RENATO MARINO MAZZACURATI
Galliera, 1907 - Parma, 1969

Massacre of the Innocents, 1943

RENATO MARINO MAZZACURATI
Galliera, 1907 - Parma, 1969

Massacre of the Innocents, 1943
High relief in plaster on a wooden base, 100 x 130 x 33 cm
Signed and dated lower left: Mazzacurati 943

LITERATURE AND EXHIBITED: “Mazzacurati la felicità della compiutezza espressiva”, curated by S. Bonfili e A. Agati, Palombi Editori, 2009, p. 91 n° 36.

BIOGRAPHY: From an early age he learned the trade by attending the studies of the sculptor Scanapia and the painter Beccaluva, and consolidated his training by working with a relative stonemason in the Veneto region; the artisan integrity derived from this first phase is remembered by Mazzacurati with the utmost consideration. His debut took place in 1925 at the Triveneta art exhibition. In 1926 in Rome, he attended the free school of the nude at the Academy; he met Scipione, Mafai and Raphaël, forming the partnership with them that Longhi calls the "Scuola di Via Cavour". Some landscapes and still lifes of those years recall the Morandian world. At the end of the 1920s he was assistant to Arturo Martini in the studio of Villa Strohl-fern; around 1930, due to contingent needs, he worked as a funerary sculptor, making use of his proven virtuosity. The early Thirties were full of activity: he founded the magazine "Fronte" with Scipione, illustrates Campana's Canti Orfici, and stayed in Paris for a few months, looking at the various trends in sculpture. These influences give his compositions a restless and dramatic dynamism, in which the very purity of the sign refuses to be classically composed. Emblematic in this respect is the series of small bronze nudes from the early 1930s. Between 1934 and 1935 he retired to Gualtieri, in Emilia, to deepen the language of sculpture which since then has become almost exclusive to him. During this stay he is among the first to materially help, encouraging him in painting, Antonio Ligabue, the best known Italian naif. In 1936 he moved permanently near Civitavecchia where he shuttled to Rome, and in 1942 he exhibited at the Galleria di Roma with Gentilini, Stradone, Natili and Monti. During the war years his style, already marked by a vigorous realism, takes on more and more the tones of a violent expressionism, pushed to a grotesque and caricatured charge reminiscent of Daumier, as in the series of the Massacre of the innocents of the Emperors and Hierarchies.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: G.C. Argan, Marino.Mazzacurati in "Proceedings of the National Academy of S. Luca", Rome 1965-66;
M. Maccari, Mazzacurati cat. exhibition, National Academy of S. Luca, Rome 1966;
V. Martinelli, Scipione and Mazzacurati painter, in Studies in honor of V. Viale, Turin 1 967;
M.M., cat. exhibition, Municipio, Reggio Emilia 1983, with writings by R. De Grada, G.C. Argan, R. Guttuso, M. Maccari, C. Marzi, G. Persichetti;
M. De Luca, V. Mazzarella, R. Ruscio, The Marino Mazzacurati Museum. Works from the Carla Marzi donation, Reggio Emilia 1995;
a volume edited by R. Ruscio on the Mazzacurati Archive of the Reggio Emilia Museum is in preparation.

Very good condition