(Bagheria/Palermo 1912–1987 Rome)
Lamento per la morte di Picasso, 1973, signed and dated, oil and collage on canvas, 114 x 85 cm, framed

In 1981 the painting was reproduced on a stamp (L. 200) edited by the Republic of San Marino on the occasion of Picasso’s birth centenary (stamp available)

Provenance:
Pellin Collection, Varese
Galleria Toninelli, Rome
European Private Collection

Exhibited:
Palermo, Renato Guttuso, Galleria La Tavolozza, 2 – 30 May 1974, exh. cat. no. 9 with ill.
Berlin, Renato Guttuso: Erinnerungen an Picasso, Akademie der Künste der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, 7 March – 6 April 1975, exh. cat. no. 7
Todi, Opere scelte di Renato Guttuso, Palazzo del Popolo, 16 May – 13 June 1976, exh. cat. p. 42 with ill.
Sofia, Guttuso, Galleria d’ Arte della Città di Sofia 1976, exh. cat. with ill.
Breslau, National Museum, Italienische Malerei 1950–1970, 1 December 1976 – 9 January 1977, travelling to Vienna, Künstlerhaus, 6 October – 6 November 1977, exh. cat. with ill.
Saint-Étienne, Guttuso: peintures, gouaches, dessins, Maison de la culture et des loisirs, 10 January – 15 February 1979, exh. cat. with ill.
Molfetta, Renato Guttuso: antologica 1938–1979, Sala dei Templari, March 1980, exh. cat. with ill.

Literature:
“L’Ora”, Palermo, 30 April 1974, with. Ill.
F. Borsi, Arte a Roma: dal Liberty a oggi, Editalia Rome, 1981, p. 206, with ill.
Omaggio a Renato Guttuso, Graphis Arte-Toninelli Arte Moderna, 1982,p. 62 with ill.
E. Crispolti, Catalogo ragionato generale dei dipinti di Renato Guttuso, Mondadori Milan, 1985, p. 181 no. 73/28 with ill.
E. Crispolti, Renato Guttuso. Opere della Fondazione Francesco Pellin, Ed. Mazzotta, Milan 2005, p. 136 no. 38, with ill.

“A work of art is always the sum of the pleasures and pains of the man who created it. I mean that it is not necessary for a painter to be of one party or another, or to make war, or start a revolution, but it is necessary for him to act, in painting,
in the manner of those who start a war or a revolution.”

Renato Guttuso

Guttuso’s art has always been characterised by strong social commitment. While maintaining an often intimate and private lyrical impression, Guttuso always privileged a public image, painting that is an expression of social problems, espousing the conviction that art must have a didactic function first and foremost.
Guttuso’s expressionism does not limit itself to the inner world. In his works it is reality that manifests itself in its vigorous incisiveness, its colours and raw details. It is reality that provides the emotional thrust that leads to the choice to privilege social commitment and the use of violent colours.
It is therefore no coincidence that Pablo Picasso is Guttuso’s greatest moral and stylistic model. The relationship with Picasso is evident in the Sicilian artist’s work such as Colazione con la Dama di Cranach (1973) or La spiaggia (1955-1956). In the latter, Guttuso depicts Pablo Picasso on a crowded Ostia beach in profile and tanned, rubbing a green cloth on himself with the movements of a bullfighter. But it is not only a bond of friendship that Guttuso evokes with Picasso’s image: in the poignant Lamento per la morte di Picasso, painted in 1973 after the death of the Spanish master, the artist stages a series of variations on the theme of the funeral banquet, with Picasso surrounded by characters from his paintings. He thus composes an epitaph that expresses disillusionment for a century that is far from over, but already irreversibly marked by the feeling of defeat.