Felice CASORATI ✿

Felice Casorati (Novara, 1883 - Turin, 1963) was an Italian painter, engraver, designer, set designer and teacher. Felice Casorati was one of the most important artists of the early twentieth century, a leading exponent of magical realism, a typical expressive mode of Italy in the 1920s.

In 1901 he began to paint for the first time, then refining his technique with the artist Giovanni Vianello. In 1907 he graduated in Law at the University of Padua; however, he chooses to devote himself to an artistic career. Between 1907 and 1910 he was in Naples, where he devoted himself to painting and studied in particular the works of Pieter Brueghel the Elder in the collection of the National Museum of Capodimonte.

In the same year he exhibited for the first time at the Venice Biennale, admitted thanks to a portrait of his sister Elvira, Portrait of a lady. He returns again to the Biennale of 1909 and 1910; on this occasion he has the opportunity to observe the works of Gustav Klimt that will influence some of his later paintings by him, such as The dream of the pomegranate, presented at the First International Art Exhibition of the Secession in Rome in 1913.

Between 1911 and 1915 he lived in Verona, where he founded the magazine La Via Lattea with other artists, in which he collaborated with illustrations in the Art Nouveau style in the manner of Jan Toorop and Aubrey Beardsley.

He participated several times in the Venice Biennale, had a prolific graphic activity and was not only a painter but also a sculptor, architect, set designer and, as mentioned, he developed interests in the applied and decorative arts, an area in which he was able to express himself, for example, with the mosaics for the VI Triennale di Milano and for the Gualino home theater itself.

A painter still very much appreciated by the market today, the general public knows Casorati above all the art of the 1920s, when Casorati was included in the trends of the return to order, together with artists such as Carlo Carrà, Arturo Martini and Massimo Campigli.