Carlo Bonomi (Turbigo, 1880-1961), Flock of sheep

Carlo Bonomi (Turbigo, 1880-1961) Flock of sheep Oil on canvas, 32 x 63 Framed, 51 x 82 cm     Born in Turbigo, in the Ticino Valley, Carlo Bonomi attended the Brera Academy between the 19th and 20th centuries and subsequently attended various courses at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich between 1905 and 1907. In Germany, the young artist from the province of Milan came into contact with the works of masters Von Stuck, Lembach and Kollwitz. The artist's stay in Rome is also dated to the beginning of the 20th century. After returning to Milan after his trip to Rome, Bonomi opened a studio in Milan together with Carrà, Castiglioni and Barilli, which soon became an important cultural reference point. Enlisting as a volunteer in the First World War, he served in the front lines in Cadore and on Monte Grappa; the war experience strongly marked the artist's imagination, who, between the 1910s and 1930s, portrayed the tragedies and sufferings of soldiers and civilians in war: an example of this trend coincides with 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 within which the artist perfectly expresses his rebellion and his total distance from the brutality of the conflict. Bonomi was 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. Exemplary of 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 child in her womb amid the warmth of the sheep at dawn. From the second half of the 1910s, 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, among which we remember: 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 subsequently perfected between 1923 and 1948, represents a woman in the act of holding her child close, in an intense emotional exchange. The work was presented for the first time on the occasion of 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: the restoration operations implemented on his project at the Castle of Turbigo and the Broletto of Novara are well known. In the 1920s, Bonomi built his hermitage, La Selvaggia, in his native country, in his own image and likeness, the name of which is inspired by "Selvatico è chi si salva" – a famous saying by Leonardo Da Vinci – in which he created his painting and sculpture. La Selvaggia structure conforms as a true citadel in stone, where, even today, his works are collected and where, in the Gipsoteca, based on that in Possagno of Canova, it is possible to admire the plasters of his sculptures. A recognized artistic heritage at Italian and international level, the residence, preserved and inhabited by Bonomi's successors, still transmits the message of an artist who has never cared about fashions, currents, but whose inspiration has always been the humanity of the people, the strength of work, the freedom of his expression. This painting, with its dark tones and fragmented brushstrokes, inspired by divisionism, features an elderly woman leading a flock of sheep to pasture in a cold and foggy dawn. The rural atmospheres recall the pictorial passages of Giovanni Segantini, with particular reference to Herd on the Move of 1887. The female figure, on the other hand, recalls those of the peasant women of the early post-war period of the German Käthe Kollwitz.      The object is in good condition.