Felice Filippini
Born in 1917.
Died in 1988.
Known here for his versatile practice, he worked as a painter, printmaker and muralist while pursuing a literary career as a novelist, poet and author of radio plays, and also working as a cultural journalist and translator.
Trained in Locarno, he obtained his diploma from the teacher-training college in 1937. After beginning with woodcut and painting, he gradually turned towards mural painting. Among his earliest mural interventions were a chapel of the Via Crucis in Morcote in 1940 (the painting is reported to have been destroyed immediately) and the illustrations for the military chapel on Monte Ceneri in 1941.
The following decade saw further public commissions: in 1949 he decorated the chapel situated on the square in front of the Teacher Training College in Locarno, and in 1957 he painted the scene entitled Wedding Feast in Ticino on the wall of the top floor of the main staircase in Bellinzona’s new government building.
Alongside his mural work, Filippini continued an important practice of printmaking: he is credited, in particular, with 100 linocuts made for Ein Dorf Erwacht by Guglielmo Canevascini, published in Zurich by Büchergilde in 1944.
A significant encounter with Alberto Giacometti in 1965 inspired a series of works and a text entitled Fare il ritratto di Giacometti, presented in exhibitions at the Marino Gallery in Locarno in 1966 and at the Elvetica in Chiasso in 1968.
As a sign of his multifaceted intellectual activity, he also translated texts from French and German into Italian and maintained a regular literary output alongside his artistic practice.
