Benvenuto Ferrazzi Biography
Benvenuto Ferrazzi, born on 21 August 1892 in Castel Madama, came from a family of artists. At fifteen, he decided to change his name and called himself "Benvenuto" in honor of Benvenuto Cellini. After a long apprenticeship as a copyist in museums following his father, he began to paint his own paintings. His artistic debut took place in the Roman panorama of the 1910s, during the climate of late symbolism and nascent futurism. In 1918, he exhibited in a group show at the Galleria dell'Epoca, together with Giorgio de Chirico, Carlo Carrà and Enrico Prampolini. He continues with personal exhibitions at the Anton Giulio Bragaglia Gallery, where he finds a personal style with a "primitivist" tendency that plays an important role in the story of the first Roman School. Although economic success was within reach, Benvenuto chose freedom and decided to return to his secluded world, living and working in convents and makeshift studios in Rome, Naples, Lazio and Abruzzo. Despite this, his painting gained notoriety. In the thirties and forties, he concentrated on urban views, becoming the new "painter of vanished Rome" and describing the popular Rome of the ancient neighborhoods, "the painter of Trastevere" and Borgo. Today, his paintings are preserved in the capital's museums, the Museum of Rome in Palazzo Braschi, the Gallery of Modern Art of Roma Capitale and the National Gallery, as well as in important Italian private collections. Benvenuto Ferrazzi was a secluded, shady artist who fueled his own legend for the bohemian attitude and lifestyle that characterized his entire existence, but also for the freedom and anarchy that led him to distance himself from the world of the art market and galleries. His contemporaries defined him as "the painter of vanished Rome", the "painter of Trastevere".
