorealism and wrote a number of polemical essays, including Courbet e il Realismo (1949), Il lavoro nella pittura italiana (1950), and the conference he presented at the Gabinetto Vieusseux in Florence on 19 January 1953.

In 1951, Birolli held his first solo exhibition in New York at the Catherine Viviano Gallery, accompanied by an introductory text by Lionello Venturi. The three solo exhibitions and three group exhibitions that Viviano would subsequently organise around Birolli’s work, including those of 1953, 1956 and 1970, played an important role in bringing his work into American collections.

In 1952, he joined the Gruppo degli Otto, comprising Afro Basaldella, Renato Birolli, Antonio Corpora, Mattia Moreni, Ennio Morlotti, Giuseppe Santomaso, Giulio Turcato and Emilio Vedova. The group was presented by Lionello Venturi at the XXVI Venice Biennale, where Birolli was also given a dedicated gallery.

During the same period, the publisher La Conchiglia issued the volume Italia ’44.

In the spring of 1953, Birolli travelled through Spain before spending the summer at Fosso Sejore, where he completed the Taccuino delle Marche. The following year, he created a large-scale mural decoration for the X Triennale di Milano and participated in the XXVII Venice Biennale.

In 1955, Birolli held his second solo exhibition at the Catherine Viviano Gallery (January 31-February 26), and took part in the inaugural edition of documenta in Kassel, held from July to September.

He spent the summer in Manarola, where he painted the celebrated series of Vendemmie e Incendi nelle Cinque Terre (1955, 1958), in which physical space dissolves into the emotional intensity of colour, giving rise to a new and highly distinctive form of abstract naturalism.Enthusiastically received by critics and the press, the abstract works of this final period earned him the Premio La Spezia, the third prize at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, and the Premio Lissone. In 1956, he spent the summer in Tellaro and travelled to Germany for the first time.

Between late 1956 and May 1957, Birolli spent several months in Antwerp, where he began the pictorial cycle of I Canti. After returning to Milan, he made brief trips to Paris and London.

In May 1957, more than fifty of his works, together with his drawings of the Resistance, were included in the exhibition of the Cavellini Collection at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome. The exhibition was subsequently presented at La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, in January 1958.

In 1958, Birolli took part in the XXIX Venice Biennale as a commissioner. In March, he travelled to New York, where his third solo exhibition at the Catherine Viviano Gallery opened the following month, presenting works from his Antwerp period. During this stay, he encountered the latest developments in Action Painting, which he studied with considerable interest without ever fully embracing them.

After returning in March 1959 from a brief journey to Germany, Birolli died of a heart attack on 3 May 1959.

Only a few days later, a solo exhibition opened at the Haus am Waldsee in Berlin, before travelling to numerous German cities between 1959 and early 1960. During the same period, the LIV Biennale di Verona, held from May to June 1959, and the VIII Quadriennale di Roma, from December 1959 to April 1960, each devoted an individual gallery to his work.

Between October and November 1959, the Galleria La Nuova Pesa in Rome presented Italia ’44, a solo exhibition devoted to Birolli’s drawings of the Resistance, which subsequently travelled to several Italian cities during 1960.

The following year, his Taccuini were published under the editorship of Enrico Emanuelli, while the XXX Venice Biennale devoted a monographic gallery to his work from June to September 1960.