The Leces arrived Psiss and less Italians from Paris – Leces – Art.it.it.it.

Lecce – More than an informal meeting of painters living more or less permanently in Paris, the experience of the Italiens de Paris was a real partnership characterized by a certain cultural and planning cohesion.
The beating heart of the group was the Groupe des Sept, formed by Massimo Campigli, Giorgio de Chirico, Filippo de Pisis, René Paresce, Alberto Savinio, Gino Severini and Mario Tozzi, protagonists of an exhibition season between 1928 and 1933. What united this group of Italian artists, active in the French capital, was an openness towards Europe, as well as a position of partial and conscious ‘page’ respect for the dominant direction of the Italian twentieth century.
The common international tension and distance from an Italian context increasingly focused on monumentalism and ‘modern classicism’ as theorized by Margherita Sarfatti, is another element of commonality.
The experience of these painters, their similarities but also their differences form the underlying theme of the exhibition Filippo de Pisis and the Italians de Parisedited by Paolo Bolpagni and Maddalena Tibertelli de Pisis, which will be held February 14 to May 10 to the Biscozzi Foundation | Rimbaud, in collaboration with the Association for Philip de Pisis. One of the most original and international chapters of Italian art between the late 1920s and early 1930s is told through the voices of Massimo Campigli, Giorgio de Chirico, Filippo de Pisis, René Paresce, Alberto Savinio, Gino Severini and Mario Tozzi. Waldemar George had guided and supported the group, describing himself as “the only defender in Paris of Italianism considered a form of visual art”. It was he who presented them at the Venice Biennale in 1930 in a specially named hall Calling from Italy. Followed by gallery owner Léonce Rosenberg, the Italians took part in the “Novecento Italiano” exhibitions.

Filippo de Pisis, Interior of the Parisian studio, 1930, watercolor on paper applied to canvas, 31.2 x 49 cm, private collection, Turin

The route places the figure of Filippo de Pisis at the center of the investigation, starting with the famous painting Dahlias (1932), exhibited in the first room of the Lecce Foundation’s permanent exhibition. Around an important core of more than twenty works by the Ferrarese artist, made between the mid-1920s and the early 1930s, a comparison is made with a targeted selection of paintings by the other six members of the Groupe des Sept, which belong to the same period. The journey, accompanied by a catalog in Italian, French and English, published by Dario Cimorelli Editore, with essays by the curators and color reproductions of all the works on display, emphasizes affinities and differences.