The first decades of 20th century in Florence correspond to a period of a flourishing
production in the field of the graphic arts, in book illustration, in art and
literary journals. When Carlo Sbisà arrived from Trieste at the beginning of 1919,
the Tuscan city was still seeing the effects of the establishment in 1912 of the
chair of printmaking in the local Academy of Fine Arts, and a growing interest
for the international “etchig revival” also due to the contribution of many young
artists who had come to Florence from the North-East regions of Italy to escape
the war. The central role of the practice of drawing and etching in Sbisà’s career
during the 1920s, in close relationship with the style of Emilio Mazzoni Zarini
and the contemporary research of Giannino Marchig and Carlo Cainelli, marks
his Florentine experience with a deep taste for linearity which was to remain influential
for his further production.
