ALBERTO MORROCCO: SUNSHINE ON DUNDEE

Taking a Dip, pencil on paper, courtesy of Open Eye Gallery

‘Alberto painted as an Italian operatic tenor sings, that is with a passionate theatricality and always con brio.’

So wrote artist and lecturer David McClure, about his compatriot and near-contemporary Alberto Morrocco, one of the leading figures of 20th-century Scottish art. 

Morrocco was born in Aberdeen in 1917, the son of immigrant ice-cream sellers, and his Italian ancestry was an important part of his artistic DNA. At one point it cost him dear: after Italy declared war on Britain in June 1940, he was briefly incarcerated in Edinburgh Castle as an enemy alien.

He was soon released, and was allowed to serve as a conscientious objector for the Royal Army Medical Corps, until 1946.

Like many painters of that era, then, his career was severely interrupted by the war, but he subsequently made up for it with a prodigious output of paintings and drawings, particularly in the last 16 years of his life, after he retired from teaching (at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, now University of Dundee).

He was an accomplished landscape painter, and also produced figure paintings, interiors and still-lifes, of subjects captured both in Scotland and abroad: he was a frequent visitor to his ancestral home and is particularly remembered for his beach scenes and views of Venice and the Veneto region.

Alberto Morrocco is represented by Open Eye Gallery, who have acquired scores of paintings and sketches from his estate, and are displaying many of them at an exhibition in their elegant Edinburgh city-centre townhouse space, until December 23. We’ve picked a study for a painting, Taking a Dip, which gives insight into his MO (plein-air sketches with notes about colour were worked up later in his studio). 

Indeed he is known for his bold and brightly coloured palette, and the manner in which he brought a little Italian sunshine to the Scottish art scene. We’re not sure where this sketch of a chap relaxing under an ombrellone was made – the Lido di Venezia, perhaps? – but it certainly makes you yearn for a bit of Mediterranean summer sun, as the temperature drops, and the nights draw in. 

Alberto Morrocco OBE (1997 – 1996), Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh, until December 23