Political, civil and social commitment

"What do artists do for the working class? I replied: we try to express our desire for a better... more just.. world.”

(Aldo Borgonzoni, “Strike in Barbarra”, 1957 Courtesy Archives and Research Centre Aldo Borgonzoni)

Aldo Borgonzoni’s life and art are characterized by his consistent ethical and ideological commitment to freedom and to fighting any abuse against man’s dignity, especially the most humble and the weakest. As an antifascist, driven by spiritual and humanitarian generosity, he contributed to the rescue of Virgilio Guidi during the Resistance. He joined the Italian Communist Party, but he was let down by it, as evidenced by the typed letter addressed by the artist to Carlo Ludovico Raggianti on, March 28th, 1983.

“A few years later, the war devastated the world, producing the worst atrocities of the millennium at its dusk, at a time that was apparently characterized by reason. The Nazi extermination camps were scattered around the whole of Europe, the Italian Fascist government sent its youth to slaughter and reason was replaced by grim violence of man by man. Hence, only in 1943, upon the liberation of Rome and the development of an opposition movement, could our hope be rekindled. During that year, due to Allied bombing and famine that affected Bologna very harshly, I returned to Medicina with my family. There I found Maestro Guidi. Due to the same reasons, the artist had moved to the countryside, to Villa dei Lenzi in Buda, a hamlet close to my town. At that time, the partisan movement was very active in the area. It was led by Orlando Argentesi, a close friend of mine since adolescence. One September morning, he told me that Guidi had been sentenced to death, being a member and activist of the Republic of Salò. I opposed it with all my strength and I begged him to consider that he had done nothing irreparable and that a positive general judgment on his work should instead prevail. After heated discussion, his death sentence was converted into immediate expulsion from the town, due to take place within three days. At the time that was agreed upon, and after repeated cycling lessons, Guidi, his pupil accompanied by her husband and myself, we left Buda and reached Chioggia by bike and then Venice by ferryboat late at night. Here intellectuals close to the resistance movement finally freed him from persecution, despite the fact that the Master went on asserting that the Germans would sooner or later reverse the fortunes of the war thanks to their secret weapon, while attending the historic Caffè Florian of Venice.”

(A. Borgonzoni, Virgilio Guidi and Domenico Rambelli between art and ideology, in C. Spadoni, edited by, Aldo Borgonzoni’s Expressionist Naturalism, Faenza, by Silvio Pellico publishing house, 1995)