Renzo Vespignani Biography
Roman by birth, he was a painter, illustrator and set designer. His youthful artistic references range from Luigi Bartolini to the foreign painting of George Grosz and Otto Dix with whom he shares the dramatic poetics coming from the experience of war. His themes, expressed with figurative and realistic tools, are those of the crisis of Western civilization and dehumanization in consumer society. Founder of "Città Aperta" in 1956, he intended to make a contribution not aligned with the realist "movement". In 1963, together with colleagues Ugo Attardi, Ennio Calabria, Francesco Ferroni, Fernando Farulli, Giuseppe Guerreschi, Piero Guccione, Alberto Gianquinto he founded "Pro e contra", yet another gathering point for Italian figurative trends. From the beginning, passionate about literature, he illustrated numerous masterpieces, from Eliot to Boccaccio, with etchings of renowned quality.