Carlo Carrà
Carlo Carrà (Carlo Dalmazzo Carrà) was born in Quargnento, in the province of Alessandria, on 11 February 1881, into a family of artisans. He was an Italian painter, art critic and writer; known as one of the signatories of the Futurist Manifesto, he experimented with different artistic trends, from Realism to Divisionism, from Metaphysics to the 'mythical realism' of the 1920s and 1930s in Italy. After a brief apprenticeship as a painter which began when he was only 12 years old, in 1895 he moved first to Milan and then in 1899-1900 to Paris, where he was engaged in the decoration of the pavilions of the Universal Exhibition. Here he became interested in the art world and came into contact with the leading painters of the time, such as Manet, Renoir, Monet, Gauguin and Cézanne.
In 1904/5 he returned to Milan and decided to attend courses at the Evening School of Applied Art and in 1906, thanks to two art prizes and a scholarship from a paternal uncle, he enrolled at the Brera Academy. After a brief experimentation with Divisionist painting, the real artistic turning point for Carrà came in 1908, the year in which he met Marinetti, thus approaching Futurist painting. In 1910, he signed Marinetti's Manifesto of the Futurist Painters, thus joining the group for six long years; he actively collaborated in drafting the movement's main concepts. Carrà conceived his subjects as dynamic images to give the sensation of movement; his paintings are intended through colour to eliminate the fixed law of gravity of bodies. The main works from this period are (The Milan Station 1910, The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli 1910, The Milan Gallery 1912, Woman at the Balcony 1912).
From 1915 onwards, Carrà began to feel the need to abandon the themes of speed and dynamism typical of Futurism, seeking a more structured contact with reality, also helped by the war that involved Carrà being called to the front. Hospitalised in Ferrara, he met Giorgio De Chirico, Alberto Savinio and Filippo de Pisis, with whom he would define the theoretical principles of Metaphysical Art. After an initial period of works purely in line with De Chirico's style, Carrà He soon achieved an individuality of his own, did not remain confined within the typical formulas of the metaphysical movement, but in his art metaphysics was decisively overtaken by poetry and a sense of the magical. The most famous paintings from this period are ( The Western Horseman (1917), Mother and Child 1917, Portrait of a Woman, The Daughters of Loth 1919 ). The painting The Daughters of Loth bears witness to the artistic research carried out between 1915 and 1916 and marks a further transition between metaphysical painting and magic realism.
In 1926, Carrà spent the summer in Forte dei Marmi and it was there that the painter discovered landscapes suitable for experimenting with his renewed artistic language, which was more orderly and objective. This was a new and definitive turning point in Carrà's artistic career, which also led him to abandon metaphysics, driven by the desire to 'be just himself'. In this last, more mature phase, painting must grasp that relationship that includes the need for identification with things, abstraction and contemplation of the landscape. Here again, the artist relies on the balanced division of planes and spaces to achieve a balance between the concrete element and transfiguration. Carrà died on 13 April 1966 in Milan.
