Fausto Pirandello

Calogero Fausto Pirandello was born in Rome in June 1899 and passed away in November 1975. He was the son of Luigi Pirandello, the first Italian Nobel laureate in Literature. In 1928, Fausto, along with his friend Capogrossi and his future wife Pompilia, sought refuge in Paris, hoping to find new artistic inspiration.

His experience in the bustling Parisian environment is captured in his still life works, where everyday objects appear to come together without careful selection, driven mainly by color. One notable piece from his collection features a letter resting on a small table in his studio on rue Bardinet, likely sent by his father upon learning of Fausto's escape to Paris. This letter seems to serve as a paternal admonition, with Luigi urging Fausto to embrace his freedom: “Now you speak of exile, you talk like a defeated man… Work, work, and that’s it! If you want to go to Paris, go! But not with that spirit! Go to work and to have fun… You must overcome your discontent with yourself, and the only way to do that is to rid yourself of so many fruitless attempts.”

By the late 1930s, upon returning to Rome, Fausto opened a new chapter in his artistic journey with his series titled Le Spiagge (The Beaches), marking one of his most interesting and modern expressions. In this series, he reinvents compositions that serve as a pretext for depicting his vision of humanity. His paintings of war-scorched shores and landscapes on wooden panels are filled with figures of distorted shapes, huddled together as if in pain, embodying the weight of existence. A collector described these figures as “earthly nymphs who are certainly not of Diana’s court. The land they inhabit is often like a sun-baked and grayed wasteland. More than light, a sultry vapor envelops it, where colors dissolve, appearing like pastels and treated with a spatula like plaster: those chalky whites, the dry clay grays, and delicate pinks with earthy browns.”

In 1942, due to the ongoing war in Europe, Pirandello sought refuge in Anticoli Corrado, closing the windows of his home with heavy curtains to shield against bombings. During this time, he turned to his immediate surroundings for subjects, asking them to express his own existential anxieties and transformations into new myths and everyday rituals. One of his notable works from this period features his wife Pompilia and their two sons, Pierluigi and Antonio. In this painting, they are depicted in their daily lives, stripped of Sunday finery and distant from the conventional poses typical of Roman salons. The tight composition lacks perspective, drawing focus to their facial expressions, which convey a profound lack of communication and a hunger for words and gestures. It is the mother, extending her hand towards her youngest son, that offers a glimpse of tenderness amid the apparent hardness of the gaze.