“I have not found many artists who, in this current time, have the merit of having attempted to interpret the era in which we live, ascending into rhapsodies about it.
Poetry, basically, is right at home in Pardini’s painting, and he reaches it with his every effort, starting from the 1300s-style frescoes and, slowly but surely, to the Impressionists, to Cezanne, to the Fauves, to Viani, to Picasso…”
LEONIDA REPACI
(Palmi, 5 April 1898 – Roma, 19 July 1985) was an Italian writer and painter.
In 1929, along with Carlo Salsa and Alberto Colantuoni, he co-founded the Premio Viareggio, and he remained the president of the prestigious award until his death. Rèpaci’s work can be defined as autobiographical and in direct contact with his life experiences, right from his debut L’ultimo cireneo (1923), where he recalls being injured during his time at the front while at war. In the book In fondo al pozzo, he tells of the traumatic experience of being in prison, while La Pietrosa racconta (1984) is a sentimental re-evocation of his much-loved wife. Finally, the work that was most dear to him was the trilogy, Storia dei Rupe, in which the tales of a copious, dynamic, bourgeois Italian family unfold over time, expressing their troubles through social, spiritual and psychological experiences of the first thirty years of the 20th century. In this book, the writer demonstrates a knowing interest for the trials and tribulations of his land. Apart from the autobiographical themes, the narration also contains political and social topics with an authentic and totally realistic commitment, but it is also brimming with a lyrical descriptiveness full of color and intrinsic violence of a vertiginous sensuality.
In 1959 Federico Fellini cast him in the film La Dolce Vita, playing himself, alongside the painter Anna Salvatore and the actress Laura Betti.
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