Giovanni Costantini Biography
Giovanni Costantini (1872 - 1947) as a young man began to enter the world of art as a shop boy, first for the set designer Alessandro Bazzani and then for the painter Gioacchino Pagliei. At the same time he studied and, in his free hours, attended, albeit occasionally, the evening school of the nude at the French Academy, starting to produce works in which the influence of Giulio Aristide Sartorio was evident. He made his debut at the Mostra degli Amatori e Cultori in 1892 with a series of landscapes of the Roman countryside. Around 1900 he introduced the human figure into his pictorial compositions, as a natural complement and animating force of the landscape, committing himself with great passion to harmonizing man with nature, sometimes also through symbolic visions. In 1904 he immediately joined the XXV Group of the Roman Campaign. At the first Roman Biennale (1921), following a pressing invitation first from the organizing committee and then from the Mayor of Rome, he decided to present the challenging pictorial cycle that had occupied him continuously since the end of the First World War, called The Tears of War. Difficulties and bitterness immediately began for the author, who was accused of defeatism by some members of the organizing committee due to the crudeness of some scenes of life at the front, forcing him to withdraw six of the forty-five compositions that made up the cycle. Threats are circulating and the paintings risk destruction due to their pacifist and anti-militarist tone. Despite all this, the public declared the painter's works a great success and the painting The Spy even won the first prize for paintings. Despite the important exhibitions in which he was among the protagonists (Mostra del Sempione in Milan in 1906, I Roman Secession in 1913, I Mostra dei XXV della Campagna Romana in 1922) Costantini continued to paint until the end of his days.
