Bidspirit auction | Raffaele Carrieri

Raffaele Carrieri - Raffaele Carrieri - Perch, 1937. First edition, 1937, Vanni Scheiwiller publishing house, All'insegna del pesce d'oro . Unnumbered pages. Rare. Editorial paperback. Print run of 220 numbered copies on handmade paper and 30 copies on Japanese paper numbered from I to XXX for book lovers. The volume does not list the Series, but in the Novati catalogue it is listed as no. 3 of the series ”Literary series (First series 1936-1939)”. Published on the first anniversary of the death of Edoardo Persico. Copy no. 190. Copy embellished with the ownership signature of the eminent literary critic Giuseppe Susini. At fourteen he left his hometown and traveled to Albania, Montenegro and other Balkan countries, living on occasional jobs. While still very young he took part in the Impresa di Fiume organized by Gabriele D'Annunzio, during which he was injured. He spent his convalescence in Taranto, and then embarked as a sailor on merchant ships, which gave him the opportunity to visit numerous ports in the Mediterranean, Europe and North Africa. When he returned to Italy, he worked as a tax collector in Palermo for two years. This experience gave rise to his first collection of poems, Il lamento del Gabelliere, which was published in Milan in 1945. In 1923 he settled in Paris where he managed to come into contact with important avant-garde intellectuals. In 1930, thanks to the knowledge he had accumulated in France, he settled in Milan and began working as an art critic for numerous newspapers, including the Corriere della Sera. This was to be an activity that would keep him busy throughout his life. Carrieri would also publish numerous successful monographs dedicated to great contemporary artists: Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Blaise Cendras, Massimo Campigli, Salvatore Fiume, Renato Guttuso, Domenico Cantatore and poets and intellectuals including the Armenian exile Hrand Nazariantz. In the post-war period, he would add to this that of a poet, publishing a series of compositions that would earn him general critical acclaim and numerous awards; among others, in 1953, the Viareggio prize for the volume Il trovatore.