Mario Sironi (1885–1961) was a prominent Italian Modernist artist deeply entwined with the political and artistic currents of his time. He was described by Art critic Giulio Carlo Argan once as a “towering figure of Italian modernism”.
Early Life and formation
Sironi was born in Sassari, on the island of Sardinia. His father was an engineer and his maternal grandfather was the architect and sculptor Ignazio Villa (1815-1895).
The year after his birth his family moved to Rome where he spent his childhood. In 1903, he experienced a nervous breakdown, one of many severe depressions that would recur throughout his life. As a result, he left the study of engineering at the University of Rome.
He decided thereafter to study painting. He began attending the Scuola Libera del Nudo of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma.
Balla and the Futurism
There he met the painter, art teacher and poet Giacomo Balla (1871-1951), best known as a key proponent of Futurism. He became “his first real teacher”.
Sironi adopted the Futurism for a brief time. In 1914, He exhibited with the Futurists at the Galleria Sprovieri in Rome.
In fact, he was drawn to Futurism mainly because of its socio-political ideas. These included its scorn for bourgeois values and its extreme nationalism. He was less interested in its aesthetic principles.
He enthusiastically supported the movement’s campaign for Italian intervention in the First World War. During this time, he served as a member of the Lombard Volunteer Cyclists and Drivers.
The inter-war years and Fascism
In 1922, Sironi helped found the Novecento Italiano movement. This movement was part of the return to order in European art during the post-war period.
Sironi’s work achieved great success during the inter-war years.
Sironi fervently supported Mussolini. He had close relations with the regime, for which he set up several exhibitions and many pavilions. Moreover, the painter worked as an illustrator for the Popolo d’Italia, the newspaper founded by Benito Mussolini.
He produced an astonishing volume of propaganda. This included over 1,700 cartoons for Il Popolo d’Italia and La Rivista Illustrata del Popolo d’Italia, the official Fascist newspapers.
Sironi rejected the art market and the traditional notion of easel painting. He was drawn to a fusion of decoration and architecture. For him, the mural was the ideal vehicle for a heroic, popular national art, serving both public and patriotic aims.
He remarked, “art must be the reflection of the chaos we live in, yet it seeks to restore order,”.
Sironi was a firm believer in the social and political role of art. He signed the ‘Manifesto of Mural Painting’ in 1933. He also created several mosaics and bas-reliefs for public spaces during the inter-war years.
This philosophy led to several major state commissions in the 1930s. These included the vast mural L’Italia fra le arti e le scienze (“Italy Between the Arts and Sciences”) in 1935. There were also contributions to the Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution in 1932.
Paradoxically, some right-wing critics dismissed his work for lacking overt ideological messaging.
Isolation and Sorrow
After World War II, Sironi’s close association with Fascism cast a long shadow over his reputation. His Fascist ties led to decades of neglect by critics and historians.
Embittered by the course of events, he had returned to easel painting in 1943, and worked in relative isolation.
His withdrawal from society increased after the tragic death of his daughter Rossana by suicide in 1948.
The paintings of his later years sometimes approach abstraction, resembling assemblages of archaeological fragments, or juxtaposed sketches.
He continued working until shortly before his death on August 13, 1961, in Milan. By that time, he was largely forgotten by the art world that had once embraced him.
Legacy
Sironi’s work experienced a revival in the 1980s and was reexamined in major exhibitions.
These included Les Réalismes at the Centre Georges Pompidou (1981) and Italian Art in the Twentieth Century at the Royal Academy of Arts in London (1989).
His distinctive “cellular” compositional style may have influenced American artists employed by the U.S. government’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the Great Depression in the 1930s. They created public murals, often depicting scenes of American life and values.
His legacy remains a testament to an artist unwavering in his vision. He was bold and controversial. He was also profoundly insightful into the tumult of his era.
It remains also a study in contrasts. He was visionary yet compromised, and his work was monumental yet mournful. He was a painter whose art continues to provoke reflection on the intersection of creativity and ideology.
Art critic Giuseppe Marchiori once noted, “Sironi’s architecture of form embodies the strength of a nation, yet leaves the soul unclaimed.”
Today, Sironi’s works are held in prestigious collections across Europe, including the Museo del Novecento in Milan, the Tate Gallery in London, the Guggenheim Collection in Venice, the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris, and the Kunsthaus Zürich, to name just a few
*(This postcard is part of a vast collection. An artist amassed it over sixty years ago and stored it in a wooden box).
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