Ettore Di Giorgio Biography
Ettore Di Giorgio was born in Alexandria, Egypt on 13 August 1887. After completing his classical studies, he moved to Italy where he attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence from 1904 to 1911, dedicating himself mainly to engraving under the guidance of A. De Carolis. During his stay at the Academy he received two encouragement awards for study trips to Venice and subsequently completed his artistic training with short stays in Siena and Rome. From 1912 to 1914 he resided with his family in Munich, Germany, where he began his career as an engraver. From the beginning he practiced what was called original xylography, revived by A. De Carolis and E. Cozzani, founders in 1912 of the Italian Wood Engravers Corporation, an association that aimed to free wood engraving from a purely illustrative function, placing it in continuity with the great Italian engraving tradition of the sixteenth century and also enhancing its artisanal commitment with respect to new photomechanical reproduction techniques. Between 1913 and 1914 Di Giorgio was one of the illustrators of the magazine L'Eroica, directed by E. Cozzani, which constituted one of the most prestigious and exclusive showcases of original wood engraving of the time. However, in the end he moved away from the rhetorical and redundant virtuosity from which he started, achieving an ever greater stylization of forms. As for the subjects, Di Giorgio soon abandons the literary themes of D'Annunzio inspiration and dedicates himself to a recovery of figures and images with an exotic and vaguely archaic taste. From the point of view of graphic technique, he simplified the various traditional processes in an experimental and original way, obtaining, for example, chiaroscuro or colored wood engravings by subsequently inking a single matrix with different shades; this workmanship was sometimes enriched by the application of decorative motifs cut from thin gold sheets. As an engraver he participated in various national and international exhibitions: in Levanto at the 1912 Wood Engraving Exhibition, in Bologna in 1919 at the Black and White Exhibition, in Rome in 1921 and 1923 at the I and II Biennale, in Monza at the 1923 I International Exhibition of Decorative Arts, and in the same year at the Turin Fine Arts Exhibition. From 1930 he combined his career as an engraver with that of a painter (especially of portraits and still lifes) and continued to participate in exhibitions in Italy and abroad: in 1927 at the International Exhibition of Modern Engraving in Florence, in 1931 at the "Settimana Italiana" art exhibition in Athens, in 1935 with his personal exhibition in Livorno, again in 1935 and then in 1938 and 1939 at the Unione Interprovinciale Fascista delle belle arti exhibitions in Naples, in 1937 at his personal exhibition in Viareggio and the Italian Art and Contemporary He exhibited in Berlin, in 1939 at the III Quadrennial in Rome and at the Sanremo National Painting Competition, where he won with a portrait of a lady, now at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome. Di Giorgio's last years of activity were dedicated almost exclusively to painting, also due to an accident that deprived him of the use of his left hand. After 1940, however, opportunities to exhibit his works became less frequent. Di Giorgio's works are currently present in some Italian and foreign galleries and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in Milan, the Revoltella Museum in Trieste, the Cabinet of Drawings and Prints of the Uffizi Gallery and the Museo d' Modern Art of Turin.
