AJMONE Giuseppe

Giuseppe Ajmone (Carpignano Sesia, 1923 – Romagnano Sesia, 2005) was one of the leading figures in Italian painting in the second half of the twentieth century. Trained in the postwar Milanese art scene, he developed a personal style in which landscape, the human figure, and still life became ways to explore light, color, and memory. From his early experiences with realism and post-Cubism to the maturity of a freer, more lyrical style of painting, Ajmone maintained a deep connection with the natural world without giving up experimentation. In his paintings, bodies sometimes seem to emerge from the pictorial material, while river landscapes become images suspended between observation and memory. Alongside painting, he produced a significant body of graphic work, also connected to Italian poetry and literature.

Origins and Artistic Training

Giuseppe Ajmone was born on February 17, 1923, in Carpignano Sesia, in the province of Novara. His artistic training began in 1937 at the studio of sculptor Riccardo Mella, where he was introduced to drawing and the study of form. In 1941, he moved to Milan and enrolled at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, attending classes taught by Achille Funi and Carlo Carrà. L's encounters with these masters allowed him to deepen his understanding of the Italian painting tradition, but it was above all his relationships with the young artists of his generation that shaped his subsequent choices.

During his years at the Academy, he meets Ennio Morlotti, Bruno Cassinari, and other painters interested in renewing figurative art. These are the war years, marked by profound political and cultural changes. For many artists, engaging with contemporary reality becomes an expressive necessity. Ajmone graduates from Brera in 1944 and begins to take an active part in Milan's art debate. In this setting, the idea matures of a style of painting capable of engaging with modern life without abandoning formal experimentation.

The postwar period, Corrente, and the Beyond Guernica manifesto

In the 1940s, Giuseppe Ajmone comes into contact with the artistic circle of Corrente, a movement that brought together painters and intellectuals opposed to cultural isolation and interested in developments in European art. Pablo Picasso's painting, particularly Guernica, is a key reference for many young artists. LThe work demonstrates that the distortion of figures and compositional freedom can serve as tools for expressing the drama of history. In 1944, Ajmone contributes to the founding of the magazine Numero, which later continues publication under the title Pittura.

In 1946, he is among the signatories of the Manifesto of Realism, known as Beyond Guernica, alongside artists and intellectuals including Ennio Morlotti, Emilio Vedova, and Giovanni Testori. The manifesto expresses the desire to create a new kind of painting, capable of engaging with reality without simply returning to the forms of traditional realism. For Ajmone, this experience represents an important but not definitive phase. In the following years, his work gradually moves away from post-Cubist structures, favoring a more direct and personal relationship with nature and visual experience.

From Picasso's teachings to the painting of Bonnard and Cézanne

In the late 1940s, Giuseppe Ajmone undergoes a period of transformation. LInterest in the post-Cubist construction of the image gradually gives way to a style of painting more attentive to color, light, and the sensations evoked by reality. Artists such as Paul Cézanne, Pierre Bonnard, and Georges Braque become important points of reference. From Cézanne, Ajmone draws above all an interest in the structure of the landscape and the relationship between forms.

Bonnard's painting suggests new possibilities for him in the use of color and in depicting spaces through light. This is not a passive adherence to existing models. Ajmone reworks these experiences to develop a personal painterly sensibility, in which the image emerges from the encounter between observation and memory. Colors gain greater freedom, while forms seem to gradually lose the rigidity of their outlines.

Reality remains the starting point, but is transformed through the painterly gesture and emotional perception.

The Landscapes of Giuseppe Ajmone: Nature and the Sesia River

Landscape occupies a central place in Giuseppe Ajmone's work, particularly from the late 1950s onward. Nature is not depicted as an immobile backdrop, but as a living presence, shaped by light and atmospheric changes. River landscapes and places linked to the Sesia region are particularly important to him, and the artist remains deeply attached to them. In his paintings, water, riverbanks, vegetation, and open spaces are often rendered as compositions in which forms seem to emerge slowly from the paint.

Color does more than describe a place. It helps evoke the feeling of a moment, the luminosity of an atmosphere, or the memory of an observed landscape. Silvery hues, luminous grays, and darker contrasts become characteristic elements of his palette. One significant example is Il Sesia from 1967, a painting held in the art collection of the Chamber of Deputies. In this work, as in other landscapes from the same period, Ajmone seeks a balance between the subject's recognizability and freedom of expression.

Landscape does not disappear into abstraction, but neither is it reproduced like a photographic view. Rather, it is an image filtered through experience, in which nature takes on an inner dimension.

Giuseppe Ajmone between Art Informel and New Figuration

LAjmone's painting evolves through some of the major artistic movements in postwar Italy. In the 1950s, his work drew closer to the sensibility that critics associated with the last naturalists and certain developments in Art Informel. At this stage, the paint takes on greater freedom, and representation loses some of its traditional definition. Forms are not necessarily enclosed by precise outlines, but seem to emerge from the interplay of color, light, and gesture.

Unlike completely abstract painting, however, Ajmone maintains a constant connection with the visible world. Landscape, the body, and objects continue to serve as points of reference in his artistic exploration. In the 1960s and 1970s, this relationship with reality develops further, drawing closer to the approaches of the New Figuration movement. The figure once again takes on a recognizable presence, while remaining immersed in a free and sometimes restless style of painting.

Ajmone does not consider realism and abstraction to be necessarily opposing possibilities. In his artworks, observation of the world coexists with the painterly transformation of the image.

Female nudes: the body between light and memory

Alongside landscape, the female nude is one of the fundamental themes in Giuseppe Ajmone's painting. L'The artist explores this subject over several decades, developing compositions in which the body takes on a presence that is at times luminous and delicate, at others more intense and dramatic. The figures are not always defined by precise drawing. At times, they seem to emerge slowly from the background, like images surfacing from memory.

In other paintings, the body gains greater substance while maintaining a close relationship with the paint and color. Light plays a decisive role. It can make a figure seem almost immaterial or emphasize its weight and physical presence. In Ajmone’s nudes, the relationship between figure and setting is not merely compositional: it helps create an emotional atmosphere.

This exploration reaches particular intensity in the large canvases painted between the 1970s and 1980s. In 1982, at the Palazzo della Permanente in Milan, the artist presented an important group of artworks dedicated to the so-called drowned nudes, inspired by a news story that took place in the Romagnano Sesia area. In these paintings, the human figure takes on a tragic dimension. The body is not merely a subject for painting, but becomes the means through which the artist addresses pain, fragility, and memory.

Still lifes and flowers

Another important chapter in Giuseppe Ajmone’s work is represented by his still lifes. Flowers and everyday objects offer the artist the opportunity to explore the relationship between color, light, and composition. In these paintings, too, the subject is not approached with purely descriptive intent. The arrangement of the elements, the hues, and the quality of the paint help create an image in which reality appears transformed.

Flowers, in particular, allow Ajmone to develop a style of painting sensitive to variations in color and to the effects of light. Forms may appear defined or partially dissolve into the background. This oscillation between presence and indeterminacy is a recurring feature of his work. His still lifes also reveal a connection with the French painting tradition, especially with Bonnard’s work.

Ajmone, however, uses these references to develop an independent vision in which color becomes the main tool for interpreting the subject.

The graphic artworks of Giuseppe Ajmone and their relationship with literature

Giuseppe Ajmone's work was not limited to painting on canvas. From the 1940s onward, the artist devoted considerable attention to printmaking and graphic arts, creating etchings, drypoint engravings and lithographs. This activity developed alongside his painting and took on particular significance through its relationship with literature. Between 1946 and 1949, Ajmone collaborated with the Einaudi publishing house, also working on the artistic design of its publications.

In 1947, he created a series of etchings inspired by Cesare Pavese's Hard Work, while in 1949 he turned to Giacomo Leopardi's L'Infinity. These experiences testify to a profound dialogue between image and word. Ajmone did not consider illustration merely a visual translation of literary text. His painterly sensibility allowed him to develop images capable of evoking atmospheres and meanings through an independent language.

In the following decades, he continued to create graphic artworks and collaborate with literary publications. His most significant projects include the portfolios Album Leaves (1970) and Six Nudes (1977), as well as works connected to texts by Italo Calvino, Antonio Machado and other authors. Ajmone's lithographs and engravings revisit the fundamental themes of his painting: landscape, the body, nature and memory. His graphic work is therefore an important part of his artistic career, through which it is possible to trace the evolution of his style beyond the canvas.

The artworks of the 1970s and 1980s: more dramatic painting

In the 1970s, Giuseppe Ajmone's painting developed an increasingly intense emotional dimension. His relationship with nature and the human figure remained central, but some artworks introduced references to historical events and painful episodes. Works from this period include Nicevò, Another Crime and The Great Studio, which were also presented in important exhibitions devoted to his work. His painterly language retained the freedom of gesture and sensitivity to color, but the image sometimes took on a more unsettling character.

The human figure can appear fragile, isolated, or caught up in situations that evoke suffering and loss; painting thus becomes a tool for addressing not only the beauty of the natural world, but also the more difficult aspects of human experience. This tension is particularly evident in the series of drowned nudes, presented in 1982. Ajmone did not, however, abandon landscape and still life.

He continued to develop different subjects simultaneously, united by a distinctive painterly sensibility.

Exhibitions, Biennales, and Awards

Giuseppe Ajmone's career was accompanied by an intense exhibition schedule in Italy and abroad. In 1948, he took part in the Venice Biennale for the first time, returning in 1950 and 1952. In 1951, he received the Senator Borletti Prize for young Italian painters and began collaborating with the Milan Triennale. In the 1950s, he took part in international events, including the São Paulo Biennial, exhibitions in the United States, and exhibitions of contemporary Italian art in various European countries.

In 1962, he was invited to the Venice Biennale, where he had a room of his own, an important recognition of his artistic career. In the following years, he continued to exhibit in galleries and public institutions. In 1976, critic Roberto Tassi devoted the study The Light of Things to his painting, a title that aptly sums up one of the central aspects of his work. In 1984, Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara hosted a retrospective dedicated to his work.

In 1997, another exhibition in Arona surveyed the artworks created between 1943 and 1997. These initiatives helped document the continuity and richness of an artistic career spanning more than fifty years.

The Final Years and Artistic Legacy

From the 1980s onward, Giuseppe Ajmone made his home in Romagnano Sesia, developing an increasingly close connection with the places where he came from. The local landscape continued to play an important role in his painting. L'artista continued working until his final years, focusing on the subjects that had accompanied his entire career: nature, the human body, and everyday objects. He died in Romagnano Sesia on April 8, 2005.

His work bears witness to an independent path, able to navigate the major transformations in postwar Italian painting without fully identifying with any single movement. From post-Cubism to Informalism and on to the New Figuration, Ajmone maintained a constant interest in visible reality and its transformation through color. River landscapes, nudes, and still lifes are different expressions of a practice rooted in light and memory. Today, the Giuseppe Ajmone Association and the artist’s archive are dedicated to studying, documenting, and promoting his work.

Giuseppe Ajmone's artworks retain a particular ability to engage viewers because they do more than describe what appears before their eyes. Through painterly material and variations in light, they transform places and figures into images in which observation, memory, and emotion become inseparable.