Pio Santini – Taking pride in painting - [21/08/05 by piosantini]

Visiting artists’ studios is always touching. Besides the finished works and the ones to come, we find a very special atmosphere, a pleasant chaos made of various keepsakes, turned down canvases, easels, palettes overlaid with the colour tests, tubes of paint, brush pots. I was not lucky enough to know Pio Santini, it’s through beautiful photos of the 60’s at his son Claude’s that I understood how intimate the world of this painter was.
One of them showed him in his studio, facing his easel, wearing an old buttoned cardigan, and we can see an Italian collar and a perfectly knotted tie. The duck trousers, like a professional sign, have obviously been used as an apron.

Emerging from the collar, a proud and determined face, like a « condottiere », scanning his work and commanding his arms, the left one for a cigarette and the brush cloth, the right one firmly stretched to the canvas, the brush ahead in a posture that reminds me of Cyrano de Bergerac “A la fin de l’envoi, je touche !”. His nearest and dearest described him as discreet and modest, but one can guess he was certain of the way he had deliberately chosen and taken, without looking back. “Not going very high, perhaps, but by myself” could have been his motto.

Faithful to his art, he never submitted to any pictural dogma. Pio Santini got through his century serenely and perseveringly. This exhibition confirms his attachment to the proper basis of painting: an expressive drawing, as he learned from his Italian masters, solid construction, adjustment of the composition, mass proportion, unaffected natural beauty and great sensitivity of the palette. This very Italian palette: blue, green, yellow, brand new red and « pink and ochre to come with » said Jean Chabanon, art critic.

If the Parisian school, born in central Europe, is well known – Soutine, Dobrinsky, Volovick, Lubitch, Pikelny – art historians will now have to pay attention and give a place to an “Italian” school of Paris, gathering Pio Santini and his compatriots, and among them his friends Georges Arditi, Lucien Fontanarosa, Enrico Campagnola, Luigi Corbellini.

In the artistic fray during the troubled time pre-war period, they have been remarkable fencers in the « realism quarrel » deserving to succeed to their French elders Lucien Simon, Constant Le Breton or be on equal terms with their contemporaries such as Maurice Brianchon or Yves Brayer.

A drawer ever since he was a child, a student in Roman Academy of Fine Arts, he came to France in1933, one of the early “Montparnasse” artist, he exhibited at the French Artists Salon and tried like a militant all along his life to unite his two countries : Italy and France. From his naïve country he kept the themes of the theatre, music, circus and harlequins; from his adopted country, a taste for portraits and quiet landscapes : Paris scenes, tributaries of the Seine and floating boats..

Far from vacuous naturalism and intellectual abstraction that never seduced him, Pio Santini’s work is a hymn to life. He never surrendered when faced with fashions, and he dedicated himself to the painting of reality.
The hole exhibition is a strong proof of that, but also a token of affection when he paints his folks, just like any self-respecting Italian : Antonella, Marina or Fabien, his grand children, have been among his favourite models. There was no ordinary subject to him. “What is genuine is worthwhile, however thin it is” Leonardo da Vinci said.

Moving against the current during the 60’s, the road had not been easy for this poetical realism supporter. It certainly cost him his reputation in his day.
As an humanist, he never changed course. As the best artists are often mute Pio Santini should have had an impresario to speak out loud for him and defend his work. But he was suspicious of unfaithful supporters, compromises and art market submission.

Painting, but above all considering painting an honor was enough for him.
After his death, in 1986, the “three brothers” –triple portrait splendidly and vigorously painted of his sons Pierre, Claude and Mario – decided to pick up the gauntlet and fight to have his work recognized, the one of a sensitive and straightforward artist. It’s only fair.

EMMANUEL BREON, head curator of the Heritage at the Museum of the 30’s.