"Questa modesta ma precisa testimonianza". Ritratto e identità nel gruppo di "Corrente"

The article proposes a reflection on portraits realized by the artists who gravitated around “Corrente”, the periodical founded in January 1938 in Milan by Ernesto Treccani. In contrast to the official and celebratory practice prevalent at the time, the painters of the group (Renato Birolli, Bruno Cassinari, Renato Guttuso and many others) used the portrait as a privileged field of psychological and expressive research, looking for a new dialogue with the examples of international contemporary art. In addition to that, portraiture gave them the opportunity to create a new iconography of artist and man, which could embody a shared horizon of cultural, existential, and political values. Finally, portraiture assumed for the artists of «Corrente» a crucial identity function: it was a tool to emphasize the existence of a network of friends and thus affirm a cohesive collective identity.