Pietro Annigoni

Presenter0:00

This download is the only extract the B B C has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley. Sino, Anagoli, whereabouts in Italy were you born?

Presenter0:10

Milan.

Presenter0:12

How early in life did you decide that you must be an artist?

Presenter0:15

At about the age of six.

Presenter0:17

When having sketched something, my father saw it and told me that I would be a great painter. I was very impressed with this word and since then, really, I wanted to be a painter.

Presenter0:30

Where did you study?

Presenter0:32

In Florence.

Presenter0:33

I believe you didn't find your formal art training very helpful. You preferred to study on your own.

Presenter0:38

Yes, because uh

Presenter0:40

A date.

Presenter0:41

time in the school of art

Presenter0:43

began the invasion of the modern ideas.

Presenter0:48

And I didn't find uh that uh classic way of teaching that I need. Yes. You'll reject all schools of modern art from the Impressionists onwards. Non-representational painting doesn't mean anything to you at all.

Presenter1:01

I m make quite a big difference in between Impressionist and many other

Presenter1:07

Couldn't so far.

Presenter1:08

of our days

Presenter1:10

Impressionists for me are real great artists.

Presenter1:13

I think that Impressionism is much more like uh a sunset of a great period instead of a dawn.

Presenter1:20

of the modern art.

Presenter1:22

and many modern things.

Presenter1:25

are also important for me as a symptom of a very bad disease of the present society.

Presenter1:33

What was the first picture you ever sold?

Presenter1:36

You remember? Wasn't really a picture, but uh I had to sketch a few figures on a large design.

Presenter1:43

made by an architect for some new building in Florence.

Presenter1:48

I remember I got fifty lire for that uh first work of mine. The architect after all wasn't very pleased because at that time I was so keen on sketching beggars and I put beggars all over the design. All around his fine new building. Yes.

Presenter2:07

When did you give your your first one-man exhibition?

Presenter2:10

It was in 1932 in Florence.

Presenter2:13

You like to mix your own paints, don't you? Using the same methods used by the old masters? Yes, my own method is supposed to be the method of the old Venetian masters.

Presenter2:24

Uh, during the nineteen thirties you achieved a

Presenter2:26

a quite considerable reputation in Italy.

Presenter2:30

Because I had uh very good criticism just in the occasion of my first one-man show by

Presenter2:36

Top critic at that time in Italy, Ugo Yeti. It was the war that stopped your work being seen in other countries. Yes, exactly.

Presenter2:43

When did you first exhibit in London?

Presenter2:46

in nineteen forty nine.

Presenter2:48

At the Royal Academy. Oh, that was your your self-portrait that caused such a sensation.

Presenter2:53

I believe it's true that before that that portrait was caused so much comment, you had offered your pictures to the London dealers without very much interest. Yes, that's true. I went around uh Albourne Street and all the galleries there because I wanted to have one man show in London, but no one was really interested.

Presenter3:14

Until that one elector. Yes, and then just the one year later, in 1950, I had my first one-man show at Wildenstein.

Presenter3:24

And just with the same works, of course. And you had another one a few years later. In 1954. It was after that that you were commissioned to paint that very famous portrait of the Queen. Yes, exactly.

Presenter3:37

You're one of the most famous painters of of the day, but also one of the most criticised. Um the critics say that your portraits in particular are are chocolate boxy and that sort of thing. Does that criticism worry you? Not really. After all, I I've got the admiration of a man like Bernard Berenson.

Presenter3:58

Well the critics pick on your portraits, but your exhibitions are extremely varied of landscapes, allegorical pictures, religious pictures, and portraits of course in a number of media.

Presenter4:09

But that is evident, after all, for a lot of people.

Presenter4:12

I think only

Presenter4:14

The critics are missing that.

Presenter4:17

How many sittings do you usually need to complete a portal?

Presenter4:20

That is in between twenty, thirty, depends on on the sizes of course.

Presenter4:25

Now there's always a queue of rich and famous people waiting to commission portraits. How do you apportion your time between working on commission pictures and working on the work that you've set yourself to do?

Presenter4:37

That doesn't also worry me because I am not painting many portraits uh in a year. Uh I would say three or four at the maximum on that roll.

Pietro Annigoni4:44

Natural.

Presenter4:46

Do you spend a lot of time travelling?

Presenter4:48

Yes, because I went uh twice to America and I went to Canada and I went to Mexico and to India and very often to England.

Presenter4:57

Sino, Anagone, many of your finest paintings are of religious subjects. Is it not true that you were brought up in an anti-clerical household?

Presenter5:05

Yes, that's true. But uh in any case, anti-clerical doesn't mean anti-religious.

Presenter5:11

I am myself rather agnostic, but with uh a great nostalgia for religion.

Presenter5:18

There's an element of horror in some of your work. Are you fascinated by the macabre? I am more fascinated by the

Presenter5:25

Life th that's

Presenter5:27

Still there.

Presenter5:29

Part of the life.

Presenter5:35

The title of this large allegorical picture in in your present exhibition, which is very horrific, do you really think life i is as horrific as that?

Pietro Annigoni5:40

Very

Presenter5:43

Very often

Presenter5:45

I think that everyone opening the newspaper in the morning can realize that everyday life is like that in some part of the world.

Presenter5:53

You have a number of pupils working with you in your studio in Florence. Yes, about three, four.

Presenter5:58

It's a very beautiful studio, judging from pictures I've seen.

Presenter6:01

Yes, it is. It's a building of the fifteenth century, in the center of the old Florence on top.

Presenter6:08

Beautiful view on the Duomo. Lovely.

Presenter6:12

What are your plans when you leave London? To go back to Florence?