Ugo Attardi Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

Ugo Attardi (Sori, 12 March 1923 – Rome, 20 July 2006) was an Italian painter, sculptor and writer. Born in the province of Genoa. Read the full biography

Ugo Attardi Biography

Ugo Attardi (Sori, 12 March 1923 – Rome, 20 July 2006) was an Italian painter, sculptor and writer. Born in the province of Genoa. The father, a trade unionist and active member of the 'Federation of Seafarers', originally from Santo Stefano Quisquina, a small village in the province of Agrigento, is forced by the fascist regime to leave Liguria to return to Sicily. The mother is Natalia Donnini Attardi. Having moved with his family to Palermo, intrigued by painting and its techniques, from an early age (in his free time he helped his paternal uncle, an old portrait and landscape painter) he began to attend the Academy of Fine Arts and subsequently the Faculty of Architecture. In 1945 he moved to Rome, hosted by Pietro Consagra, who was in turn guest of Renato Guttuso. The post-war climate rich in cultural and civil initiatives allowed him to resume his research with enthusiasm. With some young artists, in 1948, he formed the Forma Uno movement, with an abstract orientation, however developing divergent visions compared to the rest of the group. His companions were Carla Accardi, Antonio Sanfilippo, Pietro Consagra, Piero Dorazio, Mino Guerrini, Concetto Maugeri, Achille Perilli and Giulio Turcato. In 1948 he participated in the National Exhibition of Figurative Arts (5th National Art Quadrennial) in Rome. In the early fifties he oriented his art towards expressionism, taking inspiration from Francis Bacon and George Grosz among others, combining his activity as an artist with political commitment within the Italian Communist Party. The need to experiment with a new and visionary relationship with reality leads him to move away from abstractionism, to study his own form of expressionism. In 1952 and 1954 he was invited to the XXVI and XXVII Venice Biennale. In 1956, despite the crisis of realism, he successfully exhibited in a gallery in Trastevere. In 1958 he participated in the foundation and began collaborating with the culture and political newspaper "Città Aperta", together with Tommaso Chiaretti, Elio Petri, Renzo Vespignani, Mario Socrate. In the early sixties he participated in numerous exhibitions both in Italy and abroad. In 1961 he founded the group Il Pro e il Contro, leading all the demonstrations until the last year, that of its dissolution. In 1963 one of his works was exhibited at the Contemporary Italian Paintings exhibition, held in some Australian cities. In 1963-64 he exhibited at the exhibition Peintures italiennes d'aujourd'hui, held in the Middle East and North Africa.