Gianbecchina
Places included in the LIM register of the Sicily Region (Places of historical personalities and culture) - Sub-category "Places of personalities of architectural and artistic-figurative culture" - Valenza LIM: Giovanni Becchina known as Gianbecchina - 1909 - 2001 - painter (house)
1909-1914
Giovanni Becchina was born in Sambuca Zabut on 2 August, the penultimate of 5 children, to Audenzio and Calogera Guzzardo, in a small house in Via del Popolo (now Via G. Marconi). The father was a shoemaker. The housewife mother. The parents leave for America. Giovanni, just 3 years old, remains entrusted to the care of his uncles Michele Guzzardo and Marantonia Ferrara who take care of the first education of his nephew and then try to introduce him to the profession of agronomist, who, in an agricultural center like Sambuca, it seemed then the most qualifying activity.
1915
He attended elementary school in his native country and already shows a marked inclination towards drawing.
1917-1924
At the age of eight he had his first meeting with an amateur painter of the local nobility, Vincenza Oddo, who introduced him to the first palette and the first tubes. Giovanni is already fascinated by painting. He spends whole days contemplating decorators who paint the vaults of the Sambucesi patrician houses, until one of these, Gaetano grippi, hires him as a boy and gives him the first rudiments of painting techniques. , to access the next school grade. He moved to Sciacca, where he attended the "complementary school" corresponding to the current middle school.
1930-1934
He paints "Concertino on the terrace", the work that marks his debut in art and with which he anticipates the artistic orientations of "Corrente", rejecting the academic styles and regimes of the twentieth century. He leaves for Rome, without a lira in his pocket , and enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts, which he attended under the guidance of Umberto Coromaldi. There he meets Pippo Rizzo who pushes him to participate in the competition for a scholarship announced by the Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo. He wins it and thus continues his studies in Palermo without economic hassles.
1935-1937
He participates in the Palermo association of avant-garde artists: Renato Guttuso, Barbera, Lia Pasqualino Noto and Franchina with whom he shares non-conformist ideas, open to the new. He attends meetings in the Pasqualino house, where a circle of intellectuals, artists, musicians and journalists exchange experiences and innovative ideas. He lives for six months with his friend Beppe Sala, an art scholar, in a fishermen's box in Cefalù, between sea and countryside he paints numerous watercolors outdoors. The memories of this stay are fixed in the book “Sodalizio a Cefalù”: text by Peppe Sala, illustrations by Gianbecchina.
1925-1929
To comply with his uncle's will, he moved to Agrigento where, hosted by the canon Marsala, he reluctantly attended the Institute for Agronomists for just one year. To acquire a certain economic autonomy and become independent from his uncle, he begins to carry out the first decoration works in the Sambucesi coffers and in the meantime he contemplates leaving home, attracted by the overwhelming call of art. Following the example of two other Sambucesi, the painters Guarino and Alfonso Amorelli, he left Sambuca and went to Palermo, where he settled at the modica pension, in the old via Alloro, and enrolled in the Free School of Nude, at the academy of Fine Arts. His teacher is the sculptor Archimede Campini, who encourages him to study to achieve artistic maturity. With the young Sambucesi, with a goliardic spirit, he organizes the “Marcantonio and Cleopatra” and “Aida” masquerades. The young painter paints the sets and prepares the costumes. Out of thirty candidates, he is the only one to obtain the artistic high school diploma and fulfills his military obligation in the S. Francesco di Paola barracks in Palermo. He is part of the First Regiment - Radiotelegrafisti Genius - 2nd Company.
1938-1939
He exhibits at the 8st Venice Biennale of Art. In Rome he is a guest of Guttuso, in the studio in Piazza Melazzo da Forlì, together with Pizzinato, a Venetian painter. In the same year he moved to Milan where with the sculptors Tarantino, Pierluca, Nando and the model - painter Bettina he shared a cold basement in via del Guercio n ° XNUMX. In Milan he met Beniamino Joppolo; point of reference for all Sicilian "emigrants" and with him Birolli, Migneco, Quasimodo, Raffaellino de Grada, Badodi, the artists who gave life to "Corrente". These were years of hardship and misery: many paintings painted and very few sold. He tries to make up for himself by earning something with an occasional activity as a decorator and illustrator for "Il Corriere dei Piccoli" by collaborating on the strips "Adventures of Signor Bonaventura".
1940-1943
Forced by the war, he returns to Sicily. "The war is also a turning point in Gianbecchina's art which no longer takes place only towards the" nature "of the country but also towards the people who live there". This year is "My land" ... ... He gets the chair at the Art School of Palermo and this determines his long stay in Sicily. His painting moves on a parallel track to "Corrente" despite its chromatic and compositional originality. He meets Maria Marino, a splendid young Sambucese, who will become his wife, will be able to support him, with love and intelligence, in his life and will be a source of inspiration in his long artistic journey. This year is “Incendio nell'aria”, a work that represents the disaster of the fire caused by a bombing with great expressive intensity and with a notable charge of movement. He executes the drawings to illustrate "Ridi Milena", a book of poems by his friend Sandro Paternostro.
1944-1947
With works such as "The bargaining" or "The family", the following year, he anticipates the advance of neorealism. The style and theme most congenial to him have already been outlined, which Guttuso defines as "The Earthly poeticity" of Gianbecchina. On January 6 Giovanni and Maria get married in the Carmine Church of Sambuca di Sicilia. Archpriest Don Giuseppe Bellino celebrates the wedding. Soon after they moved to Palermo and set up their home in via Tenente Ingrao, where the painter already has an art studio. On 1 May 47 the Becchina family is gladdened by the birth of their first son Elio. With numerous drawings he collaborates with the magazine "Chiarezza" and the newspaper "La Voce della Sicilia", documenting the first struggles for the land and for the redemption of the Sicilian people.
1948-1954
He carries out an intense fresco and restoration activity, on behalf of the Superintendency of the Galleries, in numerous churches on the island damaged by war events: in the huge dome of the Annunziata di Caccamo church, in the transept and in the side nave of the Casa church He professes in Palermo, in the minor seminary of Favara and then in Marsala, Mazara del Vallo and Syracuse. He also restores frescoes and paintings at the National Gallery of Palermo, at Palazzo Abbatellis, at the Pepoli Museum in Trapani, at the “Mandralisca” Museum in Cefalù and in various other Sicilian churches. Between one assignment and another, he went several times to Paris where he went to find out about the new restoration techniques and at the same time he went to admire the works of artists of the past, especially the French Impressionists. He participates with "La zolfara" at the Venice Biennale and wins the "Bevilacqua-La Masa" prize.
(Text source: http://www.gianbecchina.it/sitofinale/biografia/biografia1.html)
Card insertion: Ignazio Caloggero
Photo: web
Information contributions: http://www.gianbecchina.it/sitofinale/biografia/biografia1.html, Ignazio Caloggero, Web
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