Felice Casorati

Felice Casorati (December 4, 1883 – March 1, 1963) was an Italian painter, sculptor, and printmaker. The paintings for which he is most noted include figure compositions, portraits and still lifes, which are often distinguished by unusual perspective effects.

Casorati was born in Novara. He showed an early passion for music, but abandoned his study of piano after a serious illness, and became interested in art. To please his mother he studied law at the University of Padua until 1906, but his ambition to be a painter was confirmed in 1907 when a painting of his was shown in the Venice Biennale. The works he produced in the early years of his career were naturalistic in style, but after 1910 the influence of the symbolists and particularly of Gustav Klimt turned him toward a more visionary approach. In 1915 he had a solo exhibition at the Rome Secession III, where he showed several paintings and the first of his sculptures in varnished terracotta. His military service in World War I began that year and lasted until his discharge from the army after the death of his father in 1917.

In 1918, "intrigued by the decadent atmosphere of Turin with its sinister views", he settled there with his mother and two sisters. His works of the next decade typify, in their emphasis on geometry and formal clarity, the "return to order" then prevalent in the arts as a reaction to the war. Although many critics found his work cold, cerebral, and academic, Casorati achieved international recognition as a leading figure in this movement. Often working in tempera, Casorati drew inspiration from his study of Renaissance masters, especially Piero della Francesca, as in his 1922 portrait entitled Silvana Cenni. This symmetrical composition of a seated woman in a white dress is perhaps the best-known of the artist's works. In it, the careful rendering of volumes results paradoxically in a sense of unreality which is characteristic of Casorati's art.

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