Biography

Camillo Innocenti was born in Rome on June 14, 1871, son of Enrica Santarelli and architect Augusto Innocenti. After graduating at Liceo Visconti, he is directed to the workshop of the "Nazarene" painter Ludovico Seitz, a friend of his mother. Following the master, at the time working in the Vatican - from Leo XIII he had received the commission to paint the vaults of the Candelabra Gallery - the young Innocenti had the opportunity to study closely the great art of the past, from Raphael to Michelangelo. Soon, however, his attention moved to contemporary art. Between the late 1880s and the early 1890s, in fact, the artist begins to attend Antonio Mancini’s studio. He will remember the impact of Mancini painting on young artists in the fundamental autobiography published in 1959 by the publisher Pinci with the title Art and Life Memories: “as soon as we young started to see Mancini paintings we even lost our heads. At home I met my father’s and my older brother’s scoldings who reproached me to running after a madman. I coped with in silence, but did not change my opinion”. In the same period he is in contact with Domenico Morelli, for whom he realizes some studies, and Francesco Paolo Michetti, whom he reaches in Francavilla sul Mare along with Gabriele d'Annunzio. The lesson of the masters profoundly influences his painting at this early stage, as it is evident in works such as the ‘morellian' Holy Family (private collection), the ‘mancinian’ Girl with Poppies, and also Le Buranelle (Ascoli Piceno, Pinacoteca Civica), in which in addition to referring to Michetti, it is recognizable the suggestion of Ettore Tito painting.

Innocenti debuted at the Venice Biennale in 1903. In addition to exhibiting three paintings characterized by a slightly divisionism (Dawn, The First Light and the Agricultural Labourers and Portrait), he collaborates with the peers colleagues Arturo Noci, Umberto Coromaldi, Alessandro Poma and Enrico Nardi at the realization of the decorative frieze designed by Giulio Aristide Sartorio for the Lazio Room. Since then, a series of international successes followed one another. In 1904 he won the gold medal at the World Fair in St. Louis with Ciociara Song, work with which he obtains the Rome Prize in 1906; in the same year, he won the silver medal of the Ministry of Education with Girl Listening to Fables. In 1905 the famous Irish painter John Lavery proposes to award Innocenti with the gold medal at the Venice Biennale for the painting On the Mountains of Abruzzo (currently lost), on display in the Lazio Room along with In the Square, the latter purchased by the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome. Influenced by international modern painting, with which he could confront at the Venetian Bienniali, the artist found a new source of inspiration in the modern woman life. In 1905, returned to Rome after his travels to Abruzzo, Innocenti made a series of drawings during the rest moments between a painting and another, representing "small figures of maidens and ladies while playing the piano, pouring the tea, coiffuring hair before the mirror, crocheting or caring for some other household chore” (V. Pica, 1909). Of the referred drawings eight were presented in the 1906 issue of “Novissima”, as if to announce to a cultured and refined public the new direction of his own research. The great success of the worldly subjects, with which he participated at the 1907 Biennale, led him, in the 1909 edition, to ensure a solo exhibition with twenty large paintings, presented in the catalog with an enthusiastic critical text by his friend Ugo Ojetti.

In 1910 he is member of the Italian Commission at the Universal Exhibition in Brussels and at the International Exhibition of Rome in 1911. In 1912 he is among the founders of the “Secessione romana” (“Roman Secession”), created in controversy with the Società degli Amatori e Cultori di Belle Arti (Society of Amateurs and Connoisseurs of Fine Arts), by now considered retarded and excessively connected to official circles. The group first exhibition took place at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in 1913 but Innocenti, despite being among the protagonists, presented only one portrait: a large part of his recent works, in fact, were on display in Paris at the prestigious Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, in a solo exhibition that definitely consecrated his international success. Still in 1913 he obtained an important official recognition at the Accademia di San Luca, where he is appointed Accademico di merito (Academic of Merit) for the painting class. At the “Secessione” exhibition in 1914 he recovered the previous year absence, presenting in a solo show both the works carried out in Paris and new paintings such as The Sultana, currently in the collections of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Rome.

Due to the onset of World War I, the subsequent "Secession" exhibitions (1915, 1916-17) were realized in small measure: the Biennale of Venice, on the contrary, was not held from 1914 to 1920. Thus, in those years Innocenti focuses on the movie scenographer activity, on which he commits to with great success throughout Europe. After the war, his fashionable painting no longer seems to meet the critical and the market enthusiasm, now directed towards a more rigorous monumentality. The artist aims at new scenarios then, such as the Egyptian one: in 1923 he held a solo exhibition at the Italian Club of Alexandria. Back in Rome, he exhibited in a solo show at the II Biennale Romana, presenting subjects inspired by his journey to Egypt. He will return to North African soil in 1925, when he takes over the direction of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cairo. He will remain there until 1940 - working, amongst others, as court artist - when, due to the ever more pressing war acts, he returns to Rome by makeshift means. Between 1943 and 1947 he resides on the Adriatic coast. In 1945 he holds a solo exhibition in Rimini, but by now his figure is out of the artistic debate of the time: the years to follow will be marked by increasingly dramatic economic conditions. He dies in Rome, nearly ninety, on January 4, 1961.