Manlio Bacosi biography
Manlius Baccus
Manlio Bacosi was an Italian painter born in Perugia in 1921. Creative vitality and expressive originality are just some of the main characteristics of Manlio Bacosi, considered one of the most renowned Italian landscape painters. From painting to graphics, from ceramic decoration to sculpture, Manlio Bacosi is confirmed as one of the most prolific post-war artists. He trained at the studio of the sculptor Leo Ravazzi and the futurist painter Gerardo Dottori. He began exhibiting in 1947 and since then has held numerous solo exhibitions in Italy and abroad.
In 1951, at just thirty years old, Manlio Bacosi was invited, on the recommendation of Gerardo Dottori, to the first post-war exhibition on Futurism at the Palazzo del Podestà in Bologna, in the section of young artists identified as continuators of the futurist artistic avant-garde.
During that period, Manlio Bacosi was exploring the abstract and informal, however, the Umbrian landscape style of Dottori's aeropainting season would influence the young artist to such an extent that he would dedicate himself entirely to it for the rest of his life, being considered in every respect the continuator of Umbrian landscape painting.
In the works of Manlio Bacosi, the landscape undergoes a profound process of reduction and synthesis that leads the artist to represent a minimal world, indicated by a few signs on flat and uniform layers of color in a two-dimensional space. In this context, the artist intervenes with a certain gestural inclination that leads him to overlay this reality with even more mysterious and hermetic pictorial signs. In addition to landscapes, among his favorite themes are also still lifes, of which he evolves the concept, applying it to subjects that float in the colored void or in simple, albeit elaborate, geometries.
The ceramics also demonstrate new distinctive traits, works resulting from an intense creative activity that perceives color in new, less sharp, more blurred forms.
In 1972, the city of Todi held an Anthological exhibition in his honor at the Palazzo Comunale.
In 1975 in Recanati, during the Leopardi celebrations, Manlio Bacosi presented a large collection of his works in the municipal halls. Also in 1975, the city of Montecatini organized a solo exhibition of over 50 of his works. In December of the same year, the Municipality of Rome presented a large solo exhibition of his works in the halls of Palazzo Braschi.
In March 1976, a retrospective exhibition of over 80 works took place at the Municipality of Perugia.
In 1979, he was awarded the International S. Valentino d'Oro Prize for Figurative Arts. In July of the same year, an anthological exhibition at the San Marino museum was organized by the Municipality.
In May 1982, it was time for the major solo exhibition with 80 works in the Saloni della Molinella in Faenza under the patronage of the Municipality. Manlio Bacosi died in Perugia in 1998.
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