Enrico Galassi Biography
Enrico Galassi (1907 – 1980) An all-round artist, born in Ravenna in 1907, Galassi was an all-round artist who trained in decoration, mosaic and architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts and who during his career was able to compare himself with some of the major artists of his time such as De Chirico, Savinio, Carrà, De Pisis. After a period dedicated to traveling (Paris, North Africa, southern Spain), he made his debut in 1931 at the Galleria del Milione in Milan. His first personal exhibition was a great success: in fact, others followed at some prestigious national galleries and at the II Quadrennial in Rome (1935). When his artistic path already seemed well outlined towards a successful pictorial career, Galassi decided to change by dedicating himself to architecture. The first works built, his home-studio "I Ronchi" (1934) and a holiday home for Alberto Savinio (1936-38), both located in Poveromo, near Forte dei Marmi, convinced and pleased the critics, so much so that “I Ronchi” was published and positively reviewed on the pages of “Domus” by Gio Ponti himself. In the 1940s, twenty years after his studies at the Ravenna Mosaic School, Galassi sensed the potential of a mosaic that was renewed on the basis of the art of his time, as an independent artistic work. Thus he founded the Mosaic Studio, in via Margutta 48 in Rome and the fruit of two years of research flowed into an exhibition of twenty-two mosaics at the Galleria Ferruccio Asta in Milan, in May 1942. After the war Galassi lived and worked in Rome, staying for a few years, also in Sicily, where he was called by Don Luigi Sturzo to direct and relaunch the Caltagirone Ceramics School. Forgotten as a painter, it was only in 1970 that his hometown remembered him with an exhibition at the Mariani gallery. Galassi's name still awaits its rightful place in the history of twentieth-century Italian art.
