From 1922 to 1936 Carlo Sbisà is an assiduous exhibitor at the Venice Biennali.
The artist begins his career precociously (he is little more than twenty), exhibiting works engraved during his Florentine period: a dry-point portrait at the 1922
Biennale and two etchings, also portraits, at the 1924 Biennale. More and more,
at the following Biennali, Sbisà makes a name for himself as a painter perfectly
in keeping with the character of “Novecento italiano”, not without some trace
of Magic realism: from Elisabetta and Maria and Female Portrait, oil paintings exhibited
in 1926, to The Astronomers, oil painting exhibited in 1936, the paintings
of the Trieste-born artist – mostly painted with a steady brush-stroke, without
indulging to any impressionistic suggestions – grant the human figure a central
position, while perfectly setting it in an architectural or landscape context. At
the 1948 Biennale Sbisà will again exhibit a couple of paintings, in a very distant
style, though, from the works of his previous period: in consonance with the
changes of the postwar years, they seem to definitively confirm the end of that
“Novecento” of which the artist has been an exemplary representative, much appreciated
by the criticism of his time.
