Dino Buzzati biography

Dino Buzzati was an Italian writer, journalist, painter, playwright, librettist, set designer, costume designer and poet. Dino Buzzati was born in the family villa of San Pellegrino di Belluno on 16 October 1906. He attended classical high school Giuseppe Parini in Milan and then enrolled in Law to comply with his family's wishes and graduated in 1928.
Known to most as the writer of 'The Desert of the Tartars', Dino Buzzati, was not only a journalist and writer, but above all, as he himself declared, a painter. If some event in his artistic life had gone differently, perhaps today we will remember him for his paintings, drawings, illustrations or hybrid texts that combine painting and literature. This is the case of Comic Poem, where the artist revisits the theme of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice from a modern point of view. This work was considered the first example of graphic novel and is composed of 208 illustrated tables. Also on the same wavelength is the last book published by Buzzati in 1971, The miracles of Val Morel, a collection of paintings which contain very short captions and which represent imaginary ex-votos featuring the protagonist in literary fiction Santa Rita.
With reference to his predilection for painting as an artistic expression, Dino Buzzati in an interview declared that he was the "victim" of a misunderstanding, that is, that he was a painter who also worked as a writer and journalist as a hobby, but for a time too long. At the same time, however, he declared that writing or painting is the same thing for him, because in both cases his goal was to tell stories to the public.
As a painter, Dino Buzzati is strongly inspired by surrealism. At the same time, he does not give up modernist suggestions such as, for example, pop or neo-expressionist ones. From these starting points, the artist creates his personal poetics which contains within it a strong nostalgia for romanticism. And it is precisely from this fable-like approach that the narrative sub-plot is probably generated. This aspect is evident in Buzzati's transfiguration of everyday life into a very different dimension.
A clear example of this is the artist's best-known work, Piazza del Duomo which dates back to 1952. In this painting, Buzzati portrays the famous Lombard cathedral as if it were a limestone structure, completely immersed in nature and surrounded by a rocky landscape that aims to imitate the original architectural structure of the square.
The same type of atmosphere, that is, dark that does not fall into gloom and anguished but not desperate, is part of another of his famous works, Le anime in torment. In this painting we find a group of spirits haunting an entire city at night. The ghosts, with dimensions similar to those of the buildings, are the only inhabitants of that urban representation that exudes anguish. This vivid tension that is generated between city and nature is part of all his poetics, but also of his life. This aspect was influenced by the places that saw him born and grow, San Pellegrino di Belluno and Milan, places that marked his existence.
The themes he addresses in his pictorial career are therefore intertwined with literary ones, forming a world where real and fantastic dimensions come together, creating dimensions characterized by mystery, destiny, waiting and a melancholic vision of love. Those who appreciated Buzzati's pictorial work stated that he wrote by painting and by painting he wrote. Even in literary works, in fact, the word made one think of an image, while the latter has always been part of the words. Both the aforementioned Comic Poem and The Miracles of Valmorel are examples of his stylistic imprint.
All these characteristics are part of Buzzati's first exhibition, Storie dipinte of 1958 and that of 1966 at the Galleria Gian Ferrari, both in Milan.
The Paris exhibition at the La Pochade Gallery had an international dimension. Buzzati's consecration as a painter, unfortunately, occurred after his death in 1972 with the retrospective at Palazzo Reale di Milano in 1991.