Cesarina Gualino, Enlightened Artist and Patron

The Gualino spouses

Cesarina Gualino was a patron, collector, dancer and painter. Cesarina Gurgo Salice was born in 1890, the eldest daughter of a rich Piedmontese bourgeois family.

In 1907 she married the industrialist Riccardo Gualino. In 1908 the Gualinos purchased the castle of Cereseto.

While restoring the building, they purchase several paintings, goldworks, ancient marbles: the beginning of the extremely wealthy Gualino collection.

The dance

Between 1921 and 1923, Gualino attended dance classes inspired by Isadora Duncan in Normandy and Paris.

When Casorati and architect Sartoris restored the couple residence in Turin, he built a small theatre connected with the residence so that guests (including Margherita Sarfatti, Luigi Pirandello and Benedetto Croce) could experience a range of emotions from the performances and multiple masterpieces within the house.

Concerts and dances organised by Cesarina along with the dancer Bella Hutter were held at the small theatre. In 1922 Casorati portrayed Mrs Gualino, identifying her as the muse and patron of the dissemination of modern ballet.

The painting

After the experience of dance, Cesarina Gualino slowly shifts towards painting, beginning in 1929 with some axonometry lessons with Gigi Chessa, to design the furniture for the Sestri Levante house.

In 1944 Libero De Libero published a monograph with the catalogue of Gualino's works and in 1947 her first and only solo exhibition was presented at the Studio d’Arte Palma in Rome.

Visual Diary

“She paints because she loves nature, and experiences all the value of a gradation of tone, of a formal structure, of a composition of planes. Her shapes and colours bring the feelings she received from external reality to life: now of disconsolate pity, now of lush richness, now of innocent delicacy, now of a majestic city, now of the enchantment of a wide view.
(Lionello Venturi)

Gualino's painting thus acquires an additional value, that of the candour and confidence of a diary. Her works reveal the vibrant reflection of many positions of painting and culture

A great laugh

The words of her husband, Renato Gualino, perhaps better than anyone else describe the figure of Cesarina: “Her individuality is difficult to define. She is happy with a nothing, she is indifferent to a whole; she has a lively spirit, ready to perceive and reply, she is a fearful adversary in discussions, she is a delightful travel companion. She is never ill, in an almost perpetually excellent mood, always willing to change from dark to serene, she readily grasps the comic sides of life and gives us a great laugh every time."

“She was the ideal companion of my life, and enriched my day with her everlasting freshness [...] Dance and painting are the two crucial cornerstones on which my wife’s spiritual activity rests. I participated in it with fervent enthusiasm, just as she took part in the construction projects and in creating the collection”.