Alfredo Biagini

Alfredo Biagini
Amadriade
1920-1923
majolica; 40 x 18, 5 x 26 cm
Marche: under the base "siai / Rome / Pezzo Unico"


Son of a Roman goldsmith, Alfredo Biagini began his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, but in 1909 he moved to Paris to take anatomy courses. Returning to Rome, he entered the colony of artists who lived and worked in Villa Strohl Fern, including Amedeo Bocchi and Renato Brozzi, sharing his stylistic choices now oriented towards the secessionist language and the attention paid to decorative values. Starting from 1915, in his repertoire began to appear more and more frequent sculptures of zoomorphic subject, realized in marble, bronze or majolica with great fire, used both as independent sculptures and as decorative elements for architectural projects. In 1916, he participated in the IV International Art Exhibition of the Roman Secession, exhibiting an Amadriade in veined marble, portrayed squatting with a fruit in his hand, which became the starting model of the later majolica versions, painted with enamels of different shades, in most part of the cases spread with particular effects of pouring in contrasting colors. The choice of such a particular animal was part of the general interest of Biagini for rare species linked to distant territories, which reflected the taste for the exotic of nineteenth-century derivation, still strongly shared by the artists and the public of the time. In his animalier sculptures, Biagini was able to combine the perfect anatomical knowledge of the individual species described from time to time, the result of the study of truth in zoological parks, with a marked sensitivity for rendering attitudes and facial expressions, and with a tendency to simplification formal, which allowed him to reach outcomes on horseback "between the caricatural and the decorative" (Lancellotti 1917, p. 303). In 1921 at the I Biennale in Rome he proposed a series of large-scale and painted majolica animals, among which in all likelihood his own Amadriade, made by the Italian Artistic Trade Union of Rome as a unique piece and which presents those characteristics of formal stylization, of acumen in the rendering of the animal's character and balance between the caricatured cut and the decorative effect that characterizes most of his animal work of the 1920s. Moreover, Biagini already reveals explicit cadences in the decoration of the Teatro Cinema Corso in Rome, designed by Marcello Piacentini, which he expects between 1915 and 1917 with Arturo Dazzi, and continues to practice them in the works presented in the II Roman Biennial of 1924, and in that case much admired by Roberto Papini, and in Cercopiteco rosso, merged in 1926 to be exhibited at the 15th Venice Biennale. Proposed again in 1929 at the First Exhibition of the Lazio Fascist Union of Artists, it was purchased by the Municipality of Rome. It is a piece of very high quality drawing and plastic that confirms not only the remarkable inventive and executive qualities of Biagini, but above all the ability to transform the animal subject into a decorative invention in perfect line with the taste choices of that period. 'years.
Bibliography: Alfredo Biagini 2013, pp. 89-90.
Valerio Terraroli

Author: Alfredo Biagini
Dimensions: 40 X 18,5 X 26
Year: 1920