Carlo Bonomi

Carlo Bonomi (Turbigo, 1880 – Turbigo, 1961) Cows Oil on canvas, 57 x 81 cm With frame, 95 x 122 cm Born in Turbigo, a town in the province of Milan in the Ticino Valley, Carlo Bonomi attended the Brera Academy from 1898 to 1904 and subsequently took part in a series of courses at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich between 1905 and 1907, where he came into contact with the works of masters Von Stuck and Lembach and where he learned about the "popular truth" of Kathe Kollwitz's paintings. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the artist also had a formative study stay in Rome. After returning to Milan from his Roman trip, Bonomi opened a studio in the Lombard capital together with Carrà, Castiglioni, and Barilli, which soon became an important point of reference for artists working in the city at the beginning of the twentieth century. Enlisting as a volunteer in the First World War, he served on the front lines in Cadore and on Monte Grappa; the wartime experience strongly marked the artist's imagination, who, in the works of the second and third decades of the 20th century, portrays the tragedies and sufferings of soldiers and civilians in the war: a crucial example of this trend is provided by The Prisoners of Mauthausen, a painting executed between 1922 and 1923 and presented for the first time at the Exhibition of Ex-Combatants in Monza in 1924, in which the artist, in an absolutely anti-rhetorical way, revisiting a work such as The Martyrdom of the Franciscan Fathers at Nagasaki by Tanzio da Varallo at the Pinacoteca di Brera, perfectly expresses his rebellion and his total dissociation from the brutality of the conflict. Bonomi is inspired, especially in the early years of his long career, by the late nineteenth-century models of the most famous members of the Lombard divisionist circle, first of all Gaetano Previati, Giovanni Segantini and Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, reinterpreted in a sober and plastic key. Exemplifying this trend is a painting such as Pastoral Symphony: the work, which takes its cue from Segantini's Two Mothers at the GAM in Milan, takes up the theme of the mother breastfeeding the baby in her womb amidst the warmth of the sheep at dawn. From the second half of the 1910s onwards, Bonomi dedicated himself mainly to sculpture, which became, from this moment on, the most continuous form of his artistic expression. His sculptural works are present in different public places and cemeteries or in private collections, including: the Monumental Cemetery of Milan or those of Busto Arsizio, Gallarate and Turbigo, as well as the public gardens of Novara. His most famous plastic work, however, is certainly La Mater: this bronze, made in 1915 and perfected later between 1923 and 1948, represents a woman in the act of holding her child to herself, in an intense emotional exchange. The work was presented for the first time at the First Exhibition of the "Novecento Italiano," held at the Permanente in Milan in 1926 and supported and animated by Margherita Sarfatti: in the same year, the sculpture was exhibited at the Dresden exhibition and was purchased by the German government to be placed in the Palace of Ministries in Berlin. This work makes Bonomi "an absolute sculptor, in whom essence and existence coincide, framing him thus among the great sculptors of the twentieth century whose formal integrity is almost unique and finds the perfect balance between painting and sculpture, with the same ideal continuity affirmed by Michelangelo" (V. Sgarbi, Il Novecento, vol. 1, 2018, pp. 158-165). Bonomi is also known for his activity as an architect: his restoration work on his project at the Castle of Turbigo and the Broletto of Novara are well known. In his copious production, both pictorial and sculptural, the artist never fails to maintain some traits that distinguish his work: a resigned melancholy full of pure emotion, an austerity that expresses a pain considered intimate and not theatrical, a measured humanity that proceeds by glazing and shuns strong colors, a religiosity of a secular nature, focused on the values ??of human existence. In this work, probably belonging to the first season of the artist's production, the inspiration to Segantini's models appears evident: paintings such as Cow at the Trough of the GAM of Milan or At the Barrier of the National Gallery of Modern Art of Rome constitute an essential starting point for the artist from Turbigo. Compared to Segantini's works, however, the painting appears denser and more material; it is the artist himself who reiterates his clear preference for a painting with a strong material component («I say that painting seems to me better as much as it goes towards relief»). Contrary to the vast majority of Bonomi's works, in this case the colors appear particularly flamboyant and the scene, irradiated by a brilliant morning light, conveys an atmosphere of peaceful serenity. The object is in good condition