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CONSTRUCTIVE COLOR

The Big café

The most important pictures of the second half of the 1930s are painted under the suggestion of Sassu’s French experience, which brought about a significant change in his pictorial idiom. He moved away from a lyrical, evocative tone toward a more studied structure, thanks to a solidification and a more solidly constructive use of color.

His preference in these years was for a horizontal format, probably influenced by a greater interest in the events of history and a desire to present them in narrative terms.

This evolution can be perceived in all the significant canvases of this period, whether historical and mythological in nature, like the battles, horses, nymphs, starting with the Cavalcata of 1935, or realistic, starting with The Big Café.

I quadri più importanti dei secondi anni ’30 sono eseguiti sotto le suggestioni dell’French experience, che comporta un cambiamento significativo nel suo linguaggio pittorico: Sassu passa infatti da un’intonazione lirico-evocativa a una rappresentazione d’impianto più ragionato, grazie a una solidificazione del colore e a un suo uso più saldamente costruttivo.

E' di questi anni la preferenza per il formato orizzontale, probabilmente influenzata da un maggiore interesse per le vicende della storia e dalla volontà di rappresentarle in termini di svolgimento narrativo.

Tale evoluzione è riscontrabile in tutte le tele significative del periodo, sia di carattere storicomitologico, come le battles, i horses, le ninfe, a partire dalla Cavalcata del 1935, sia di carattere realista, a partire da The Big Café.

top of page BATTLES AND MYTHOLOGY

Battle
between Horsemen

Indicative of the importance attributed by the artist to works of this type is his choice of a battle scene for his entry in the important anthological exhibition of Italian artists organized by the Galleria della Cometa in 1937 in New York.

Further examples of this aspect of his painting are works like Battle between Horsemen (1936-39), the new version of Argonauts constructed along the rhythm of a classical frieze, almost in the manner of Poussin (1938), The Wrath of Achilles (1938), Death of Patroclus, The Death of Caesar, and Solitude (1939).