Renato Paresce

René or Renato Herbert Paresce (5 January 1886 – 15 October 1937) was an Italian painter and writer.

René was born in Cabouge, a suburb of Geneva. His father was a militant socialist from Palermo and his mother Lidia Ignatieff, was the daughter of a Russian businessman. As a young man, he traveled to Paris. His parents travelled frequently, including to Moscow and Florence.

As an infant, his family mainly settled in Florence where he attended the Istituto tecnico industriale Leonardo da Vinci, and even enrolled in the Physics program of the University of Bologna, but ended up completing his physics thesis in Palermo in 1911, having studied light spectra.

Refused an academic position at Palermo, he took a position in the Barnabite College Alla Quercia in Florence, teaching natural sciences. He continued to spend time painting. He befriended the painter Baccio Maria Bacci. In Florence, he worked as a translator of French and Russian. In 1912, he married Ella Klatchko, a pianist, of Russian Jewish ancestry who had studied at the St Petersburg Conservatory, and also with Ravel and Ferruccio Busoni.

In 1912, they moved to Paris. There he met or befriended Cezanne, Odilon Redon, Picasso, Diaghilev, Faure, Paul Fort, Max Jacob, André Salmon, Diego Rivera, and Modigliani. Modigliani dedicated a painting to him in 1917.

During World War I, he moved to London, where he supposedly collaborated with marine research with the National Physical Laboratory. In London, he met Oskar Kokoschka. After the war, he traveled as a journalist to cover the Versailles conference Il Giornale d’Italia and later, La Stampa, signing his articles Renato. He soon was writing articles about artistic criticism, and painting to support his family. He remains mainly in Paris till 1930.

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