decorative work was so well crafted that he eschewed these pigeonholes.
Writing in a 1946 issue of Graphis, Orio Vergani described Garretto’s
ingenuity this way: “Once the constructive theme of his images is discovered
Garretto proceeds to the invention of the media necessary for executing
them. I believe he has painted, or rather, constructed his images with
everything: scraps of cloth, threads of rayon, with the bristles of his shaving
brush, with straw, strips of metal and mill board, with iron filings and sulfur,
tufts of fur and wings of butterflies. His colors are born of a strange alchemy
of opposed materials in the light of an artificial sun, he seeks for the
squaring of shade as others have sought for the squaring of the circle.”
Garretto was born in Naples, Italy, in 1903 but had a peripatetic
childhood because of his father, a scholar and teacher who traveled extensively.
When he was twelve years old his family moved to Philadelphia where, before
he mastered English, he would communicate with his teachers through
drawings. At the outbreak of World War I he returned to Italy and moved to
Florence because his father was a reserve officer in the army. After the war,
and amid the throes of great social upheaval, the family moved to Rome—a
hotbed of cultural activity and political revolution. In Rome, Garretto would
go nightly to the Caffe Aragno where the intelligentsia assembled; there he
would sketch portraits on the marble table tops. One portrait of F. T.
Marinetti, the founder of futurism, and another of the thespian Pirandello
served to get him a job doing cartoons for a local newspaper.
The postwar years were marred by struggles between communists
and fascists. Garretto hated the bolsheviks, he said, somewhat romantically,
for the murder of the Czar and particularly his little son Prince Alexei. But,
closer to home, the bolsheviks had attacked his father at a veterans rally,
beaten him, and stole his medals. Although his father “turned the other
cheek and forgave his enemies,” Garretto was not so forgiving. At the age
of eighteen he joined the Vanguardists, the fascist youth organization. In
those days fascism was an antiestablishment movement and an alternative
to communism. Although he has since renounced those years as childish
folly, at the time he was committed to the cause. He even designed the
fascist uniform (because he said that he disliked the disheveled look of the
fascist partisans). And when Mussolini saw him and a few of his friends in
a formation dressed in their spiffing splendor, Il Duce appointed Garretto
one of his personal bodyguards. And a great honor it was too until he
learned that the position was for life. The elder Garretto, who was
adamantly opposed to Paolo’s involvement with the fascists, eventually
helped obtain a permanent discharge, allowing him to go back to school,
earn his architectural degree, and ultimately travel to England, where he
became a sought-after caricaturist.
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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