«Questa moderna ma precisa testimonianza». Portrait and Identity in the «Corrente» Group

Abstract

The article proposes a reflection on portraits made by the artists who gravitated around “Corrente”, the periodical founded in January 1938 in Milan by Ernesto Treccani. In contrast to the official and celebratory practice prevalent by that time, the painters of the group (Renato Birolli, Bruno Cassinari, Renato Guttuso and many others) used the portrait as a privileged field of psychological and expressive research, looking for an open dialogue with the models of international contemporary art. Moreover, portraiture also provided them with the opportunity to create a new iconography of artist and man, which could embody a shared horizon of cultural, existential, and even political values. Finally, portraiture assumed for the artists of «Corrente» a crucial identity function: it was a tool to emphasize the existence of a network of friends and thus affirm a cohesive collective identity.