Atanasio Soldati (1896-1953)

Aliases: Anton Atanasio Soldati; Antonio Atanasio Soldati

Professions: Painter

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  ATANASIO SOLDATI

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  Atanasio Soldati (1896-1953)

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  ATANASIO SOLDATI

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Atanasio Soldati Biography

(b Parma, 24 Aug 1896; d Parma, 27 Aug 1953). Italian painter. After serving from 1915 to 1918 in World War I, he studied architecture in Parma (until 1920) at the Accademia di Belle Arte and practised there; he also taught drawing at the Scuola Professionale at Langhirano (1923–5) and began to paint. After moving to Milan in 1925, Soldati infused his reductive urban spaces with elements of Pittura Metafisica. Experiments with primitivism (e.g. Self-portrait , 1930) and ruralism reminiscent of Carlo Carrà’s works (e.g. Seascape at Grottammare , 1931; both Gallarate, Civ. Gal. A. Mod.) constituted his first show at the Galleria del Milione (1931), Milan, where he encountered the abstract art being developed by Mauro Reggiani and Gino Ghiringhelli (1898–1964). Carlo Belli’s introduction to his second show (Boll. Milione , 1933) consequently defined Soldati’s position as ‘order against Babel’, although such works as Composition (1934; Milan, Gal. A. Mod.) demonstrated his persistent interest in Cubism and Purism. Strict linear abstractions (e.g. Composition in Black , 1935; Turin, Gal. Civ. A. Mod.) emerged in his third Milione exhibition (1935), reflecting exposure to the work of Piet Mondrian, Vortemberge-Gildewart and others, and in the following year he joined the Parisian group Abstraction-Création. The wartime destruction of his Milanese studio was devastating, and Soldati moved to Losana near Pavia, where he joined the Resistance. In post-war Milan, he founded the Movimento di arte concreto (1948) with Gillo Dorfles (b 1910), Gianni Monnet (1912–58) and Bruno Munari, opposing Socialist Realism with ‘concretism’. Despite illness, he achieved a final exemplary freedom in such works as Ambiguity (1950; Gallarate, Civ. Gal. A. Mod.).

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