A little girl killed, but also a soldier who shoots and a crucified man are precise references to a contingent that wounds sensibility, reactivates consciences and involves the artists of the so-called Existential Realism, of which Romagnoni was certainly the most gifted.
In these still youthful drawings - he graduated from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in 1955 - the discontinuous, broken, but strong and decisive stroke becomes atdramatic perception of conflict, without conceding anything to the voyeurism that sometimes transpires in war reportages.
There are echoes of graphic solutions typical of the avant-garde, and in particular of Expressionism, which Romagnoni was particularly interested in at the time and that, however, he appropriated in a personal way, highlighting the need for an irrepressible physicality of the human image in all the dimensions of its existence (since it is on the human body that the signs of history are inscribed). This will emerge especially in the extraordinary series of paintings made between 1961 and 1964, before his premature death at only 34 years of age.
Donated by Gabriella Montaldi-Selhorst e Nokolas Montaldi, 2012
