Antonio Doghi

He was born in Rome in 1897. He was licensed at the Royal Institute of Fine Arts in 1916, and in the same year he was recalled for war and sent to France. Back in Italy, since 1919, he dedicated himself to the study of painters from the 17th and 18th centuries, visiting the museums of Florence and Venice. His exhibit debut is in 1922, when he participates in the XV Exposition of the Amateur Society and Cultures of Fine Arts in Rome. The following year is at the Biennial of Rome together with Socrates, Trombadori and Bertoletti. His first personal exhibitions were in 1924 at the Stuard Room in Via Veneto in Rome and at the Bragaglia Art House. These are the occasions that make him known by Ojetti, who appreciates and selects it with De Chirico, Guidi and Tozzi for the exhibition at Galleria Pesaro in Milan, which anticipates the lines of the painting of the twentieth century, based on the recovery of shape and shape. Even the musician Alfredo Casella knows and appreciates his art, becoming his collector. He also exhibited abroad, before 1926 at the Exhibition of Modern Italian Art, which takes place in the museums of the major US cities (New York, Washington, Chicago and San Francisco), and the following year again in New York with a staff at New Gallery, and Pittsburg, where he gets an award for the Carnival painting. Since 1928, he has been present at the Venice Biennale, where he later returned after World War II (1930, 1952, 1954). In 1929 he took part in the second Milanese exhibition of the "Novecento" and in 1930 in Buenos Aires, organized by Margherita Sarfatti, but with a rather small number of works, a symptom of his distance from the movement. In the 1930s his exhibition activity was intense, with appearances at the Quadriennali of Rome in 1931 and 1935, at the Roman Gallery of Dario Sabatello with an important staff of about forty works (1932) and at the III Exhibition of the Fascist Artistic Trade Union Lazio. Important awards come from the purchase of some of his paintings by various galleries and museums, including the acquisition of the famous Woman painting at the Palazzo Pitti's Modern Art Gallery. He also devoted himself to teaching after obtaining in 1936 the figure chair drawn at the Academy of Fine Arts and Artistic Lyceum in Rome, continuing to paint and exhibit both in Rome (Galleria Jandolo, 1938) and in Milan (Galleria Gianferrari, 1940). He was entrusted to the Painter Techniques by the Central Institute of Restoration in 1939 and two years later received a prize from the Royal Academy of Italy. He participates in the Twentieth-Century Italian Art in 1947, organized by J.T. Soby and A.H. Barr for MOMA in New York. In the 1950s he participated, in addition to the above-mentioned Biennals of Venice, at the Quadriennali of Rome of 1951, 1955, 1959.

Text © Monte dei Paschi di Siena, 2017