Aroldo Bonzagni

Flames in the Mediterranean, 1914

(Cento 1887 – Milan 1918)

Oil on canvas, 71 x 182 cm
Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art “Filippo de Pisis,” inv. 0618

Born into a very modest family in the province of Ferrara, young Aroldo Bonzagni moved to Milan in 1903 to attend the Brera Academy, where he distinguished himself for his talent but also for his rebellious conduct and defiant attitude toward bourgeois conventions. In 1910, driven by a sincere desire for renewal in the artistic and social fields, he subscribes to the Manifesto of the Futurist Painters, but after a few months he disassociated himself from the movement because of the radical formal implications of that poetics. He continued his artistic research independently, influenced first by the Secessionist style and then devoted himself to a biting satire of manners in an expressionist vein. The taste of the Secessions is related to the chromatic accents and accentuated linearism of Flames in the Mediterranean, a work created in 1914 which represents some sailboats under sail and may allude to the winds of war that were blowing in Europe at the time. In the canvas Bonzagni keeps alive the Symbolist legacy of his countryman Gaetano Previati through the Divisionist texture of the painting and the filamentous and expressive use of color. The balance of warm and bright tones embellishes the work by transforming the sails of the boats into blazing flames that stand out in a vespertine sky. The painting was first presented to the public at the 11th Venice Biennale in 1914.