Pietro Lazzari (lots 89-97)

Enlivening, fresh and rich… lyrical handling of colour, rhythm and general form
James Johnson Sweeney (curator of the Museum of Modern Art, New York and director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum)

Introduction
Pietro Lazzari trained in Rome with the sculptor Francesco Jerace (1853-1937) before serving as a soldier at the Front during the First World War. After the Armistice he studied at the Scuola di Arti Ornamentali in Rome, became an illustrator for the local newspaper Il Messaggero and had his first exhibition at the ‘Theatre of the Independents’ in Rome. Mixing with the Italian Futurists, including Balla, Boccioni, Marinetti and Severini, he spent time in Paris, but with the rise of Facism in 1925 he made the first of several visits to the USA, before settling there permanently in 1929.

In 1926 his work was included in an exhibition of nine European artists alongside Picasso, Modigliani, Gauguin, Douanier Rousseau and Jules Pascin at the New Gallery, New York. Working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), that commissioned projects as part of the New Deal during the Depression, Lazzari shared a studio with Mark Rothko. In 1935 his work was selected for the major survey exhibition Abstract Painting in America at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Among the other sixty-five artists represented were works by Arthur B Davies, Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, Arshile Gorky, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Georgia O’Keefe and Max Weber. The same year Lazzari was commissioned by a newspaper to make court room sketches during the trial of Gruno Hauptman, convicted of the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh Jr., the twenty-month old son of the celebrated aviator.

In 1936 Lazzari became one of a raft of artists commissioned by the United States Section of Fine Art to produce murals and sculpture for federal buildings across the country. Like the WPA, the programme was aimed to bolster work during the Depression and engage artists with local communities. Over six years Lazzari completed four large scale projects. Judging an early example of his mural work Max Weber singled out Lazzari for an award, commenting how the artist had the ‘touch of an uncommon personality’. Bleeding Civilian, a life-size concrete polychrome by Lazzari was featured in the Artists for Victory exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, New York that opened at the end of 1942 when the USA entered the War.

1942 also marked the end of the government funded programme and Lazzari relocated to Washington DC where he first taught at the American University and was represented by Caresse Crosby at her eponymous Modern Art Gallery. In 1947 he showed at the Venice Biennale and was taken on by the influential Betty Parson’s Gallery in New York. Parsons recalled that Lazzari ‘has a very original feeling for materials of all kinds… [and] is a magnificent draughtsman’. From the American University he became head of art at Dumbarton College (1948-50), and in 1950 received a Fulbright Fellowship.

During the 1960s he produced a series of sculptures of leading humanitarian figures including Pope Paul VI (Vatican Collection) and Eleanor Roosevelt (Franklin Roosevelt Library, New York). Throughout the post-War years his work was shown widely in commercial galleries and public exhibitions in Europe and the USA including at the Corcoran Biennal, the Rome Quadriennal, the Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris. In later years Lazarri continued to teach, holding posts at the Graduate School of the US Department of Agriculture and the Corcoran School of Art, George Washington University.


PIETRO LAZZARI (ITALIAN-AMERICAN 1895-1979)
A COLLECTION OF CARICATURES AND PORTRAIT SKETCHES
six signed by the artist; one extensively inscribed in Italian upper centre; pencil on paper; various sizes (largest 26.5 x 23cm; 10 1/4 x 9in) (all unframed)
(7)

Drawn in the 1920s.