Giuseppe Cesetti biography

-GIUSEPPE CESETTI PAINTER

 

Giuseppe Cesetti is an Italian painter. He was born in Tuscania in 1902.

Son of farmers, he spends his adolescence in contact with the nature and landscapes that we will find in his future works and that will make him known to the public as the painter of horses or the Maremma painter.

He is self-taught and at the age of 16 begins to travel throughout the Italian peninsula until he reaches Rome, where he comes into contact with the artists and writers of those years. He exhibits for the first time in Como, in 1927, then moves to Florence where, in 1930, he holds his first solo exhibition at the Galleria Santa Trinità. On this occasion, numerous artists including Libero Andreotti, Romano Romanelli, Ottone Rosai, Ugo Ojetti purchase some of his paintings to encourage the young artist.

In 1931, Giuseppe Cesetti was appointed assistant to the chair of painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice. Around him, many young artists gathered, giving rise to the Cavallino movement. Also in 1931, he participated in the Quadriennale di Roma with three works. In 1934, he participated in the Biennale di Venezia with five works, including Alla staccionata and Nudo di giovinetta. In 1935, he exhibited at the Galleria del Milione in Milan, while the following year he returned to the Biennale di Venezia exhibiting the famous painting I Vaccari.

From 1935 to 1937, he was in Paris where he formed friendships with Giorgio de Chirico, Filippo de Pisis, and Antonio Aniante. Returning to Italy in Milan, he joined the group Pesce d’Oro, which included, among others, Giovanni Scheiwiller, Francesco Messina, Salvatore Quasimodo, Raffaele Carrieri, Leonardo Sinisgalli, Arturo Tofanelli.

In 1939, he took the chair of drawing at the Liceo Artistico di Venezia, and in 1941, he was appointed as the chair of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in the same city. In 1943, he requested to be transferred to the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, and during that same period, he founded the Galleria del Secolo. 

At the end of the war, he was appointed by the liberation committees as provincial deputy of Viterbo. In 1946, he returned to Venice and in 1949 organized and presided over, in collaboration with the city of Venice, the exhibition 50 Years of Painting in Italy, creating on that occasion the Purchase Prize, which is still in effect today. In 1961, the city of Viterbo set up a large retrospective of Cesetti in the Palazzo dei Priori, with over 100 paintings ranging from 1928 to 1961.

After the 1971 earthquake that devastated his hometown, he worked to promote its artistic and cultural revival. During these years, he began working in the Montebello studio, in the countryside around Tuscania, where he continued to live and work until his death in 1990.