During the twentieth century, a new vision of the island, developed by writers and artists in parallel with the chronological and figurative ones of the “travelers”, was the basis of the celebration of native values, of nostalgia for the primitive, which merges with the myth of the uncontaminated land and the genuineness of the Sardinian people, as opposed to the overwhelming approval imposed from outside and by contemporaneity.

Such a reading finds credit and is affirmed, after all, not only in the intellectual and political circles that during the 20th century gave birth to the separatist ideology, to the various independence movements and to the Sardinian Action Party - as well as to the literary tests of certain depth such as the poetic ones of Sebastiano Satta and the narrative of Grazia Deledda, as well as various and dubious operations that mystify the “original characters” of Sardinian history and culture - but also in the artistic field, in terms of an epochal moment and process aptly defined as the 'invention of identity'.

Along with the modernity, compared to the times, of the sculptor Francesco Ciusa (Nuoro 1883-Cagliari 1949), whose plaster statue “The Mother of the Killed” won first prize at the 1907 Venice Biennale, the most wise historiographic critic has rightly highlighted the role played by illustration and engraving [in the crystallization of a figurative language of graphic branding, all based on the evidence of line and on the constructive value of color or sharp contrasts, thanks to the work of artists such as Giuseppe Biasi (Sassari 1885-Andorno Micca 1945), Filippo Figari (Cagliari 1885-Rome 1974) and Mario Delitala (Orani 1887-Sassari 1990), whose formation and debut are located, not surprisingly, in this specific area of expression.

However, it can be said that the one covered, once again in the light of the constant historical dynamics in island art, by the importation of figurative records that are actually elaborated on the island, but by artists whose training and language derive from different geographical areas of the European cultural situation, has been underestimated. The accent falls in particular on the presence of two Spanish artists, Eduardo Chicharro Agüera and Antonio Ortiz Echagüe, in the first decade of the 20th century in areas and centers of inland Sardinia, from which they drew the realistic forms and ethnographic motifs of an iconic repertoire destined to constitute a specific “mode” of Sardinian artistic identity. In particular, the second was attributed in 1908 to the creation of a large and suggestive group scenography, on the canvas “The Feast of the Brotherhood of Atzara” today in the Museum of San Telmo in San Sebastián (Basque Country), all resolved on the edge of the evocation of a village environment portrayed according to the canons of Iberian costume design. Some of the most sensitive island painters at the beginning certainly had to know and appreciate at least this Spanish work, if only for its presence at the Munich International Exhibition in 1909 and for its wide circulation following its reproduction in magazines of wide circulation even in the intellectual circuits in Sardinia.

If it is possible to capture only a distant reflection, as a direct suggestion to evoke the autochthonous values of the Sardinian people, in the “Great Country Festival” painted by Giuseppe Biasi from Sassari in 1910-11 according to a linear-chromatic approach with a secessionist brand, the presence in Munich of Filippo Figari in 1909 confirms the hypothesis and allows more than one opportunity to read the next turn, imprinted by the Cagliari painter to his production, from the initial insertion into the concentrated artistic climate Monacense to the abandonment of the secessionist graphic language in favor of the more effective and colorful, however oleographic, celebration of the glories of “Sardinian life” on the canvases of the cycle “Love in Sardinia”, painted between 1912 and 1914 for the Wedding Hall of the Civic Palace of Cagliari.

MONOGRAPHS by
M. G. Scano, Antonio Ballero. Nuoro, Ilisso, 2004 (The Masters of Sardinian Art; 6);
G. Altea, Giuseppe Biasi. Nuoro, Ilisso, 2004 (The Masters of Sardinian Art; 1);
G. Altea, Francesco Ciusa. Nuoro, Ilisso, 2004 (The Masters of Sardinian Art; 3);
M. L. Frongia, Mario Delitala. Nuoro, Ilisso, 2004 (The Masters of Sardinian Art; 7);
G. Murtas, Filippo Figari. Nuoro, Ilisso, 2004 (The Masters of Sardinian Art; 2);
M. G. Scano, Felice Melis Marini. Nuoro, Ilisso, 2004 (The Masters of Sardinian Art; 9).