Peter de Francia

Peter Laurent de Francia 1921 – 19 2012) was an Italian British artist. Influenced by nineteenth-century socialist painters such as Gustave Courbet and Honoré Daumier, as well as by socially committed artists of his time such as Renato Guttuso and Pablo Picasso, de Francia created artworks with a drive for social change.

---

Peter de Francia wrote about the work of artist Fernand Leger, and followed Leger’s style of slow, rounded, volumetric figures and cubist perspectives, taking advantage of the full and dynamic compositional pathways Leger used to propel the composition.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

---

Then in 1950, Francia met Max Beckmann and George Grosz in New York, and his drawings shifted to be more linear.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Beckmann, Grosz, and Francia worked pathways into the composition now with line, leading the eye in and around the page to hold the viewer as the narrative and characters unfolded in their complex large scale charcoal drawings. Francia loved charcoal for “the wonderful way you can go between tone and line. If I was shut up for the rest of my life with a room full of charcoal, and two rooms full of paper, I’d be perfectly happy”.

---

Peter de Francia’s drawings in the 1950s

• 

• 

---

Peter de Francia’s drawings in the 1960s

• 

• 

---

Peter de Francia’s drawings in the 1970s

• 

• 

• 

---

Peter de Francia’s drawings in the 1980’s

Peter de Francia: Modern Myths

Part of a show displayed at the NYSS in 2008, featuring de Francia’s work from the 1980s

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

---