PARIDE FALCHI  1908-1995

Poetry in painting

Born on June 28th 1908 in Sabbioneta (Mantua), where he spent whole his life. He attended the elementary school in the Palazzo Ducale (Palace of the Duke) of Sabbioneta. One day, coming back home from school, he was impressed when he saw a painter at work. From that moment he dedicated his whole life to painting. From 1920 to 1927 he was the helper of a villa decorator and local portrait painter from whom he learnt the techniques. He experimented the colour doughs and lernt perfectly the chromatic nuances. The first oil painting depicts a Christ created at the age of 14. From 1929 to 1931 he studied at the evening school of Arts and Crafts of Casalmaggiore, Cremona. In 1932 he took part in a major exhibition of Lombard painters promoted by the Como afterwork: he was awarded the second prize with a silver medal. His career continued to grow. Equipped with considerable sensitivity, he refined his innate skills as a self-taught, reaching high class poetic peaks. He was far from the noise of modernity and of artistic fashions, lived voluntarily withdrawn from the world of his contemporaries, keeping that faith in design and poetry that will characterize all his production.
He exhibited in Sabbioneta, Mantua, Milan, Cremona, Parma, Reggio Emilia and many other locations, where he was appreciated by critics and the public. In 1986 the state television “Rai” dedicated to him a documentary edited by the director Enrica Tagliabue. He died in Sabbioneta on May 27th 1995. His works can be admired in various museums and permanent exhibitions.

Works placed in Museums and permanent exhibitions

  • Palace of the Duke Sabbioneta (MN): n. 30 oil paintings, 15 drawings.
  • Museum MaM Gazoldo degli Ippoliti (MN): n. 9 oil paintings.
  • Museum of Medole (MN): n. 2 oil paintings.
  • Museum of Quistello (MN): n. 2 oil paintings.
  • Modern art Gallery of Mantova: n. 1 oil painting.
  • Museum of the painters of the river Po, Ferrara: n. 1 oil painting.
  • Museum of Palazzo Te, Mantova: n. 1 oil painting.
  • Museum Diocesano Francesco Gonzaga of Mantova: n.1 oil painting.
SHORT CRITICAL NOTES

[…] Paride Falchi is an artist who deserves the most extensive audience. If our time, instead of being dispersed in an exhausting (and exhausted) debate on “languages” would mind “Values”, the painter Falchi would emerge in plastic evidence in exclusive reason of the “Poetry” that is innervated in his images. […] Carlo Munari, art Critic, Milan, 1984

‘It opens with the revival of a Lombard artist, … Paride Falchi, whose painting is all in the twentieth century tradition, between Symbolism and Neorealism. His
re-emergence shows us how much we still have to research and know to reconstruct a complete history and geography of twentieth century art. In the quality of the Falchi’s work emerges an increasing attention to the phenomena deemed marginal or provincial. […] Vittorio Sgarbi, Venice, 2014

[…] Between the two wars the Mantuan artists who responded to the novecentist call were few and inconstant … The late rediscovery of the pictorial work of Paride Falchi must be understood in the right terms … the spirit of independence is confirmed … to ask if he had difficulty dealing with loneliness in the long journey of his creative work, he replies: “Isolated? I never realized it. I’ve always been in the company of my art.
Falchi’s landscape is transformed by fantasy, for a search for purity that is hardly to be found in reality. While reinventing, he must stay on the place, because he needs to perceive sensations, to capture the atmospheres. He prefers winter when nature becomes mysterious, the light is more diffused, the colour variations are less perceptible and silence reigns in the sleeping countryside … Loneliness favours introspection, and Falchi has been able to scrutinize deeply in his own self.
… The series of self-portraits, which starts from the early works, deserves particular consideration, because even in this field the Mantuan painter is to be considered as the last specialist … He is the last “genre” painter to whom we should owe respect. He is a typical representative of the post-war Mantuan landscape, due to the complete lack of distraction from his cultural territory. It is a pictorial current of which he remained the only worthy representative […] Renzo Margonari, art critic, Mantua, 1984

MAIN EXHIBITIONS

Various exhibitions in Sabbioneta, Mantua, Cremona, Parma, Milan, Reggio Emilia (IT) starting from 1932
2022, April 9th – May 1st, The color of silence, retrospective, curated by Ombretta Falchi, Monastic Refectory of the Polirone Museum, San Benedetto Po, (MN).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alessandro Dal Prato (edited by), Falchi, catalogo, Mantua, 1979.
Renzo Margonari (ed. by), Paride Falchi, catalogo, Sabbioneta, 1982.
Renzo Margonari, Paride Falchi pittore di Sabbioneta, in “Quadrante Padano”, Anno IV, n.3, settembre 1983, pp 52-53.
Renzo Margonari (ed. by), Disegno Mantovano del ‘900, catalogo, Mantua, 1984, pp. 102-103.
Renzo Margonari, Paride Falchi, in “Pittori, Scultori, Incisori nella Mantova del ‘900”, ed. by Adalberto Sartori, Mantua, 1985’ pp. 171-175.
Renzo Dall’Ara, I Falchi: Pittori e scultori di famiglia, in “Arte”, n. 1986, Giugno 1988, p.91.
Renzo Margonari (ed. by), Itinerari gonzagheschi, catalogo, Sabbioneta, 1988, pp. 49-51.
Giorgio di Genova, History of Italian art of the 1900s. First decade generation, ed. Bora, Bologna, 1997, p. 164.
Claudio Cerritelli (ed. by), Arte a Mantova 1950-1999, 2000, ed. Publi Paolini Mantua, pp 98-101 e 485-486
Arianna Sartori (ed. by), Catalogo Sartori D’arte moderna e contemporanea, archivio Sartori editore, Mantua, 2013 p. 166.
Arianna Sartori (ed. by), Catalogo Sartori D’arte moderna e contemporanea, archivio Sartori editore, Mantua, 2014 p. 103
Vittorio Sgarbi (ed. by), Catalogo Spoleto Arte incontra Venezia, Ed. De Ferrari Comunicazione Srl, Genova, 2014, pp.15, 198-199.
A.Sartori, catalogo mostra “MantovainArte2015. 1°regesto artistico mantovano”, 2015, Ed.Arianna Sartori
Arianna Sartori (ed. by), Catalogo Sartori D’arte moderna e contemporanea, archivio Sartori editore, Mantua, 2017
Arianna Sartori (ed. by), Catalogo Sartori D’arte moderna e contemporanea, archivio Sartori editore, Mantua, 2018
Ombretta Falchi and Maurizio Romanato (edited by), The color of silence, Paride Falchi, Sometti editions, Mantua 2022.