Franco Sassi (26 February 1912 – 11 November 1993) was an Italian

painter Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

printmaker Printmaking is the process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand processed technique ...

and engraver.

Biography

He started his career as a

graphic designer A graphic designer is a practitioner who follows the discipline of graphic design, either within companies or organizations or independently. They are professionals in design and visual communication, with their primary focus on transforming ...

at the time when lithographic

engraving Engraving is the practice of incising a design on a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a Burin (engraving), burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or Glass engraving, glass ar ...

was still made on the

Alois Senefelder Johann Alois Senefelder (6 November 177126 February 1834) was a German actor and playwright who invented the printing technique of lithography in the 1790s.Meggs, Philip B. A History of Graphic Design. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1998. p 146 Actor ...

stone. As a teenager he received his initial training at the

Borsalino Borsalino Giuseppe e Fratello S.p.A. is the oldest Italian company specializing in the manufacture of luxury hats. Since 1857, the manufacturer has been based in Alessandria, Piedmont. The founder, Giuseppe Borsalino, is remembered for creating ...

lithographic workshop in

Alessandria Alessandria (; ) is a city and commune in Piedmont, Italy, and the capital of the Province of Alessandria. It is also the largest municipality of the region. The city is sited on the alluvial plain between the Tanaro and the Bormida rivers, ...

, the town where he lived. In the 1930s he became friend with the engraver Cino Bozzetti, of whom he was a follower in Chalcographic Art. He took part in

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

Slovenia Slovenia, officially the Republic of Slovenia, is a country in Central Europe. It borders Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the south and southeast, and a short (46.6 km) coastline within the Adriati ...

; several portraits and caricatures of superiors and fellow soldiers witness this experience. He loved his native land, which he represented in the bright views of the river landscape, as well as in the sketches and drawings of

Mulberry ''Morus'', a genus of flowering plants in the family Moraceae, consists of 19 species of deciduous trees commonly known as mulberries, growing wild and under cultivation in many temperate world regions. Generally, the genus has 64 subordinat ...

trees, clouds and clods. In the last decades of his production the vision of his land developed into the fantastic naturalism of the so-called "monsters" and the chromatic explosion of the watercolours. His production ranges from charcoal and sanguine portraits, caricatures, white and black drawings to oil paintings, watercolours, etchings and lithographic prints. His works were shown in several collective and personal exhibitions with great public and critical participation. Some of his works are kept at the Pinacoteca Civica of

and the Civica Raccolta Achille Bertarelli in

Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...

. Since 2009 the Department of prints and drawings of the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

has acquired five etchings that may be dated between 1970 and 1980.

References

*''Franco Sassi, L'immagine e il sogno'',

Province A province is an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman , which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire, Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...

, 1995. *''Franco Sassi: uno specchio lontano'',

City A city is a human settlement of a substantial size. The term "city" has different meanings around the world and in some places the settlement can be very small. Even where the term is limited to larger settlements, there is no universally agree ...

, 1996. *F. Decaria and F. Sottomano, ''Franco Sassi, la magia in un segno'',

Piedmont Piedmont ( ; ; ) is one of the 20 regions of Italy, located in the northwest Italy, Northwest of the country. It borders the Liguria region to the south, the Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna regions to the east, and the Aosta Valley region to the ...

Region In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as areas, zones, lands or territories, are portions of the Earth's surface that are broadly divided by physical characteristics (physical geography), human impact characteristics (human geography), and ...

, 1998.

External links

Official websiteThe prints collected at the British MuseumThe prints collected at the Bagnocavallo Museum in Ravenna
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sassi, Franco 1912 births 1993 deaths People from the Province of Alessandria 20th-century Italian painters Italian male painters 20th-century Italian printmakers 20th-century Italian male artists