Project Description
Amedeo Bocchi (Parma 1883 – Rome 1976), Huts along the canal
Oil on panel cm 15 x 24,5 signed (A Bocchi) and dated (1922) lower left. On the back, visible the following inscription “A Federico de Lauca collezionista intelligente. Amedeo Bocchi. Terracina 1932”.
INFO: if you need more information
Trained at the lessons of Cecrope Barilli at the Academy of Fine Arts in Parma, in 1902 he completed his education in Rome, at the “Libera scuola del nudo”. The first Roman production of Amedeo Bocchi is strongly influenced by socialist social realism. The theme of class struggle, of the last and the dispossessed, however, accompanies the artist’s first attention towards the female portrait. At the same time, he dedicated himself to a series of Parmesan decorations in the air that already denounced his tendency towards a two-dimensional painting with a secessionist outlook. Symbolism peeps out in some portraits that always insist on an elegant and expressive use of two-dimensionality.
Meanwhile, his exhibition activity takes place mainly at the Venice Biennale, at the Amateurs and Cultori exhibitions in Rome and at the Roman and Florentine Exhibitions. Very important is the phase in which Amedeo Bocchi frequents Terracina and the Pontine Marshes for the entire ten years of the twentieth century. The landscape and the scenes of rural life enter his repertoire, always characterized by symbolist accents and by a particular attention towards the female figure.
Between 1911 and 1919, but then also in the 1920s, the summer stays of Amedeo Bocchi in Terracina became more and more frequent. Inevitably he comes into contact with the harsh agricultural reality of the Roman countryside and approaches the subject of work again. But he is also interested in light, modulated according to atmospheric and temporal variations, always to illuminate female faces and bodies. It expresses a strong intimate dimension, even when it portrays work and daily activities. An example of this is the 1926 painting, kept in Parma in the collections of Arte Cariparma and Piacenza, an oil on canvas entitled “Cavallo su zattera”, of which the work presented here can be considered a preliminary study. In fact, the small panel, donated by the artist in 1932 to his personal physician Federico de Lauca, presents the same huts that we find on the bottom of the Parma painting: rudimentary makeshift dwellings that dot the Agro Pontino territory, reported by the painter on the table through the use of dense and pasty chromatic strokes.
