William Girometti (Milan, 9 January 1924 â Bologna, 3 October 1998) was an Italian painter of Surrealist influence.
William Girometti was born in Milan and spent his childhood and early years there, becoming involved with the Accademia di Brera in the period of the Second World War. At the end of the war, he began traveling and living in other Italian cities; in Ferrara, in 1954, he met the woman who would some years later become his .
In Ferrara, and in particular Pontelagoscuro, in the early 1950s, he came into contact with a group of young painters (including Tito Salomoni) with whom he would establish a strong friendship and who would encourage him in making painting his career.
Initially, in fact, he had devoted himself to sculpture, which was not completely abandoned until the end of the 1960s, as a review from 1968 demonstrates; in it, the art critic Fiorani expresses his esteem for the ësure command of expressive meansû, the ëincisiveness of the facesû, the ëharmonious rhythmû and the ëperfect balance between form, light and spaceû.
Towards the end of the 1950s he spent a period of time studying and working in France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Denmark and Sweden before returning to Italy to divide his time between Milan and Ferrara. In particular, he exhibited his works numerous times in Milan in shows of the Permanente.
In the 1960s he began his production, destined to become copious, of portraits and trompe-l'Ã Âil works, most of which were commissioned by private collectors and art dealers; finally settling in Bologna with his wife, he started in 1971 to lay the foundations for his Surrealist works despite continuing to produce more on request. In painting his father-in-law, whom he had never met because of his premature death, Girometti referred to the of only a few centimeters in size.
In 1973, with a show inaugurated on 24 November at "Il Collezionista" art gallery in Bologna, he began to present works of a Surrealistic-Metaphysical genre in a series of exhibitions, both personal and collective, in Italy and abroad, which earned him prizes, recognition and reviews in newspapers, magazines, specialized catalogues and on Italian and European radio and television programs.
His first Surrealist works were inspired by the reality surrounding him, and were centered around themes of philosophy and ecology or dedicated to musicians and literary figures. Even his portraits acquired a surreal character.
The critics generally agreed in recognizing his ëcompositional eleganceû, ëchromatic sensitivityû, ëimpeccable techniqueû and ëcommand of formû, together with the emphasis on content expressed through the ëinteresting fusion of irony and polemicû that only seemingly results in pessimism.
A few reviews underline both the effective elaboration of the teachings of André Breton and the reference to René Magritte, with whom in particular he shared ëa singularity of imagesû and ëvisual tricksû also achieved through the use of trompe-l'oeil.
If, as a , he had favored the use of clay, as a painter he created mostly paintings in oil on canvas or wood, along with some pastels and the occasional tempera. Towards the end of the 1970s he invented his own graphics technique, a technique he never divulged.
He also wrote verse, and in the dépliant of the exhibit at "Il Collezionista" one of his poems was published.
In his last years he devoted himself to the and experimented with new of constant themes; at his death in 1998 a Surrealistic and two other works were left unfinished. A few months before dying he was gratified by a retrospective dedicated entirely to him, organized by the University and by the Comune of Bologna.
In 1976 the art critic Otello Mario Martinelli introduced a radio interview synthesizing the artistic development of William Girometti: ëstarting with his early interest in Impressionism, which dates back to 1960, yielding to his natural predisposition for the human body, he has created many portraits â also using sculpture â while his inner evolution is leading him to the painting of reality with compositions and trompe-l'oeil that he expresses with soft lines and harmonious colors. In 1971 he became interested in Surrealismû.
Concerning Girometti's relationship with Surrealism, more than one critic has noted how the adherence to a pictorial movement did not prevent the artist from expressing himself in an original way, revealing the ëcontents of his thoughtû and showing a ëunique personalityû: ëan artist who identified in Surrealism the expressive form most agreeable to himû, proving himself to be "ëa valid continuatorû of a movement born as an ëadvocate of an essential inner renewal, capable of improving the very nature of a societyû.
Surrealism was for him ëthe most congenial language for expressing observations, drives and thoughtsû: ëa personality and a matter of commitment that support a style, rather than being supportedû. Girometti essentially brought about the ërehabilitation of Surrealism, not experienced passively but instead felt as a strong stimulus thanks to which the imagination manages to stand up for its rightsû.
A ëvast humanistic cultureû ërepresents the indispensable element for realizing oneself better without ever falling into self-satisfied intellectualismû and provides ëclassical ideas for new semantic inventions of lineû; together with ëa clear moral codeû it also constitutes the basis for the ëincessant work of observation and researchû: the ëcanvases are the result of the conquest of conscience, as the artist himself saysû, a man who ëhas tenaciously delved into himself in search of his own means and specific natural inclinationsû.
According to Gian Mario Olivieri, instead, ëthe literary allusions in the figurative field, the intellectual correlations and classical quotations, the vivid sensitized colorsû connect William Girometti to Magical Realism, together with those artists who work ëon an ideal conceptû and make ëconscious use of their own means to create itû.
Many critics have hypothetized about the meaning of some of his works in particular, always underlining their ëdifficult interpretationû and the ëdepth of inquiryû, and the classification of the themes dealt with in general: from themes of ëan existential nature and lyrical inspirationû, to ëthemes of a social and ecological natureû.
In graphics ëthe inspiring theme of childhood above all, and of the woman considered as a human subject, is interlaced with metaphorsû; underlined on the one hand is the ërefinement of certain musical instruments from whose spaces emerge with chaste discretion enigmatic infantile figuresû, on the other hand, ëthe motif of the constant presence of the young boy engaged by the artist to symbolize hope in a better futureû through ëcontinuous biological and social regenerationû.
Most of Girometti's paintings are in private collections.