- GIANBECCHINA ARTWORKS

- GIANBECCHINA PAINTER

Gianbecchinastage name of John Becchine, was a Italian painter. He was born in Sambuca, Sicily, in 1909.

He receives the first rudiments of pictorial techniques from the decorator Gaetano Grippi for whom he works as an apprentice helping him to paint the vaults of the patrician houses of Sambuca. 

In 1930 he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome until he won a scholarship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo, where he continued his studies.

In Palermo he frequents the house of Lia Pasqualino Noto and joins the group of avant-garde artists which included, in addition to Noto itself, Renato Guttuso and Giovanni Barbera It is Nino Franchina.

In 1938 he exhibited at the XXI Venice Biennale of Art and in the same year he moved to Milan where he met Benjamin Joppolo, point of reference for all Sicilian emigrants, and with him Renato Birolli, Giuseppe Migneco, Salvatore Quasimodo, Raffaellino de Grada, Arnoldo Badodi and other artists who gave life to the group Chain.  

At the outbreak of the Second World War he was forced to return to Sicily where he obtained a professorship at the Liceo Artistico in Palermo.

With the works Bargaining of 1944 and The family of 1945 anticipates the themes of Neorealism and he manages to give voice, like few other artists after him, to the struggles of the Sicilian peasant world.

In the following years, shows and exhibitions followed throughout Italy and abroad, also leading him to obtain important public recognition. The intense pictorial activity is accompanied by an important production of art graphics, engravings, etchings, lithographs, serigraphs. His works can be found in galleries and public and private collections. In 1997, theGiambecchina institutiondirected by his son Alessandro. A few years later, in 2001, the artist died in his hometown.