Roberto Melli (Ferrara 1885 - Rome 1958)

It is not only through his date of birth that Roberto Melli (Ferrara 1885–1958) belongs to the generation that initiated the historical avant-garde movements. Pablo Picasso was born in 1881 and most of the protagonists of these movements were born in that year and those around it.
After orienting his work as a sculptor towards that of Medardo Rosso, Melli turned towards a plasticity influenced by the Futurist research into dynamism, proposing works structured in essential forms and marked by a close comparison between full and empty spaces. In 1918 he joined Mario Broglio to create the magazine Valori Plastici and between 1921 and 1922 he participated in the exhibition it organized in Germany and Italy.
Melli abandoned sculpture after the end of World War I and set out on a pictorial evolution that led him towards tonalism, a form of painting in which colour is subject to the varying effect of the light that penetrates it intimately. Like every other artistic experience, tonalism was a general ambit within which different sensibilities and qualities were at work, starting from that of the greatest significance of Giorgio Morandi. Melli’s version of tonalism is marked by a subtle lyricism, as well as being constantly influenced by Cézanne’s lesson with regard to the organization of volumes.
Melli’s activity as critic and cultural organizer was wide-ranging, underpinned by a rigorous cultural awareness of the various choices he made over the years and marked by a notable openness to younger artists making their début, such as Capogrossi and Cavalli.