The Old Gossips

Between 1907 and 1909 Felice Casorati, working with live models, made numerous studies of elderly women, young ladies and girls, works that aroused considerable success from the public and critics, and excellent reviews about his skills as a colorist and designer with great expressive ability. The work "The Old Gossips" seems almost to counterbalance the painting of the same period "The Little Girls". A group of elderly women wrapped in shawls is portrayed in a kaleidoscope of expressions and personalities: Casorati masterfully orchestrates the psychology of the characters by guiding the figures in a slow converging movement of the elderly immobile, sitting and curved, symbol of a lived life that inexorably flows towards its natural epilogue. "I paint poor old women with their faded shawls and the burden of their sorrows, their memories... intent only on striking a thought, fixing a character, creating a type...".