Ennio Pozzi

Ennio Pozzi was born in Sesto Fiorentino in 1893 and devoted himself to painting from a young age, soon showing his talent especially in figure paintings. At the age of thirty-one, in 1924 he obtained a prize at the Ussi Competition and in the same year he participated in the Venice Biennale with Il bagno.

The strong influence exerted on him by the post-impressionist authors is immediately evident: the vigorous plastic value of the figures and the importance of spatial rendering through angular and careful geometries combine him with the poetics of Cézanne. Inserted since 1920 in the group of avant-garde artists called “Tuscans of today”, he also undergoes the influence of the return to order before moving into an extremely personal and expressive trait.

In 1927 in Florence he presented two still lifes and a nude which seems to be very close to the nude figures of Felice Carena. In fact, Pozzi’s poetics are decidedly alongside that of the Turin artist, especially in the works presented up to the 1930s. At the I Regional Art Exhibition in Tuscany he exhibits five paintings, Old woman, Figure of a child, Peasants, Gisella and Portrait of my wife, all figures in which the monumental structure of the bodies and at the same time the ancient simplicity of the spaces make Pozzi fit fully. in instances of return to order.

We can say the same for the White Girl among friendly figures, presented at the Venice Biennale in 1928 and for the works presented at the IV Tuscan Regional Art Exhibition, Confidences, Tuscan girls, My daughter, Old woman with child and above all Figures in the garden that it seems to narrate the epic of peasant labor, but also the family aggregation that this entails. Like solemn sacred figures, women and men work and rest among the plants in the garden. It is a strong and heartfelt painting by the artist, which naturally recalls its origins.

In the thirties he made several trips, in particular in Paris he approached the works of French and German expressionism. His painting begins to undergo a series of changes. The expressiveness of the faces, the suffering or the intensity of the figures derive from the observation of Kokoschka, from whom he also inherits the nervous trait and the tormented, expressionist chromatism.

At the 1930 Biennale these changes began to emerge, when he presented Maternità, Fiori, Giovinetta Toscana, but even more so at the Rome Quadriennale in 1931, where he sent The old gardener, Tuscan girl and Still life, in which he also notes the stretch of Van Gogh. In any case, the drawing power remains in all the works presented during the thirties and forties.

Invalid worker, Portrait of the mother and The race appear at the II Quadrennial of Rome in 1835, Boy with lambs and Mary at the III Quadrennial of 1939 and nine works at the IV of 1943. Among these there are some nudes of great expressive value, influenced by Primo Conti style. Until the seventies, the artist painted works such as Still life with asparagus. He died in Sesto Fioretino in 1972.

Elena Lago