Ottone Rosai
Ottone Rosai: the Artist’s Paintings and Works
Ottone Rosai (Florence 1895 – Ivrea (Turin) 1957)
Painter and engraver
Ottone Rosai is the third great 20th-century Italian painter along with Giorgio de Chirico and Giorgio Morandi. Prof. Vittorio Sgarbi
The great artist took the lessons of 14th- and 15th-century Tuscan masters like Cimabue, Giotto, and Masaccio and applied them to the latest artistic trends.
Ottone Rosai: the person behind the artist
Ottone Rosai was a 192-meter giant, imposing, morose, and troubled – always on a knife edge.
He debuted as an artist in 1913, the same year he encountered the works of Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, and Ardengo Soffici.
The next year, he was in the Futurist exhibition at the Sprovieri Gallery in Rome and started working with Lacerba. He volunteered to go to war. His father’s suicide in 1922 radically affected his life and he was forced to work in his father’s carpentry workshop to support his family.
This tragedy haunted him throughout his life and influenced his subjects and works.
Ottone Rosai and Fascism
He was accused of being a fascist in the 1920s and a communist after the war. He lived alone on Via Toscanella and then the beautiful Via San Leonardo. He had close relationships with his wife and his friends, who included Vasco Pratolini.
The exhibitions
He had his first solo show at Palazzo Capponi in Florence in November 1920, followed by one at the Casa d’Arte Bragaglia in 1922.
In 1928 he showed at the 15th Venice Biennale. and in 1929 he was in the Second Exhibition of 20th-Century Italian Art in Milan.
In the autumn of 1930, the Galleria del Milione in Milan opened with a solo show of Rosai’s works.
Rosai in 1932 he was invited to show 12 works at the Biennale and had a solo show at the Galleria di Palazzo Ferroni in Florence.
In 1933 Rosai showed at the Galleria delle Tre Arti in Milan.
He showed five large figure paintings at II Quadriennale di Roma.
He kept up the pace in the 1940s, exhibiting alongside 20th-century Italian masters.
Collaboration with “Il Selvaggio”
From 1926 to 1929 he contributed to Mino Maccari’s magazine Il Selvaggio and exhibited in Florence in 1930 with the Il Selvaggio group.
Chair in Florence
Not even his position as Chair of the Florence art academy erased the dark shadow over him that fascinated artists like Francis Bacon, who called him one of the greatest painters of the 20th century.
The last scene of Charlie Chaplin’s movie Modern Times was inspired by Ottone Rosai’s work The Engaged Couple.
In 1957, Ottone Rosai died in Ivrea.



The Egidi MadeinItaly product catalog features for sale a work Il cancello signed by Florentine master Ottone Rosai
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