Leonardo Sinisgalli
Encyclopedia
Leonardo Sinisgalli was an Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 and art critic
Art critic
An art critic is a person who specializes in evaluating art. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites...

 active from the 1930s to the 1970s.

Sinisgalli was born in Montemurro
Montemurro
Montemurro is a town and comune in the province of Potenza, in the Southern Italian region of Basilicata.The Italian-American Lucchese crime family mobster brothers Raymond Montemurro and Monte Montemurro share their last name with the town. Monte Montemurro would later play a small part in the...

, Basilicata
Basilicata
Basilicata , also known as Lucania, is a region in the south of Italy, bordering on Campania to the west, Apulia to the north and east, and Calabria to the south, having one short southwestern coastline on the Tyrrhenian Sea between Campania in the northwest and Calabria in the southwest, and a...

. His early education and careers led to him being called the "engineer poet".

In 1925, Sinisgalli moved to Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 where he studied engineering and mathematics. After completing his engineering degree in 1932, he moved to Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

 where he worked as an architect and graphic artist. He was a close friend of the poet Giuseppe Ungaretti
Giuseppe Ungaretti
Giuseppe Ungaretti was an Italian modernist poet, journalist, essayist, critic and academic. A leading representative of the experimental trend known as Ermetismo , he was one of the most prominent contributors to 20th century Italian literature. Influenced by symbolism, he was briefly aligned...

 and painter Scipione
Scipione
Scipione is an opera in three acts, with music composed by George Frideric Handel for the Royal Academy of Music in 1726. The librettist was Paolo Antonio Rolli. Handel composed Scipione whilst in the middle of writing Alessandro...

. He worked at Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

 for architecture and graphic design projects.

Sinisgalli's early collections such as Cuore (1927), 18 poesie (1936), Campi Elisi (1939) focused on themes from ancenstral southern Italian myths. Later he explored a more relaxed style in I nuovi Campi Elisi (1947), La Vigna vecchia (1952), L'età della luna (1962), Il passero e il lebbroso (1970), Mosche in bottiglia (1975) and Dimenticatoio (1978). He authored prose that analyzed the conflicts of existentialism
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...

 and realism
Realism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...

 such as Fiori pari, fiori dispari (1945) and Belliboschi (1948). He also explored the scientific culture of the day in Furor mathematicus (1944) and Horror vacui (1945).

Sinisgalli founded and managed the magazine Civiltà delle Macchine (1953–1959), and was a member of the Scuola Romana
Scuola Romana
Scuola romana or Scuola di via Cavour was a 20th century art movement defined by a group of painters within Expressionism and active in Rome between 1928 and 1945, and with a second phase in the mid-1950s.-Birth of the Movement:...

. He also created two documentaries which consecutively won the Biennale di Venezia awards and edited radio broadcasting programs.

He died in Rome in 1981.
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