Andrea Parini Biography
Andrea Parini (Caltagirone, 13 June 1906 – Gorizia, 18 January 1975) was an Italian sculptor, ceramist and engraver. Thanks to a scholarship he attended the artistic high school of Palermo, then enrolled in courses at the Academy of Fine Arts of Palermo, graduating in sculpture. In the same period he practiced in ceramic workshops in Palermo. He then opened a studio in Palermo, where he created marble sculptures and engraved woodcuts, for which he initiated contacts with the artists who gravitated around Ettore Cozzani's magazine L'Eroica. In 1928 he became a friend of Luigi Bartolini, who was transferred as a teacher to the Caltagirone introductory school due to disagreements with the fascist authorities of Pola. His debut was at the Los Angeles International Engraving Exhibition in 1930. Present, from 1932 to 1942, at exhibitions of the Sicilian Fine Arts Union, he arrived at the Venice Biennale in 1934, in the "Applied Arts" section; he was then present at the Rome Quadrennial in 1935 and 1939, and at the Milan Triennale in 1947 and 1951, awarded the silver medal that year. From 1942 to 1963, without interruption, he was director of the Nove Art Institute in Bassano, including the teaching of art history. It develops Nove's ceramic production from tradition and supports a group of young ceramists, including Giovanni Petucco, who feel free from the references of the past. His students are Alessio Tasca, Pompeo Pianezzola, Federico Bonaldi and many others. The Vicenza area thus becomes an innovative Italian center in artistic research in the field of ceramics. In the same years, Parini formed a fraternal friendship with Gio Ponti, documented by an extensive correspondence. In 1950 he participated in the IX International Ceramics Competition in Faenza and returned to the Venice Biennale, obtaining the Prize for Ceramics with the Chess series. In 1952, like Lucio Fontana, Fausto Melotti and Pablo Picasso, he obtained a personal room at the 1st Exhibition of Italian Art Ceramics in Messina. Some of his works are found in the "Twentieth Century" Section of the Ceramics Museum of Nove, in the "Contemporary" Section of Palazzo Sturm, the Ceramics Museum of Bassano del Grappa, and in the eighteenth-century "Women's Hospital", which today houses the MACC - Museum of Contemporary Art of Caltagirone. Large vase of the Queen, 1954 In Nove, in the fifties, he opened a modern ceramic studio, under the name of "Parini Ceramiche". In 1958 he presented a solo exhibition at the La Chiocciola Gallery in Padua and exhibited works in stoneware, majolica, porcelain and earthenware. In 1963 he was appointed director of the State Art Institute of Padua and a few months later of that of Venice. From 1966 to 1975 he directed the State Art Institute of Gorizia, in whose cemetery he was buried in the family tomb, designed by his friend Gio Ponti with the dedication: "Master in his art to which he dedicated his life". Vittorio Sgarbi wrote about him: «He is in reality, like Melotti, Fontana, Leoncillo, essentially a sculptor, with an elegiac streak, without the intellectual rigor of his business colleagues, but to some extent similar, in sensitivity to Melotti, a masked lyricist . His portrait of his sleeping daughter Onorina, from 1941, is a masterpiece of incomparable delicacy, formal and sentimental.»
