Donghi Collection

The collection includes 23 oil paintings, 2 watercolour pastels and 4 drawings produced between 1920 and 1962. They represent the full evolution of the artist’s style.

The collection begins with a first set of artworks from his training, in youth, in the early 1920s. It continues to more mature paintings from the 1930s and40s, where the change in his artistic language becomes more evident, up to productions from the last years of his life.

From the beginning of his practice, Donghi developed his own figurative language, drawing on the themes and subjects of everyday life: landscapes, small in size and rigorously devoid of human figures, mainly representing views of Rome, the city where Donghi was born and spent his whole life. There are also real-life depictions of towns and the countryside that the artist painted during short trips around the capital in the Aniene Valley, lower Lazio, Umbria and Tuscany.

Observing these landscapes, there is a clear radical change in style between those produced initially, with a predominant naturalistic accent (Basilica di Massenzio, La fontana dei Cavalli Marini, Paesaggio Romano, Veduta di Roma - Convento di San Bonaventura al Palatino and Veduta di Roma - Chiesa di Santa Anastasia) and subsequent paintings which, starting from the 1940s, display a more precise technique with meticulous attention to detail. The representation of vegetation is analytical to the point of being scientific, each individual leaf on trees and bushes rendered with great care (Valle Violata, Villa fuori le mura, Autostrada del Sole, Ritorno dal lavoro).