Vatican Museums

1946, the year in which the painting The women of Warsaw was produced, was eventful for Ennio Morlotti: he held his first personal exhibition at the Il Camino Gallery of Milan, he joined the “New Front of the Arts”, and signed, along with Vedova and Testori, the Manifesto of Realism Oltre Guernica (Beyond Guernica), which acknowledged Picasso’s famous painting, from which the manifesto took its name, as a generating element. In parallel, his painting revealed increasingly explicitly his relationship with the work of Picasso, whom he met in person in 1947 when he visited his studio, and to whom he dedicated the article Guernica in 1946.
The women of Warsaw is a central work in Morlotti’s artistic trajectory, which encapsulates and expresses the aim of his research in this direction: the solid compositional balance and the stylistic choices, influenced by Picasso, combine with a violence and expressive bitterness that distinguish his personal interpretation of the famous Spanish artist.