Francesco Menzio

Francesco Menzio was born in Tempio Pausania in 1899 and died in Turin in 1979. "This melancholic Orpheus, with the pale face and slumped shoulders of an emigrant, was obeying a crisis of conscience, seeking his inner harmony in the universe of color." With these words, Edoardo Persico described the motivations that led Francesco Menzio to travel to Paris in 1928. The painter felt the need to study the latest European painting in its original form, attending ateliers to meet its key figures firsthand. From this "faith in European painting," some of Menzio’s most significant works from the late 1920s emerged, such as Scialle verde and Ritratto di giovane. The artist focused his research on careful and delicate chromatic harmonies, earning him the label of a "symphonist who understood Matisse and Modigliani." Menzio abandoned the use of backlighting, constructing the figure through light and rapid brushstrokes. His intent was to be a man of his time, modern. For this reason, he withdrew the woman or young person from the usual timeless, metaphysical dimension, situating the portrait in its contemporary period through details of clothing, such as fashionable hats. In this attention to the minutiae of worldly life, one can detect, among other influences, an echo of Dufy.