From a very young age, Filippo showed great curiosity and an eagerness to learn in a multitude of fields; he composed poems, wrote short fiction and theses and he surrounded himself with pottery, old relics, and books. During bike rides with his brothers, he gathered butterflies, wildflowers, plants, and insects and categorized them with astonishing skill to create an herbarium which he donated to the University of Padua when he was 19. The strength and beauty of the flowers that de Pisis painted later in his career are based on the knowledge he accumulated compiling his herbarium. Skillfully, de Pisis portrayed with a few clever touches the beauty of a great variety of floral species. His formative years underscore the multifaceted personality of the artist. With the same curiosity and energy of his youth, de Pisis became an artist who broke with convention and who became an important figure in the Italian avant-garde art movement.

In 1910, when de Pisis was in his teens, the Tibertellis were invited to stay at the Palazzo Calcagnini in Ferrara. De Pisis turned the attic into his studio and called it his ‘camere melodrammatiche’, his melodramatic chambers. He decorated the rooms with curious objects, flowers, books, and drapes. Here he experimented with different compositions and theatrical effects. The names he gave to these rooms changed during his lifetime, from ‘metaphysical living room’ to ‘golden cage’, but the atmosphere remained the same. The poetic constellations of the artist’s still-life paintings were a reflection of these ‘wunderkammers’.

In 1915, the artist Giorgio de Chirico and his brother Andrea (aka Alberto Savinio), arrived in Ferrara to join the army. Italy had just entered the war. The two brothers had spent four years in Paris and found the mysterious city of Ferrara a sleepy place compared to Apollinaire’s Paris. But, with its Renaissance history and Jewish culture, the city turned out to be an ideal breeding ground for their inquisitive minds. In Ferrara, de Pisis met de Chirico. De Pisis was fascinated by the intellectual attitude to the art of de Chirico and a life-long friendship was born. De Chirico and his wife were instrumental in his contact with the Parisian avant-garde. He became friends with Apollinaire and they had lively correspondences. The artists Carlo Carrà and Ardengo Soffici were also in Ferrara during this period.
Together, with the de Chirico and de Pisis, they become known as the Valori Plastici group. The first use of the term ‘metaphysical’ by the group, was to define art that combined an attachment to tradition with an openness to the darkest regions of the subconscious and mysterious and unknown elements in the surrounding reality. During these years, de Pisis did not paint, and he instead wrote metaphysical stories and decided to enroll in the Faculty of Arts in Bologna. As a student, he met Giorgio Morandi, with whom he shared a similar way of conceiving painting through the metaphysical and symbolic atmosphere created by the particular presence of objects.

De Pisis moved to Rome in 1920 where he held his first solo exhibition, consisting of drawings and watercolors in Casa d’Arte Bragaglia. He took up painting again, inspired by the artists and different movements with whom he surrounded himself. From the very start of his career, de Pisis favored artistic eclecticism. He borrowed elements from futurism, the Valori Pastici, and metaphysical theories and incorporated them in his personal style, where order and harmony were essential. In his work, he tackled all the traditional genres of painting, still-life, portrait, nude, and landscape, achieving extraordinary compositions of light, atmospheres, and color tonalities.

In 1925, he moved to Paris. In his new surroundings, his work evolved under the influence of Impressionism and the work of Manet, the Romanticism and color use of Delcroix, the Expressionism of Daumier, and the modernity of Picasso. He also rediscovered his old friends from Ferrara and took part in the exhibition Les artistes Italiens de Paris. The art critics and the public appreciated his work and for the first time in his career, he started to sell outside of his close circle of friends and commissioners.

Sadly, a few months later his mother died. This event was followed by a period of depression. A close friend gave him the parrot Cocò, who became an invaluable companion. De Pisis returned to Italy in 1931, where he established a high reputation. He frequently visited London in the 1930s, where his work displayed some influence of the English post-impressionism artist Walter Sickert.

De Pisis is held in some suspicion by the Italian governing regime for his sexuality and as an opponent of fascism. During the war, he settled in Milan, until his house was destroyed by a bombing in 1943. He decided to move to Venice where he was as much inspired by the work of Guardi as by the atmospheric pastel-colored light of the lagoon. At the end of his career, his works were exhibited widely in Italy and abroad (in 1947 he also has a show in New York), but he still experienced homophobic hostility. For example, in 1948 the Gran Premio (Grand Prize) of the Venice Biennale was withheld from him because of his sexuality. That same year he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Brugherio. The last years of his life were marked by periods of hospitalization and recovery. Nevertheless, he continued to be very active as a painter. His condition rapidly worsened and he abandoned painting but took up drawing. His final works were speedy ink drawings made in the first months of 1953, shortly before his death. The same year the XXVIIII Venice Biennale organized an important retrospective show of his works.

De Pisis remains a very significant figure in Italian art history. His works are included in collections of major museums in Italy and abroad and exhibitions dedicated to his oeuvre are frequently organized.

Close