Houses at Ponte Petrino

Arrigo Del Rigo 1930

This representation in synthetic foreshortening is typical of the Prato artist Arrigo Del Rigo. His landscapes, humanised and animated by figurines, are places of memory rather than real places, and almost always idealised. The industrial transformation of the city is represented by the soaring chimney on the left, almost a symbolic image, and the inscription “OLEOBLITZ”, with a futuristic feel. The preparatory study of this painting, taken from life, also exists in the municipal collections.

Technical information

Author: Arrigo Del Rigo
Title: Houses at Ponte Petrino
Date: 1930
Material and technique: Oil on plywood
Size: 53x72,5 cm
Location: Palazzo Pretorio Museum
Third Floor

Arrigo Del Rigo was a tormented artist, his humanity fragmented and reflected in landscapes and visions with a clean language, open to the stimuli of the Avant-garde introduced in Italy by Ardengo Soffici. In this work, with its rough language, expresses the intense poetry that lurks in everyday reality and in the places of memory.
In Del Rigo's mature phase, two distinct ways of interpreting reality coexisted: that more lyrical and true-to-life of his landscapes and the more synthetic and plastic manner of his portraits, under the influence of the neo-15th century taste in vogue in the 1920s.
Del Rigo’s companions along the way, in particular Gino Brogi and Giulio Pierucci with Oscar Gallo, show in their urban views how the industrial transformation of the city with its factories and soaring chimneys was already underway.