Biography of Aurelio De Felice

Sculptures of the 20th century

October 29, 1915
June 14, 1996
The sculptor Aurelio De Felice was born in the medieval village of Torreorsina (Terni) on 29 October 1915 by Antonio and Maria Marini. In the first half of the 1920s he attended the elementary schools of the native country with considerable profit and a keen interest in poetry and drawing. At this time he began his first approaches to sculpture. He enrolled in 1928 at the industrial school of Terni, where he attended the section ' called ' artistic ' section Cabinetmakers-carvers. Here comes into contact with the first means to express his natural inclination for art. Approaching subjects such as modeling clay, wood carving, drawing and art history. In Torreorsina models the portrait of someone with an almost photographic realism. After that school's courses, his father forces him to work in the workshops of Terni to earn some money and help the family. After three months of work in the arms factory, taken from love for art, run in Rome against the will of the father, who, infuriated, throws all his sculptures from the destroying them. In Rome know the greatest misery. During the day does the humblest crafts and evening artistic-industrial school classes follows. This is the most dramatic period of his life, he falls seriously ill and heals miraculously. Knows the sculptor Fazzini, with whom he established a close friendship, and the painter Montanarini. On the occasion of an exhibition in Rome, in 1936, an art lover buys a small sculpture and then helps her to enroll at the Academy of fine arts in the capital. Here in protest against the spirit of the Academy by writing, in his thesis, that it would be appropriate to close all Academies or renew them on other bases and other principles. This won him the expulsion from the Academy for one year. In Terni makes the acquaintance of the painter-Shoemaker Orneore Metelli. He's so impressed by his work that promises to make him known worldwide. A promise kept since 1942 when he begins to exhibit the paintings of the great painter Terni naïve and that continued throughout his life. Attends assiduously studying sculptor Fam where he made the first wooden sculptures «Silvia» and «Young Holy ", which are the basis for its future activity as a sculptor. In Rome he came into contact with the cultural environment. His sculpture stands in the spirit of the ' Roman school ', where the artists of this school, clustered around the Gallery «Comet», operate in one direction and with official rhetoric and opposed the policy of monumentalistic art of that period. The sculptures made in this spirit between 1937 and 1941 win various prizes and are purchased by some museums and private collections in Italy. Start experiencing the first awards by critics and audiences, winning the first prize at the exhibition of Auditors of Umbria (1938), the first prize at the exhibition-Union of Lazio (1939) and the first prize with the statue «teenager with the ocarina» in a national competition involving 250 young sculptors (1940). In June 1940 he graduated at the Academy of fine arts and in October of the same year he was appointed Assistant Professor in the same Academy. In the same year he held his first personal exhibition in Rome, presented by Renato Guttuso, and met and befriended Vincenzo Cardarelli. The following year he was appointed Professor for «fame» in State schools of art. Starts for him a long period of exhibitions that bring him in Genoa, Milan, Florence and Naples. In 1946 for the first time passing the border and travels to Switzerland, in Geneva and in Zurich. Starts to hold solo exhibitions in Europe and particularly in Zurich, Paris, Frankfurt, Bienne (Switzerland), Vienna. In 1950 is instructed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to create the Italian art school in Paris «» Ravenna mosaic and ceramics of Faenza, which he founded in 1950 together with Gino Severini and directed until 1955. In Paris he meets painters such as Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Jean Cocteau, Fujita, Van Dongen and Zadkine. After the Parisian adventure back in Italy and continues with the exhibition program bringing his art in Turin, Milan, London and Florence. In 1956 holds a solo exhibition in Rome. The preface to the exhibition catalogue was written by the critic Marco Valsecchi that, after analyzing the artistic-style of master, calls him "wunderkind" of the Roman school. In 1958, he was appointed Director of the school of art of Volterra and continues with the exhibits describing in Livorno, in Rome, in Lyon (France) and in Braunschweig (Germany). After his proposal is mandated by the Ministry of education, in 1961, to found the State Institute of art in Terni. Following a national competition was appointed Director of the same Institute. Its exhibition activity brings back abroad, in Germany, and continues in Cologne, Lúnen, Hagen, in Oberhausen. Back again at home continues his incessant activity until the seventies of the last century when, as a result of a profound reflection on the meaning of his art, moves away from the media spotlight retiring in peace in birthplace leading a life away from the clamor but not from art. In 1977 he was invited by the Museum of modern art in Tokyo for a Conference on "naive painters and Orneore Metelli». The eighties and nineties of the twentieth century are very difficult because of the many health problems but that doesn't stop him from being, in February 1993, in Kobe, Japan, for the inauguration of the Park of Nunobiki dedicated to love. For the occasion gives the city the sculpture "maternity". Aurelio De Felice goes off at his home in Torreorsina on June 14, 1996, at the age of 80 years.
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.