Aligi Sassu was born in Milan in 1912. In 1921 his family moved to Thiesi in Sardinia. The region would form a lasting impression on Sassu, who took in the sights, sounds and smells – an experience that would also kindle a love for horses.
As his artistic sensibilities began to develop, Sassu took an interest in the Futurist movement, reading its magazines and manifestos, and indulging a fascination from an exhibition his father took him to see in Cavo in 1919. Through his father’s connections, Sassu was able to get close to the movement and familiarise himself with the works of Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Gaetano Previati, Giandante X (as Dante Persico was known) and Giuseppe Gorgerino, all of whom would inspire him in different ways. Manifestos would become Sassu’s tool of choice, including one work of distinction on painting – Dynamism and muscular reform – he published with his friend Bruno Munari.
His early creations from the late 1920s onwards comprised small paintings that experimented with colour. The themes were taken from Sassu’s immediate environment: cyclists, miners, workers and boxers, laying the foundations for his future body of work. In 1930, alongside Filiberto Sbardella, Giacomo Manzù, Nino Strada, Candido Grassi, Giuseppe Occhetti and Gino Pancheri, he managed to secure his first major exhibition in Milan.
In 1934 he enjoyed a three-month sojourn in Paris, where he cemented his love for 19th century art and studied the works of great masters such as Matisse, Géricault, Cézanne and above all Delacroix, whose atmospheric use of colour and passion for animalistic subjects would appear in Sassu’s own work. Having returned to Italy with a renewed vigour for social and political activism, Sassu formed the Rosso Group with Nino Franchina, Vittorio Della Porta and others. Unfortunately, his anti-Fascist rhetoric and anti-Francoist sympathies saw him hounded by the government and eventually accused of conspiracy against the Italian State in April 1937, being watched for six months, a period originally extended to 10 years. He was pardoned by Mussolini in 1938, but would remain supervised, his artistic activities limited. In spite of these travails, he painted mythical and common scenes and travelled extensively, meeting the likes of Picasso. Every step on his journey was rich in inspiration and opportunities, with Sassu constantly creating and exhibiting along the way.
Sassu died on his birthday in 2000. That same year, his ceramic works went on display at the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza, before being transferred to the Manlio Trucco Museum of Ceramics in Liguria and the Albissola Civic Museum of Contemporary Art. From 2000 onwards, the town of Besana in Brianza has hosted the Friends of Aligi Sassu Cultural Association which, among a plethora of initiatives, organised the first sculptural anthology for the artist in 2001, followed by Picasso, Fontana, Sassu: Ceramic art from Albissola to Vallauris in 2003 and Cenacolo Verde: Cassinari, Migneco, Morlotti, Sassu and Treccani in Brianza in 2005. That same year, the Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi awarded Sassu with the Gold Medal of the Italian Republic for services to culture and art, as recognition for his achievements in the field of education, school, university and research and for the promotion of culture.
