Head of a young African girl

Signed on the marble base: “Guerrisi”

‘A confident master of sculptural plasticity, incisive in his representation of characters’[1], Michele Guerrisi was one of the most highly regarded sculptors by the public and critics in Italy between the 1920s and 1940s. Committed, especially during the 1930s, to portraiture characterised by solemnity and austere formal purity, he seems to embody the values of physiognomic representation in Hellenistic sculpture, in an effective combination of solid modelling and expressive research. Involved in the cultural activities promoted by the regime, he was also deeply aligned with the imagery of colonial Italy, with a desire to transform the iconographic stereotypes of the 19th century through a strongly 20th-century perspective. As early as 1926, at the Venice Biennale, he was awarded a prize for his plaster sculpture Donna negra (fig. 1), which was then exhibited again at the Turin Quadriennale in 1927 and described as “admirable for the modelling of the flesh”[2].

In the sculpture, we discover echoes of Attilio Selva’s Enigma (fig. 2), not only in the choice of a similar pose and a fleshy, expressive solidity, but also in the mysterious depth of the face. While Selva’s work reveals a mysticism of Egyptian and Mediterranean origin, Guerrisi’s woman’s face shows a more deeply African psychological intensity, which is even more evident in Volto di giovane africana (Face of a Young African Woman), a bronze portrait exhibited at the 1929 Barcelona International Exhibition under the title Testa di negra (Head of a Black Woman). Although he was not among the artists who physically travelled to the so-called overseas colonies during the regime, Guerrisi skilfully shaped the woman’s face, certainly bearing in mind the dry, primitivist modelling of African statuary. Guerrisi was also a critic and in his Discorsi sulla Scultura (Discourses on Sculpture), published in 1931, he also devoted a section to African and pre-Columbian art. However, he did not neglect the realistic details of the ethnic features, such as the full lips and abundant hair, gathered in a cap rendered in a synthetic manner that further emphasises the luminous vibrations of the bronze surface. The absolute simplicity of the composition, as well as the slightly raised chin and the pupil-less gaze, contribute to giving the figure that air of sophisticated mystery coming from distant lands.

[1] F. Geraci, L’inaugurazione della I Quadriennale d’Arte Nazionale, “Roma”, 8 January 1931.

[2] Un Osservatore, V Esposizione Quadriennale di Torino, “L’Artista moderno giornale d’Arte applicata”, XXVI, 1, 1927, p. 227.