Luigi Serralunga (1880 – 1940) - I frutti dell'autunno

Luigi Serralunga (Turin, 1880 – 1940) The Fruits of Autumn dimension with frame 128x98 cm the frame is not part of the sale but is complimentary Luigi Serralunga was born in Turin on October 26, 1880, into a wealthy family belonging to the Turin bourgeoisie and tied to the royal administration. The paternal branch of the family has a long tradition of service at court: the great-grandfather Giuseppe Dalmazzo Serralunga was treasurer for the House of Savoy from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century, while the grandfather Luigi, a knight and lawyer, was appointed excisor for the Royal Ministry of Finance in the Pinerolo area, as well as holder of the revenues of a salt and tobacco shop near Volvera. His father Alessandro, an employee at the Direzione Opera Pia San Paolo, married in 1878 Adelaide Calcina, widow Mogna. Luigi Serralunga spent his childhood in Turin, at the family home at 24 Via Gioberti; in December 1896, after completing technical studies, he enrolled at the Royal Albertina Academy of Fine Arts, where he attended the three-year courses in architecture, geometry, figure drawing, history, and ornament, taking part in internal competitions organized by the Academy with appreciable results. After completing the preparatory studies, in the autumn of 1900 he enrolled with merit in the higher course of painting, obtaining the copper medal in the figure drawing course taught by Professor Giacomo Grosso. Among the Academy’s instructors, including Piercelestino Gilardi and Odoardo Tabacchi, who respectively held the chairs of painting and sculpture, the painter Giacomo Grosso, who had achieved success with the first Venice Biennale, is undoubtedly the main reference in shaping Serralunga’s painting style. In February 1901 his mother Adele dies suddenly. After a few months away from the Academy, Serralunga returns to attend lessons and gains the opportunity to stay in Rome, where he travels in 1902 to study and take sketches from the antique. The studies proceed profitably: at the end of the second year, he wins the silver medal and the purchase of a work chosen outside the competition valued at 25 lire, as well as the following year, when he is again awarded the silver medal. At twenty-three, Serralunga successfully completes his studies in June 1904, winning a stipend of 100 lire for the final life drawing. In the same year the painter begins to exhibit at the Società Promotrice di Belle Arti, participating in the annual exhibition for members in a nearly continuous fashion until 1939, the year before his death. At twenty-seven he marries the contemporary Carolina Muzio, leaving his father’s home to move to via Santa Teresa, behind Piazza San Carlo, where he will live with his wife until the second half of the teens. At the end of the First World War, the Serralunga couple move to corso Duca di Genova, where the artist will keep his studio until his death. In addition to the city apartment, from 1929 the Serralungas purchase a house on theCastiglione Torinese hillside, where they spend their leisure time and where the painter pursues hunting, a recurring subject in his paintings. In those years Serralunga participates in the Turin exhibitions of the Promotrice and in the national exhibitions of the corresponding Milanese society; particularly notable are his participation in the exhibition Tre pittori piemontesi, held in Milan at the La Vinciana Gallery in 1921, and in the Turin Quadriennials of 1923 and 1928. In the same year the Promotrice hosts a solo show of the artist presenting about fifteen works including still lifes and portraits. Serralunga is equally present in the exhibitions organized by the Società d’Incoraggiamento alle Belle Arti within the Circle of Artists, and by the Società Amici dell’Arte, both active in Turin, as evidenced by the art chronicles penned by Emilio Zanzi, art critic of La Gazzetta del Popolo and Turin correspondent for Emporium. Despite the advent of fascism, Serralunga, a committed socialist, continues to participate in the Promotrice’s exhibitions, which culminate in the annual exhibition of the Fascist Union of Fine Arts, whose regulations from 1929 onward allow non-party members to exhibit as well, upon payment of a fee of 30 lire. Serralunga gradually asserts himself in the flourishing Turin art scene, where figures such as Lorenzo Delleani, Cesare Saccaggi, Leonardo Bistolfi, and Giovanni Guarlotti work. Serralunga’s painting style, initially tied to the fin-de-siècle taste of the Grossi and Ranzoni schools, over the years gains expressive autonomy and yields the best results in portraiture, the nude, hunting scenes, and some still lifes, subjects rendered with a light, almost unfinished brushwork (particularly evident on the edges). His poetics embody the principles of late-symbolist tradition, contaminated by the suggestions from the great era of nineteenth-century figurative painting. In portraits of ladies and city bourgeoisie, the bright light emphasizes the pallor of the complexion, while the brushstroke, at first more controlled and suave and then more ragged and opaque, offers the viewer intense passages of chromatic and compositional harmony. Alongside his artistic production, Serralunga opened his studio to young Turin artists, who recognized in him a stern and capable master: among them Mattia Moreni and Ettore Fico. In 1939, already ill, Serralunga participates in the selections for the Sanremo painting prizes, before leaving artistic activity and spending the last months at the Castiglione Torinese house. Stricken and moved to a hospital, Luigi Serralunga dies in Turin on February 3, 1940. Two years after his death, the Circle of Artists organized a posthumous exhibition with more than eighty paintings selected by friends from works in his studio and private collections, accompanied by a moving introduction by the painter Guarlotti. With the proceeds from the sale of the works, the widow established the Luigi Serralunga Prize, consisting of 1000 lire awarded by the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts for a painting or sculpture exhibited for the first time at the annual show organized by the body. The first two editions saw winners Adriano Alloatti and Michelangelo Monti. After the artist’s death, his works were exhibited in the annual Piemonte of the Twentieth Century organized by the Fogliato gallery, including the notable Omaggio a Serralunga in 1977, and in the exhibitions La pittura a Torino all’inizio del secolo (Turin, Teatro Regio, 1978) and Flower Power (Verbania, Villa Giulia, 2009). In addition to numerous private collections, Serralunga’s works are present at GAM – Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Turin, the Civic Museum at Palazzo Traversa in Bra, the Soprintendenza ai Beni Culturali of Pisa, and a large core at the Ettore Fico Museum in Turin.

Estimate:£1,250.25

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