Gigi Chessa Biography
Luigi Chessa was born in Turin in 1898. During his childhood, he lived in Paris and moved to Turin in 1909, where he attended the Albertina Academy between 1914 and 1918, followed by a year of study with the painter A Bosia. In 1920 he met Spadini in Rome and, at the end of the year, worked for some time in Anticoli, in Ciociaria. He was interested in Fattori, whose works he had the opportunity to see at the Roman Biennale of 1921, and in Cézanne, admired at the Venice Biennale of 1920. In 1922 he exhibited at the Promotrice in Turin and began to collaborate with the Lenci company, for which he created several furniture and carpet projects. In 1923 he was awarded at the Biennial of Decorative Arts in Monza, where he exhibited a Breakfast Room and a Room of Dolls, and participated with paintings in the I Quadrennial of Turin and in the XIV Venetian Exhibition of Ca' Pesaro, where he appeared as a student of Casorati. In 1924 he exhibited at the Pesaro gallery in Milan and at the Lido in Venice, and in 1925 at the Società Fontanesi in Turin, again at Ca' Pesaro and at the Parisian exhibition of decorative art, where he was awarded a prize. As an architect-decorator and set designer, in 1925 he restored the old Scribe Theatre, which took the name of the Turin Theater and of which he was director for a year. A sensitive painter of landscapes, nudes and still lifes, in 1926 he was invited to the I Mostra del Novecento Italiano in Milan, in 1927 to the Turin Quadrennial and to the exhibition of contemporary Italian painters at the Rath Museum in Geneva and in Zurich. Also in 1927 he was entrusted with the chair of scenography at the Higher School of Architecture in Turin, and he exhibited the furnishings of a pharmacy at the III Biennale of Monza. In 1928 he was present with a complete review of his activity at the XVI Venice Biennale, where he also created decorations for the exhibition rooms. In the same year he also participated in the I Rational Architecture Exhibition in Rome and designed the pavilions of photographers and the Valli di Lanzo for the Turin Exposition. Chessa's notoriety is particularly linked to the group of "six painters of Turin", which included J. Boswell, N. Galante, C. Levi, F. Menzio and E. Paulucci. Their movement was mainly based on taste, in opposition to the declared Romanism of the twentieth century and their hostile corporatism towards any foreign influence. The Turin group, on the contrary, recognized themselves in the common cultural premises of modern and European art. Despite his serious illness, Chessa did not slow down his work: in 1930 he created advertising works for the companies Venchi Unica and Vis Securit in Turin, he furnished the Solaro company and the house of his friend R. Gualino; again in Turin, in 1932, he set up shop windows for the Fashion Exhibition and created the furnishings of the Fiorina bar. He died prematurely on 23 April 1935 in Turin, where in the same year a retrospective presented by C. Levi was dedicated to him: the following year the Venice Biennale paid homage to him.
