Cagnaccio di San Pietro

Cagnaccio di San Pietro (January 14, 1897 – May 29, 1946), born Natale Bentivoglio Scarpa, was an Italian magic realist painter.

He had his artistic training at the Academy of Fine Art in Venice, where he studied under Ettore Tito. Cagnaccio's early paintings were in a Futurist idiom, but by the early 1920s he had adopted a very smoothly brushed, nearly photographic style. His work, which includes portraits, nudes, still lifes, scenes of popular life, and religious pictures, shows the influence of the German painters of the New Objectivity.

One of his best-known paintings, "After the Orgy" (1928) shows three nude women asleep on a floor littered with wine bottles, playing cards and cigarettes. The clinical realism of this work is also seen in his still lifes, which often represent crabs, lobsters, or glass objects that he painted with chilly precision. He died in Venice.

References

*Bonet, Juan Manuel, et al. (1997). "Realismo Magico: Franz Roh y la Pintura Europea 1917-1936". Valencia: IVAM Institut Valencià d'Art Modern. (Spanish and English) OCLC| 38962637
*Castellan, Edoardo, et al. (1991). Cagnaccio di San Pietro. Milan: Electa. ISBN 88-435-3534-X (Italian)