Tel Aviv’s homage to Piero Cividalli: “My life devoted to painting”

Even now that he is 96, the painter Piero Cividalli goes about his day tending to what is not just a job but a passion that did not fade through the years. “Of course, everything is a bit slower than in the past, and age starts to make itself felt. But painting is still an occupation in my daily life, a pleasant commitment that gives rhythm to my life” he says. A famous artist, whose work is now on display in Tel Aviv, Cividalli is also among the last survivors of the Jewish Brigade, the heroic body of volunteers arrived from the then mandatory Palestine (the nascent State of Israel) to free Italy and Europe from Nazi-fascism. Cividalli was born in Florence in 1926 to a Jewish family involved in literature and art – one of his forebears was the well-known Italian painter Vito D’Ancona. He left Italy in 1939 because of the racial laws, with his mother, siblings, and the father, Gualtiero, wanted by the regime for his opposition to fascism.
Resistance to fascism has been a part of his professional and personal life since his youth: “In 1936, the two brothers Carlo and Nello Rosselli, friends of my parents, were murdered in France,” he says. “I knew Nello, who lived in Florence. I played with his daughters as a child, and this double crime made me a passionate opponent of fascism. Fascism led to destruction and misery. The false idea of glory is washed away by disaster upon disaster. We must learn how to live, not how to die on the battlefield”.
When he turned 19, following the example of his sister Paola who joined a British auxiliary unit, he enlisted in the Jewish Brigade of the British Army. In 1947 he enlisted in the IDF’s Givati Brigade and fought in Israel’s War of Independence.
Marked by a tendency to abstract art, his career started in his youth with the auspices of his father, who was among the firsts to realize his potential. Significant was the influence of another Florentine Jew, the artist Renzo Luisada. “He took me under his wing and taught me a lot. I studied at the art school, but his contribution was decisive”. After the antisemitic turn of Mussolini regime, he also had to leave Italy and start anew in Eretz Israel.
Cividalli is still an active witness between Israel and Italy. In 2019, speaking in the hall of the Milan City Council, he had delivered this message to the new generations: “I would like Italians to know their history and know what fascism and that false desire for nationalistic glory has led them to. We must never forget that we are all citizens of the world and have no future if we do not help each other instead of making new wars and disasters”.
Today, along the same lines, he reiterates: “Nationalism taken to the extreme, to the point of fanaticism, is a real problem. It exists in Italy and unfortunately also in Israel. To counter it, we must remain vigilant”.
Throughout his life, Cividalli has been engaged in teaching painting and art history alongside fruitful and intensive work on his paintings. His work was presented in solo exhibitions in galleries in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the United States, Germany, and Italy and are currently in many important collections in Israel and around the world. The exhibition at the RawArt Gallery features about 60 works in various techniques – pencil drawings, ink drawings, watercolors, oil on canvas, and oil on cardboard.
These works provide a glimpse into 80 years’ worth of work by an artist with a unique life story. “The world – he says – will only be beautiful if you don’t let yourself be seduced by false promises of well-being at the expense of others. Let’s help each other in loving the world, life, and humanity”.