Lugano
Ennio Morlotti was born in Lecco in 1910. He graduated as a private student at Accademia di Brera in 1936. In 1937 he had the occasion to see the recently completed Guernica in Paris. The artwork left a deep impression on him, leaving him with a strong opinion about what direction modern art should go. Morlotti joined the group Corrente in Milan in 1939. Corrente used a strong pictorial style that combined expressionism with cubist and Picasso’s influence and that fiercely opposed the revival of tradition carried on by the Novecento movement. After the war, Morlotti was part of the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti, and then of the Gruppo degli Otto, led by the critic Lionello Venturi. During these years, he slowly abandoned the cubist influence to develop a more personal style: some figurative references of landscapes and still lifes were still present, but matter and colour (often laid on canvas with a spatula) became the protagonist of his works. In 1950 and 1951, he exhibited at the Caterine Viviano Gallery in New York, starting to be known outside Italy. Besides Venturi, Morlotti’s work was praised by other leading Italian critics such as Arcangeli, Longhi, Testori and Volpe. Arcangeli in particular included Morlotti among “gli ultimi naturalisti”, the last naturalist painters, as one of the last heirs of a Lombard tradition of figuration. During his later years, Morlotti further widened his choice of subjects, working on new series such as the Teschi (skulls); Rocce (rocks); Bagnanti (bathing women), inspired by the series by Cézanne. He died in Milan in 1992.