CARLO SOCRATE
Mezzanabigli, 1889 - Roma, 1967

Still life with fishes, 1951
Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 cm
Signed and dated lower right: C. Socrate, 51

Photo-certificate by Archivio della Scuola Romana, Rome

LITERATURE AND EXHIBITED: “I Maestri della Scuola Romana”, curated by A. Statuti, Florence, 2014, p. 50.

BIOGRAPHY: Son of actors, he lives in Argentina until the age of nine. Back in Italy, he attended the free school of the nude in Florence, and in 1914 he was in Rome, where a year later he took up his studio at Villa Strohl-Fern. In this first phase he is attentive to Cézanne, whom he can see at the exhibitions of the Secession, and looks to Spadini, an important figure in the Roman pictorial culture of those years. In 1917 he worked in the company of the Russian Balls of Diaghilev, collaborated on the sets of Las Meninas (music by Fauré, choreography by Massine) and prepared the scenes of Léon Bakst for Les femmes de bonne humeur. In this period he met Picasso, whom he followed in Paris, collaborating with him on the scenes of Parade (music by Satie, libretto by Cocteau, choreography by Massine). During his stay in Paris he meets Derain and other exponents of the cultural environment. With Picasso he went to Barcelona and Madrid, where together they visited the Prado Back in Italy, in 1918 he exhibited at the Casina Valadier al Pincio the Still life with a plate of apples and onions, which aroused perplexity in the Roman environment due to the personal "neoclassicism. "museum but attentive to the European situation of those years, as still demonstrated, in 1920, by Pesci, who knows how to combine in a singular way a cubist style with neo-Caravaggesque experiments. In 1926 Roberto Longhi dedicated a monograph to him, Bathers, Sleeping Venus, Female Torso, all painted in the early 1920s, are exemplary works of the climate of "rappel à l'ordre", both in terms of ideas and painting, applied by young people Romans - in addition to Socrates, Donghi, Trombadori, Francalancia - in the second decade of the century. Manet, Courbet, Ingres, Tiziano, Caravaggio intertwine in a complex web of references to fix themselves in a motionless, magical timelessness. After Portatrice di Frutta (1924), which is among his masterpieces, at the Milanese exhibition of the Italian twentieth century he exhibits the Hunters (1925), a painting of particular commitment. Until his death, his work will tend to repeat, lightening them, the same characteristic motifs, losing the tension that had stimulated his previous research. In the years between the two wars Socrates exhibited mainly in public exhibitions: with the group of "Valori Plastici" he was present at the "Florentine Spring" of 1922 (presented in the catalog by Alberto Savinio). He was invited to the various exhibitions of the "Novecento Italiano ", in 1931 is present with a large personal at the first edition of the Quadrennial. It is worth mentioning also his activity as an art critic for the "Corriere Padano", sometimes with the pseudonym of Carlo Lerrate.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: R. Longhi, "History of Carlo Socrate", Rome 1926;
F. Benzi, card in cat. "The artists of Villa Strohl-Fern", Rome, 1983;
"Scuola Romana artists between the two wars", catalog of the exhibition edited by M.Fagiolo, V. Rivosecchi with the collaboration of F. R. Morelli, 1988;
"Carlo Socrate", edited by M. Quesada, texts by G. Briganti, A. Trombadori, Rome 1988;
"Magic Realism", exhibition catalog edited by M. Fagiolo, contributions by V. Rivosecchi, A. Trombadori, F. R. Morelli, Verona-Milan 1988-'89;
AA. VV., "Rome 1920s", exhibition catalog, Rome 1990;
General catalog of the Municipal Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, edited by G. Bonasegale, Rome 1995.

Credits: Netta Vespignani, Francesca F.R. Morelli, Valerio Rivosecchi

Good condition, small tear on the canvas at the bottom right
Frame, without glass