Fiorenzo Tomea
Zoppè di Cadore, Belluno, 1910 - Milano, 1960
Tomea’s life is marked by the various stages of his success: exhibitions, prizes, commissions and the execution of great religious works. After participating in the XXIII Venice Biennale in 1942 with 19 works in a room reserved for him, in 1945, in Marzio, he painted two large frescoes in the parish church. In 1958 the Church of Santa Barbara was inaugurated in Metanopoli, near San Donato Milanese, where the entire back wall is covered with a large mosaic "Calvary" of Tomea commissioned by Enrico Mattei.
Fiorenzo Tomea, the last of ten children, spent a childhood of poverty and hardship that marked him deeply. In 1920, when his father died, he left his father’s house with his older brother Giovanni and went down to the big cities to help the family, performing various and occasional jobs. First in Milan and then in Verona to practice the street trade, he enrolled in the evening classes of the Cignaroli Academy, an ancient institution that formed illustrious students such as Antonio Canova, Angelo Dall'Oca Bianca and, more recently, Birolli and Manzù with whom Tomea became friends.
In 1928, always driven by his profession, Tomea returned to Milan and came into contact with young artists: he saw Birolli and Manzù again, he met, among others, Sassu, Cassinari and Messina. The meeting with Edoardo Persico, a Neapolitan critic, arrived in Milan from Turin in 1929 after the experience with the group of the "Six"which was the most active and stimulating figure of that period and which saw in Tomea’s popular imprint a primitivism free from all intellectualism, an immediate, instinctive and poetic adhesion to the primary values of existence, a genuine sample of a need for reaction and renewal compared to the twentieth century academic and passive, interpreter of the dictates of monumental regime.
Persico introduced Tomea to the works of Carrà, Rosai, Metaphysics, French Impressionism, Cézanne and Van Gogh, then unknown in Italy.
In 1931 he went to Florence for military service where he met Ottone Rosai. When in 1932 Persico organized a group exhibition at the Galleria "Il Milione", Tomea participated with 40 drawings (small landscapes, shepherds, players in the tavern) together with Manzù, Sassu, Birolli and others.
With the money he collected from the street business in the fall of 1934, together with his friend Aligi Sassu, he stayed a few months in Paris, where he fell in love "immediately with Delacroix, then with Cézanne and Van Gogh" to discover at the end Titian and understand - he says himself - "as the latter was the greatest of all put together". On his return in 1935 he settled permanently in Milan, abandoning the profession of itinerant and devoting himself solely to his pictorial vocation. In 1936 he exhibited with Manzù, Sassu and others at the "La Cometa" Gallery in Rome; in 1937 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Ministry of Education at the 8th Lombard Trade Union Exhibition at the Palazzo della Permanente in Milan; Always at the Permanente he exhibited at the first Exhibition of the group of "Corrente" - (although remarkable movement that does not however bring a decisive upheaval in his painting) - inaugurated on 18 March 1939 and eight months later, for young people only, at the Grande gallery in Via Dante; In October 1940 - after the break for the recall to military service in Udine for a year, in 1939 - he exhibited in a personal exhibition, confirming the fullness of expressive means, at the Barbaroux gallery in Milan.
Married in 1943, Tomea’s life, in addition to the birth of two children, is marked by the various stages of his success: exhibitions, awards, commissions and the execution of great religious works. After participating in the XXIII Venice Biennale in 1942 with 19 works in a room reserved to him, in 1945, in Marzio, he executed two large frescoes in the parish church (returned again visible, after some difficulties, only in 1973-74).
In the post-war period, Tomea’s activity focuses on motifs that all relate closely to his native country, with its poor and simple things, opening a new season of his painting, more serene, clearer, indissolubly linked to the poetic world of its mountains and its people. This is how the "lanterns", the "flowers", the "landscapes of Cadore" assert themselves, reproposing, with absolutely original traits, the themes of religiosity and childhood.
In 1956 the Venice Biennale once again gave him a room. In the same year he was appointed Mayor of Zoppè, a position he held until his death.
1958 is an important date for Tomea: in December the Church of Santa Barbara is inaugurated in Metanopoli - (building that also houses works by other artists: Giò and Arnaldo Pomodoro, Pericle Fazzini, Bruno Cassinari, Franco Gentilini) - at San Donato Milanese, where the entire back wall is covered with a large mosaic "Calvary" of Tomea commissioned by Enrico Mattei, President of ENI and representing the sum testamentary of his painting. " I would like to be able to condense there in that great wall - he himself will say - all that I have created and tried: my sufferings and those of my mountain people..."
1960 is the last year. Aglauco Casadio, in a pause of the evil that had struck him, makes a documentary about the life and work of Tomea that gets the first prize at the III International Art Film Exhibition, in Venice. Before his death, which occurred on November 16, 1960, an anthological exhibition in Turin and then in Pieve di Cadore at the "Magnifica Comunità Cadorina" was dedicated to him.
Tomea non fu un naïf, un ingenuo interprete relegabile a livello di arte popolare o popolaresca. Il suo originale mondo pittorico, che affonda le radici in una forte immaginazione popolare, è un autentico mondo di poesia che possiede la stessa tensione morale di un Van Gogh. Per Formaggio egli è un "... pittore-poeta delle origini, del sorgere originario delle cose, della case, dei monti e degli alberi della sua Zoppè..." avvolte in un clima di dolci chiarità solari di un mondo cantato in tenere note di colore. Ma l'animo di Tomea, - ed è questo il segreto della sua pittura, continua Formaggio - "... spento il giorno, consunta la luce diurna e il suo canto insieme alle opere quotidiane... trasmutava, si riempiva di volti e di fantasmi dell'immaginario primitivo", divenendo visitatore familiare delle notti buie dell'Inconscio. Ed ecco, allora, comparire le sue famose candele, sparse su lande desolate dentro paesaggi surreali o apocalittici, i suoi pagliacci, le sue clownerie, e poi i mostri, le grottesche deformazioni dove il fatto simbolico ed allegorico si amalgama con la memoria delle tradizioni carnevalesche montanare; le maschere che sono autentiche fisionomie (che ricordano le sculture lignee popolari della fine del Quattrocento) e che si riferiscono ad una memoria contadina e montanara che si esprime dalle saghe montane fino alle scene macabre affrescate nelle chiese, dai filò alle storie raccontate davanti al focolare. Il tema del paesaggio attraversa tutta la pittura di Tomea dagli anni giovanili dell'Accademia Cignaroli sino alle ultime opere.
Museums:
L’Aquila, Museo Nazionale d’Abruzzo
Teolo, Padova, Museo di arte contemporanea Dino Formaggio
Roma, Collezione di Palazzo Montecitorio
Pieve di Cadore, Belluno, Museo del Cadore
Suzzara, Mantova, Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea
Macerata, Pinacoteca di Palazzo Ricci
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Museo d’Arte Moderna Mario Rimordi
Chieti, Museo d’Arte Costantino Barbella
Bibliography:
Enciclopedia Universale Seda della Pittura Moderna, Milano, Seda, 1969; A. M. Comanducci, Dizionario illustrato dei Pittori, Disegnatori e Incisori Italiani Moderni e Contemporanei, Milano, Luigi Patuzzi Editore, 1972
In 1928, always driven by his profession, Tomea returned to Milan and came into contact with young artists: he saw Birolli and Manzù again, he met, among others, Sassu, Cassinari and Messina. The meeting with Edoardo Persico, a Neapolitan critic, arrived in Milan from Turin in 1929 after the experience with the group of the "Six"which was the most active and stimulating figure of that period and which saw in Tomea’s popular imprint a primitivism free from all intellectualism, an immediate, instinctive and poetic adhesion to the primary values of existence, a genuine sample of a need for reaction and renewal compared to the twentieth century academic and passive, interpreter of the dictates of monumental regime.
Persico introduced Tomea to the works of Carrà, Rosai, Metaphysics, French Impressionism, Cézanne and Van Gogh, then unknown in Italy.
In 1931 he went to Florence for military service where he met Ottone Rosai. When in 1932 Persico organized a group exhibition at the Galleria "Il Milione", Tomea participated with 40 drawings (small landscapes, shepherds, players in the tavern) together with Manzù, Sassu, Birolli and others.
With the money he collected from the street business in the fall of 1934, together with his friend Aligi Sassu, he stayed a few months in Paris, where he fell in love "immediately with Delacroix, then with Cézanne and Van Gogh" to discover at the end Titian and understand - he says himself - "as the latter was the greatest of all put together". On his return in 1935 he settled permanently in Milan, abandoning the profession of itinerant and devoting himself solely to his pictorial vocation. In 1936 he exhibited with Manzù, Sassu and others at the "La Cometa" Gallery in Rome; in 1937 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Ministry of Education at the 8th Lombard Trade Union Exhibition at the Palazzo della Permanente in Milan; Always at the Permanente he exhibited at the first Exhibition of the group of "Corrente" - (although remarkable movement that does not however bring a decisive upheaval in his painting) - inaugurated on 18 March 1939 and eight months later, for young people only, at the Grande gallery in Via Dante; In October 1940 - after the break for the recall to military service in Udine for a year, in 1939 - he exhibited in a personal exhibition, confirming the fullness of expressive means, at the Barbaroux gallery in Milan.
Married in 1943, Tomea’s life, in addition to the birth of two children, is marked by the various stages of his success: exhibitions, awards, commissions and the execution of great religious works. After participating in the XXIII Venice Biennale in 1942 with 19 works in a room reserved to him, in 1945, in Marzio, he executed two large frescoes in the parish church (returned again visible, after some difficulties, only in 1973-74).
In the post-war period, Tomea’s activity focuses on motifs that all relate closely to his native country, with its poor and simple things, opening a new season of his painting, more serene, clearer, indissolubly linked to the poetic world of its mountains and its people. This is how the "lanterns", the "flowers", the "landscapes of Cadore" assert themselves, reproposing, with absolutely original traits, the themes of religiosity and childhood.
In 1956 the Venice Biennale once again gave him a room. In the same year he was appointed Mayor of Zoppè, a position he held until his death.
1958 is an important date for Tomea: in December the Church of Santa Barbara is inaugurated in Metanopoli - (building that also houses works by other artists: Giò and Arnaldo Pomodoro, Pericle Fazzini, Bruno Cassinari, Franco Gentilini) - at San Donato Milanese, where the entire back wall is covered with a large mosaic "Calvary" of Tomea commissioned by Enrico Mattei, President of ENI and representing the sum testamentary of his painting. " I would like to be able to condense there in that great wall - he himself will say - all that I have created and tried: my sufferings and those of my mountain people..."
1960 is the last year. Aglauco Casadio, in a pause of the evil that had struck him, makes a documentary about the life and work of Tomea that gets the first prize at the III International Art Film Exhibition, in Venice. Before his death, which occurred on November 16, 1960, an anthological exhibition in Turin and then in Pieve di Cadore at the "Magnifica Comunità Cadorina" was dedicated to him.
Tomea non fu un naïf, un ingenuo interprete relegabile a livello di arte popolare o popolaresca. Il suo originale mondo pittorico, che affonda le radici in una forte immaginazione popolare, è un autentico mondo di poesia che possiede la stessa tensione morale di un Van Gogh. Per Formaggio egli è un "... pittore-poeta delle origini, del sorgere originario delle cose, della case, dei monti e degli alberi della sua Zoppè..." avvolte in un clima di dolci chiarità solari di un mondo cantato in tenere note di colore. Ma l'animo di Tomea, - ed è questo il segreto della sua pittura, continua Formaggio - "... spento il giorno, consunta la luce diurna e il suo canto insieme alle opere quotidiane... trasmutava, si riempiva di volti e di fantasmi dell'immaginario primitivo", divenendo visitatore familiare delle notti buie dell'Inconscio. Ed ecco, allora, comparire le sue famose candele, sparse su lande desolate dentro paesaggi surreali o apocalittici, i suoi pagliacci, le sue clownerie, e poi i mostri, le grottesche deformazioni dove il fatto simbolico ed allegorico si amalgama con la memoria delle tradizioni carnevalesche montanare; le maschere che sono autentiche fisionomie (che ricordano le sculture lignee popolari della fine del Quattrocento) e che si riferiscono ad una memoria contadina e montanara che si esprime dalle saghe montane fino alle scene macabre affrescate nelle chiese, dai filò alle storie raccontate davanti al focolare. Il tema del paesaggio attraversa tutta la pittura di Tomea dagli anni giovanili dell'Accademia Cignaroli sino alle ultime opere.
Museums:
L’Aquila, Museo Nazionale d’Abruzzo
Teolo, Padova, Museo di arte contemporanea Dino Formaggio
Roma, Collezione di Palazzo Montecitorio
Pieve di Cadore, Belluno, Museo del Cadore
Suzzara, Mantova, Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea
Macerata, Pinacoteca di Palazzo Ricci
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Museo d’Arte Moderna Mario Rimordi
Chieti, Museo d’Arte Costantino Barbella
Bibliography:
Enciclopedia Universale Seda della Pittura Moderna, Milano, Seda, 1969; A. M. Comanducci, Dizionario illustrato dei Pittori, Disegnatori e Incisori Italiani Moderni e Contemporanei, Milano, Luigi Patuzzi Editore, 1972
