Alberto Carosi

Alberto Carosi was born in Rome in 1891. He enrolled at the Art Institute at a very young age and shortly afterwards went to the Scuola Libera del Nudo. At the same time he attended the studios of Publio De Tommasi and Augusto Bompiani, but the greatest influence came from his brother Giuseppe.

He mainly focused on landscape painting enriched with lyrical and symbolic elements, and thus joined the XXV della Campagna romana group. He mainly frequented the areas to the east of Rome, in particular Anticoli Corrado and the surrounding countryside.

He made his debut at the 1913 Naples Exhibition with Piazza del Popolo and Interno di cucina ad Anticoli. But his real success came for the first time at the Exhibition of the Amateurs and Connoisseurs of Fine Arts in Rome in 1915, when he again presented Interno di cucina ad Anticoli (Interior of a kitchen in Anticoli), a painting with evocative tones that brought to light the everyday life of the Anticoli and Roman countryside.

At the Amateurs’ and Connoisseurs’ Exhibition in 1919, he presented La montagna di Cervara (The Mountain of Cervara). Skilled in both oil and watercolour, he used a loose and light brushstroke, so much so that his landscapes were often pervaded by delicate transparencies, all modulated in light tones.

Over the years, he took part in several editions of the Roman Biennial and in 1923, at the Galleria Ettore Jandolo in Via Margutta, he exhibited in a one-man show together with the painter Mario Fiorentini. The focus of the exhibition is on the numerous studies and paintings that Carosi made during his time in Anticoli: views of villages with people intent on their daily activities, rural scenes, small anecdotal paintings, or simple landscapes with melancholic notes that would later mark a large part of his production.

While Carosi’s first phase was marked by the use of a slightly darker palette, mainly used in the narration of interiors, from this time onwards it was instead denoted by light and refined nuances.

In 1930 he took part in the Mostra del Sindacato Fascista del Lazio with Una cucina del Lazio, Ombrellone e zucche and Una cucina veneta. In 1932 he presented La valle dell’Aniene (Aniene Valley) and Calle San Stae, and in 1936 La caldaia di rame (The Copper Boiler), Parca (Parca) and La ricchezza del povero (Interior). He took part in the Syndicate’s exhibitions until 1942, presenting landscapes such as Anticoli or Mattino di primavera and Pomeriggio d’inverno. He was appointed a member of the Pontifical Academy of the Virtuous of the Pantheon and died in Rome in 1967.

Elena Lago