AMERIGO CANEGRATI
(Milan 1900 ~ 1938)
Landscape, 1931
Oil on canvas, 95 x 110 cm
Considered one of the most modern Lombard painting trends, and included among Italian 20th-century artists, he exhibits profound coloristic qualities in both landscape and figure paintings. He is the author of strongly architectural compositions, highlighted by a dense and substantial chromaticism. In 1930, he won the Venice City Prize at the Biennale. Canegrati interprets the landscape according to a non-descriptive, but rather evocative, naturalist formula – in the manner of Renoir – where simplification of lines is accompanied by a delicate application of color and a highly expressive use of small brushstrokes that make the artistic research "concrete". The naive atmosphere the painting conveys brings us back to themes of simple and clear immediacy, very popular between the 1920s and 1930s, when the 20th-century climate was already well-established.
Essential Bibliography: A.M. Comanducci, Illustrated Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Italian Painters, Drawers, and Engravers, Milan, Patuzzi Editore, 1962, p. 330. Galleria d'Arte Moderna di Milan, Electa, 1974.
Publications and Exhibitions: II Collective Exhibition of the Arts of the 20th Century, curated by G. Cribiori, Pavia, Castello Visconteo, April 28 – June 17, 2007.
