Anch’io ricordo anchora
“I also still remember”
There is a man in the Bassa (Southern Po Valley), he is around 70 years old, his name is Pietro Ghizzardi and he is a great man. Well before he started painting and taking part of the trinity from the Po valley – the Naïve artists Ligabue, Rovesti and him.
His painting doesn’t have to do with the sort of greatness I am talking about. He is great because he suffered greatly, because he’s been humiliated greatly and in the pages of this book – with some kind of prophetic connotation – he asks: “How long will you continue to do this?”.
I read his memories when they were still in bud and I said: “I’ll run to him immediately and I’ll hug him”. Then I didn’t run to him and hug him, time went by, one forgets – this is life – and one honours an artist more easily than a man.
I met him after the first exhibition in Luzzara about the Naïve artists, at the winter dinner, after midnight, a ritual by then. We had found our place at the table but Ghizzardi hadn’t. I still remember that he was standing in a corner, worried he would disturb, toothless, his overcoat wrongly buttoned.
Cesare Zavattini
Introduction to Mi richordo anchora, Einaudi (1976)
Pietro Ghizzardi (1906-1986)
Pietro Ghizzardi (1906 – 1986) has been a self-taught artist – painter, writer, sculptor and musician – and he is nowadays regarded as one of the most significant representatives of Italian and European Outsider Art.
Here you can listen to his biography by Vittorio Ferorelli on RE-R Radio Emilia-Romagna (in Italian only).
1906
Pietro Ghizzardi is born at six a.m. on 20th July 1906 in Corte Pavesina, situated in the hamlet of San Pietro di Viadana, in the province of Mantua.
His parents, Antonio and Maria Flisi, are tenant farmers.
His father is 40 when Pietro is born and he registers him at the General Register Office with a double name – Pierino Dante.
He is the second of three siblings – Marino is the oldest and Amabilia the youngest.
1911
Pietro draws with an extinguished firebrand (“a charcoal”) a Madonnina on the wall in front of his bed. He is only 5 years old. This could be considered his first artwork, which unfortunately went lost. The drawing isn’t appreciated and his mother scolds Pietro harshly for dirtying the plaster. This is not enough, though, to detract him from his favourite “game” and with the charcoal from the fireplace he has fun sketching animal figures on the walls and floors of his house.
1918
He receives his first Holy Communion, after having gone to school irregularly up to year 4 of primary school. His health is weak.
1919
When he is 13 years old, as he explains in his autobiography Mi richordo anchora, he has, so to speak, his first contact with art. He is fascinated by the mastery of an old drawer of digits in Gothic style drawn on linen for maids’ dowry. Pietro observes the old man, whose name is Rodolfo, and tries to imitate him.
1929
Pietro harbours a particular affection towards his grandmother, to whom he shows his work for the first time. On that same year he goes from the Gothic digits to sketching the lines of a face – he draws noses, chins, mouths, he particularly lingers on eyes.
1930
He follows his family who moves to Cogozzo, again in the province of Mantua. From this year are Ghizzardi’s first mural paintings, in the old farmhouses of the Bassa. He paints the first woman who hits his imagination of a simple man: Carolina Invernizio. In the gallery of his characters there is also the Pope and the teacher from the oratory. He produces big sized paintings that he hangs on the window of his room and under the porch of his house, so that passers-by can admire them.
1931 – ’32
Another ‘San Martino’ – that’s the name for farmers’ relocations. His father lands in a small farm on the border between Poviglio and Brescello, then he settles in Santa Croce di Boretto, where now the artist’s niece Nives Ghizzardi has founded a house museum in his memory. From now on his habitat becomes the Bassa of Reggio Emilia, Boretto in particular. Pietro continues to paint and to work in the fields. He firmly believes in his qualities as painter: only his perseverance and inner strength allow him to go on. Fortunately people’s judgement doesn’t interest him. Like a true ‘expressionist from the Po valley’ he expresses, with colours made of herbs and natural materials, what he feels, what he experiences, what he sees with the eyes of his soul and mind. Success will come later. But this is not what the painter, sculptor and writer is looking for.
1961
He receives the first official recognition at the art exhibition ‘City of Guastalla’ – one of his artworks is awarded the gold medal. Ghizzardi, wearing big boots, an overcoat tightened by a tabarro and a preening hat, and carrying different canvases somehow tied up on his back, shows up at the town hall to take part in the exhibition. The man in charge of receiving the paintings answers – annoyed: “Here we don’t accept wanderers, beggars!” and he throws him out. Ghizzardi then changes his mind, goes back and explains from whom he is sent and his artworks are accepted after all to be exposed in the exhibition. They were the most beautiful ones.
1965
The director Michele Gandin films for Film Luce the documentary about Ghizzardi Farmer-Painter with Leonardo Sinisgalli‘s commentary. The documentary will be broadcast in cinemas all over Italy.
1968
At the national Naïve exhibition ‘City of Luzzara’ he receives the gold medal from the President of the Republic. Pietro is well-known by now, loved and respected, but he stays the same: he doesn’t change neither his character nor his clothing. In the same year he is awarded the gold medal at the international exhibition of contemporary graphics in Vignola (Modena). The art critics, and not only them, start noticing him.
1969
He paints the cycle of frescoes in the House of Soliani-Pini (Casa Falugi), a hunting residence built in the first years of the last century, during the Napoleonic era. The house is situated in the old city centre of Boretto.
1973
Ghizzardi is awarded the gold medal at the Fratelli Branca Award in Corcordia di Modena.
1976
His autobiography Mi richordo anchora edited by Gustavo Marchesi and Giovanni Negri, with the introduction by Cesare Zavattini is published by Einaudi in the collection Gli Struzzi, under the aegis of the legendary editor Daniele Ponchiroli.
1977
Mi richordo anchora wins the Viareggio Literary Award as debut novel in the category of fiction. Ghizzardi is now a great artist for the general public, reports talk about him, he is famous. In Boretto people keep treating him simply, he is “the Pietrone” for everybody, the village loves him, appreciates him and treats him with kindness and affection.
The intellectual Angelo Guglielmi, in one of his most important works Il piacere della letteratura (1981), defines Ghizzardi “illiterate but writer”, a formula he will bring back up when talking about the author in the recent Il romanzo e la realtà (2010).
1978
Gian Vittorio Baldi, previous collaborator and producer of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Robert Bresson, films the documentary Mi richordo anchora – A conversation with Pietro Ghizzardi, produced and broadcast by Rai Uno for the cycle of RAI documentaries Le memorie, gli anni.
The book Mi richordo anchora is pressed on a record by Ariston Records, in a collection dedicated to popular culture, edited by Giovanni Negri and set to music by Giancarlo Nalin.
1980
Ghizzardi’s second book a lilla quatro pietre in mortalate is published by Vanni Scheiwiller in Milan, edited by Giovanni Negri and Gustavo Marchesi.
1983
He paints the house of the Morellis in Parma, where a last supper stands out filling out an entire wall next to a big family portrait. He wins the gold medal at the painting award Trofeo d’Arte in San Benedetto Po, in the province of Mantua.
1984 – ’85
In the same year Enzo Robutti and Gustavo Marchesi abridge the artist’s autobiography for a theatre representation. The theatre company Collettivo di Teatro Due in Parma put on the show directed by Gigi Dall’Aglio. The debut takes place at Teatro Due in the ducal city and the show is then rerun at the main Italian theatres: Teatro Tassoni in Bologna, Teatro dell’Orologio in Rome, Teatro Piccola Commedia and Teatro Verdi in Milan.
1985
The magazine FRM dedicates an ample report to the “Sistine Chapel” of the Bassa, House of Soliani-Pini (CasaFalugi), entirely frescoed by Ghizzardi in 1969.
1986
On the 7th December that year Pietro Ghizzardi dies in Boretto at the age of 80. His funeral is carried out according to his will – he related about them also in a memorable page of Mi richordo anchora: the coffin is carried to the cemetery on a farming cart pulled by a horse. In the same year, edited by Giovanni Negri, two unpublished works by the artist are released, for the Tipi Pivetti of Mirandola, under the title: giugliètta e romeo in quei tempi lontani and il bambino di viareggio rapito.
Critics who wrote about him:
Renato Barilli Marzio Dall’Acqua, Raffaele De Grada, Mario De Micheli, Vittorio Erlindo, Angelo Guglielmi, Anatole Jakowski,Renzo Margonari, Lando Orlich, Vittorio Sgarbi, Franco Solmi, Giancarlo Vigorelli, Cesare Zavattini.
His works of art are on display in the following museums and art galleries:
– House Museum Al Belvedere ‘”Pietro Ghizzardi”, Boretto (IT)
– Galleria d’Arte Moderna Ricci Oddi, Piacenza (IT)
– Museo Nazionale delle Arti Naïves ‘Cesare Zavattini’, Luzzara, Reggio Emilia (IT)
– Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna, Modena (IT)
– Museo di Montecatini Terme (IT)
– Musée d’Art Naïves de l’llê de France, Vicq (F)
– Musée Vieux Chateâu, Laval (F)
– Musée International d’Art Naïf Anatole Jakowsky, Nice (F)
– Museum of Naive Art, Zagreb (Croatia)
– Sammlung Charlotte Zander, Schloss-Bönningheim, Bönningheim (D)
– Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo (Japan)
