Cipriano Efisio Oppo (Italian, 1891-1962)

 

Portrait of a woman sitting in a living-room, 1914
Oil on canvas, 81 x 65 cm

Cipriano Efisio Òppo (2 July 1891 – 10 January 1962) was an Italian painter, stage designer, satirical illustrator, and critic. He was born in Rome, the city in which he also lived, worked and died, though his father's and mother's families had both come originally from Sardinia. He was an influential and perceptive commentator and mentor in respect of the Italian art scene through the challenges of the Mussolini years. When he was ten Cipriano's father sent him away to a boarding school at Spoleto, hoping thereby to assure the child an education appropriate to his middle-class aspirations. The boy rejected the institutional rigidities that the school sought to impose on him, however, and the arrangement was terminated after four years.

After returning to Rome full-time in 1904, Òppo enrolled at the city's "Royal Higher Academy of Fine Arts" ("Regia Accademia di Belle Arti denominata di San Luca", as it was known before Italy became a republic) in 1946). His studies were focused on learning to paint, exploiting a natural talent that had already been apparent for some years. College contemporaries who in due course became friends included Francesco Trombadori, Amerigo Bartoli and Antonio Maraini. He supported his studies with work at the prestigious commercial art gallery of Giuseppe Sangiorgi which filled a large part of the vast interior at the Palazzo Borghese. Here he "undertook the duties of an apprentice decorator and copyist of classic works under the guidance of Maestro Oreste Morozzi" (who appears to have combined the roles of head gardener and chief curator at the palace). In 1907 he started attending the academy's "Scuola libera del nudo" ("Free School of The Nude") in the Villa Medici, as a result of which he became more closely acquainted with Umberto Boccioni and Mario Sironi.

Òppo's first known paintings come from this period, notably his "triple self-portrait", which is dated 1910.

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