Giuditta (1957)

Autographed on the bottom right: “Acci”

Bibliography: Giovanni Acci (1910-1979). L’artista, le opere (The artist, the works), exhibition catalogue edited by M. Acci Kazantjis (Pietrasanta, Church and Cloister of Sant’Agostino, 18 December 2010 – 6 February 2011), Municipality of Pietrasanta 2010, p. 99 (illustration).

Provenance: private collection

Giovanni Acci, born in Florence in 1910, a cultured and sensitive interpreter of truth in its most alienating aspects, was the most coherent and pure exponent of the “Modern Painters of Reality”: an artistic brotherhood born after the Second World War with an exhibition in November 1947 at the Milan gallery of the magazine “L’illustrazione italiana”, which included painters Gregorio Sciltian, Pietro Annigoni, brothers Xavier and Antonio Bueno, Alfredo Serri and Carlo Guarienti.

Acci, who had made his debut in painting relatively late, participating with an Autoritratto con violino (Self-portrait with violin) in the Mostra Interprovinciale d’Arte of Florence in 1939, then had his first solo exhibition at the Lyceum in Florence in 1942, with widespread critical success. Right from these first tests the artist’s poetics emerge clearly: a perfect and lenticular painting that conveys sensations of palpable mystery, enigmatic epiphanies, energetic images, and deep silences. Stylistically akin to the painters of the German Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), he observes the expressive clarity and balance of the Renaissance Masters and the great Flemish artists. It is in this way that he fully fits in the programmatic characteristics of the Modern Painters of Reality who, in the 1947 Manifesto, of which Acci was not a signatory, stated: “We are neither interested nor moved by the so-called ‘abstract’ or ‘pure’ painting, procreated by a decaying society, which is empty of any human contents and has retreated into itself, in the vain hope of finding a substance in itself […]. We recreate the art of illusion of reality, the eternal and primeval seed of figurative arts. We do not lend ourselves to any comeback, we simply keep on with our mission of true painting”.

Acci participates in all the exhibitions of the group, which remained active for only two years, until 1949. While pursuing his path independently, he continues to modulate himself on an impeccable technique, on the solemn plasticism of figures and the enigmatic representation of a reality that is both objective and mysterious. After his experience with the Modern Painters of Reality, in 1955 he moved to Versilia, to Pietrasanta, encouraged by one of his major collectors, Sandro Rubboli. Giuditta, from 1957, fits exactly into this phase of luminous maturity. An iconic subject, so dear to the ancients, is read in a contemporary key and placed under the lens of the purest and fiercest reality, in the symbolic expression of the conflict between woman and oppressors, and the victory of feminine virtues over evil. The theme had already been taken on by Acci in two studies from 1953, in which, however, Giuditta appeared in a motionless, almost striking pose, enveloped into a red cloak and with the head of Holofernes in her hand, with the action already completed. In the 1957 painting, on the other hand, Giuditta, whose profile takes on the beloved likeness of his wife Milena, is caught in the moment just before the culminating event, as she advances resolute and proud with her fluttering cloak, so precisely described by the painter in a letter to his wife in 1953: “The creation of the painting sees considerable changes: the figure is no longer frontal but represented in three-quarters and is in movement, it seems as if she is about to leave the painting, her left hand grasps the sword, her right one disappears into the large red cloak that wraps her body.

The head of Holofernes is no longer there, his presence is felt or perhaps, more likely, the violent act has yet to happen, and its suspense is perceived. In the background, all bright sky, one can recognize the beloved Apuan Alps below. It is an image of great strength and dynamism, rendered by the power of her gestures and the waving movement of her cloak and hair”¹. The pictorial space of Renaissance matrix is the backdrop to the body with its perfect and impenetrable formalism, from which the extreme interest in human anatomy, the mastery of the technique, the search for gestural and affective rendering – the painter’s distinctive trait right up to the works of his extreme maturity – shine through.

Elena Lago

Bibliography

“Pittori Moderni della Realtà” [Modern Painters of Reality] (1947/1949), exhibition catalogue curated by M. Fagiolo dell’Arco (Florence, Palazzo Vecchio Arms Room, 30 June – 2 September 1984), Florence, Vallecchi, 1984.
Giovanni Acci (1910-1979). L’artista, le opere [The artist, the works], exhibition catalogue curated by M. Acci Kazantjis (Pietrasanta, Church and Cloister of Sant’Agostino, 18 December 2010 – 6 February 2011), Pontedera, Bandecchi & Vivaldi, 2010.

2015. Kazantjis, I Pittori Moderni della Realtà, Giovanni Acci e la Saletta degli amici dell’Arte di Modena [The Modern Painters of Reality, Giovanni Acci and the Room of the Friends of the Art of Modena], 2015.

La forza del vero. Pittori moderni della realtà [The power of truth. The Modern Painters of Reality], exhibition catalogue curated by B. Avanzi, D. Ferrari, S. Barbaro (Rovereto, Mart, 15 May – 18 September 2022), Rome, L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2022.

¹ Giovanni Acci (1910-1979). L’artista, le opere (The artist, the works), exhibition catalogue edited by M. Acci Kazantjis (Pietrasanta, Church and Cloister of Sant’Agostino, 18 December 2010 – 6 February 2011), Pontedera, Bandecchi & Vivaldi, 2010, p. 99.