The Cassa di Risparmio Foundation of Jesi, the Osvaldo Licini Study Center, the Municipality of Monte Vidon Corrado, institutions from the Marche region very active in the cultural field, present the exhibition "Renato Paresce and Les italiens de Paris" curated by Stefano De Rosa.

The exhibition is divided into two stages: from March 2 to May 4, 2025 it will be at the Osvaldo Licini House Museum in Monte Vidon Corrado (FM), and then from May 16 to September 14, 2025 it will continue in the exhibition halls of Palazzo Bisaccioni, headquarters of the Cassa di Risparmio Foundation of Jesi.

But what is the connection between Osvaldo Licini and Renato Paresce? Both frequented the lively artistic and cultural environment of Paris in the early decades of the 1900s. They never met in person, but both exhibited in the collective exhibition "Les artistes italiens de Paris" in 1928 at the Salon de l’Escalier in Paris, where works by Licini and Paresce, as well as Giorgio De Chirico, Alberto Savinio, Mario Tozzi, Filippo de Pisis, Gino Severini, Massimo Campigli, and others were featured. Since then, the group - excluding Licini who was not part of it - was presented in various exhibitions, until the last one in 1933 at the Galérie Charpentier in Paris.

From this arose the idea of the exhibition"Renato Paresce and Les italiens de Paris" which presents a core of about 30 works - from a private collection in the Marche region, chosen with rigor, passion, and expertise - by Paresce along with a section dedicated to other Italiens de Paris. The exhibition path reconstructs, from 1913 to 1931, the complex artistic journey of Paresce - who signed as Renato as a journalist for La Stampa and René on his paintings - developed in the context of the French avant-garde, starting with the adoption of post-impressionism, maturing towards the beginnings of a personal synthesis, which was then translated into an identity style.

The life and artistic journey of Renato Paresce (Carouge, 1886 - Paris 1937) are emblematic of the contradictions, anxieties, experimentation, and utopia of an extraordinary historical period. Swiss by birth, son of a Palermo-born socialist activist and a Russian mother, he had an education rich in cultural influences, travels in Europe and Moscow, and training in cosmopolitan Florence. Paresce's intellectual identity is multifaceted: a physics graduate, he was a journalist, self-taught painter, attentive to contemporary artistic ferment, and art critic. In 1912, after marrying Ella Klatchko, a Russian Jewish pianist, he moved to Paris where his passion for painting was born, frequenting famous Parisian cafes such as Dôme, La Rotonde, and Closerie des Lilas, and thus coming into contact with Pablo Picasso, Sergej Djagilev, Max Jacob, Diego Rivera, Amedeo Modigliani, and others; then from the outbreak of the First World War until 1927 he settled in London and finally returned to the French capital.

From 1926, Italian critics and cultural institutions began to involve Italian artists in exile between Paris and London - and therefore also Paresce - in a program to promote national art. Margherita Sarfatti invited the painter to the exhibitions of the Novecento group, while Maraini commissioned him to set up a room at the 1928 Venice Biennale dedicated to the