Renato Guttuso Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

Renato Guttuso (Palermo 1912 - Rome 1987) At a very young age he frequented the workshop of a cart decorator. At the end of the twenties, while completing his classical studies, he began training in the studio of the futurist Pippo Rizzo. Read the full biography

Renato Guttuso Biography

Renato Guttuso (Palermo 1912 - Rome 1987) At a very young age he frequented the workshop of a cart decorator. At the end of the twenties, while completing his classical studies, he began training in the studio of the futurist Pippo Rizzo. After exhibiting at the I Quadrennial in Rome (1931) and in a group show at the Galleria del Milione in Milan (1932), he abandoned his university studies and settled in Rome (1933). He formed friendships with Mafai, Pirandello, Cagli and Ziveri, who influenced his painting in a "tonal" sense. In 1935 he participated in the II Quadrennial and in 1936 in the Venice Biennale. In 1938 he created his first epic-popular painting, The Flight from Etna, and held a solo show at the Galleria della Cometa. In 1942 at the Bergamo Prize, he obtained second prize with the Crucifixion, an open denunciation of the disasters caused by the Regime. In this period he studied and reinterpreted the snappy figurations of the post-cubist Picasso and accentuated his polemical streak towards social issues, playing a fundamental role in the "realist" evolution of Italian painting. Also noteworthy is the function of intermediary between the Roman and Milanese environments linked to "Corrente". Initially his action in favor of an engaged painting took place within the fascist left headed by Giuseppe Bottai and the magazine "Primato". During the war years, alongside Antonello Trombadori and other exponents of the Communist Party, he actively participated in the Resistance. The series of massacres begins (collected in the book Gott mit uns). In 1947 he joined the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti. Since the 1950s he has been the main exponent of a "realist" current, politically committed alongside the PCI, and often polemically at war with the "formalist" tendencies of much abstract art.