Scipione

Scipione ( Gino Bonichi) (1904–1933). Italian painter, born at Macerata near San Marino. He was the son of a soldier and adopted his pseudonym (in 1927) in homage to Scipio Africanus, the great Roman general who defeated Hannibal. In 1909 his family moved to Rome and he studied briefly (1924–5) at the Academy there before being expelled with his friend Mario Mafai. With Mafai he was the founder of the Roman School, which introduced a romantic Expressionist vein into Italian painting in opposition to the prevailing pomposity of much art that was favoured under Mussolini's Fascist government. His subjects were mainly scenes of modern Rome, painted with violent brushwork and a feeling of visionary intensity. His career was very short, virtually ending in 1931, when he made the first of several visits to a sanatorium to treat the tuberculosis that caused his early death. Nevertheless his influence was profound: ‘After his retrospectives at the Venice Biennale of 1948 and the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna of Rome in 1954, Scipione's post-war reputation reached legendary proportions. Despite his relatively small production, he became a symbol of heroic individuality in the context of the Fascist period’ (catalogue of the exhibition ‘Italian Art in the 20th Century', Royal Academy, London, 1989).