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Cafe’ Bardi
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Cafe’ Bardi

The post-Macchiaioli literary café

Café Bardi - Piazza Cavour

We find the young Modigliani back in Livorno to treat his respiratory problems in 1909. 

That is when he began to frequent Café Bardi.

This café was a historical place in Livorno, on the corner between Piazza Cavour and Via Cairoli, a few steps from the “parapet” of the city's canals. It was open from 1908 to 1921 and quickly became the meeting point for Livorno artists of the time, modelled on the big Parisian cafés.  It was mainly frequented by painters, but sculptors, writers, play writers and musicians hovered around it too. 

A short time after the café opened, the project was conjured up to fill its walls with frescoes by the painters who frequented it: Benvenuto Benvenuti, Umberto Fioravanti, Giulio Ghelarducci, Olinto Ghilardi, Corrado Michelozzi, Renato Natali, Mario Puccini, Gastone Razzaguta and Gino Romiti were all a part of the group.

“As Gastone Razzaguta, the secretary of the Labronico Group from 1921 to 1950 stated, in that busy bar, there were the strangest people from many regions and even from overseas: some became regular customers, others vanished, “scared” off by the daily, often heated discussions that sprang up. 

One of the most frequent customers was the painter Manlio Martinelli, who came in every day at the same time, he always sat at the same table - if it was already taken he would stand up -  and at the same time, every evening, he went home, taking the same route both there and back. Others were the painter Gino Romiti who would hold conversations about spiritual problems while Renato Natali was busy making deals with the short “shrinking” Pessi to obtain food for the following day.

Maestro Pietri played his latest compositions on the piano, while, to applause, Giosuè Borsi recited verses by Dante and Boccaccio. Many other customers, including the Divisionist Benvenuto Benvenuti, Corrado Michelozzi known as "Borchia", the other Divisionist Adriano Baracchini-Caputi, Paolo Fabbrini, Sabatino Lopez, the port painter Ettore Castaldi, who later emigrated to South America, Alfredo Del Bianco, Giulio Ghelarducci, Mario Tinti, Gustavo Pierotti della Sanguigna, the editor in chief of the "Giornale degli artisti" Guido Vivarelli, Olinto Ghilardi, Alvaro Angiolini, the lawyer Augusto Diaz, the sickly painter Eugenio Caprini, the painter and photographer Gino Schendi, the photographer of five wars and the Naval Academy Bruno Miniati, the architect Mario Pieri-Nerli, Edoardo Aromatari (a somewhat well-known concert player who had ended up playing in cinemas), the elegant painter Giuseppe Maria Del Chiappa, Oliviero Cocchi (known as Mede Baffoni, the father of the painter Mario Cocchi), the small and hotheaded Giovanni Zannacchini, the actor Febo Mari, professor Alberto Calza, Modigliani’s painter friend, Aristide Sommati.”   

Café Bardi is linked to one of the best-known legends about this period of the painter's life, who would soon return to Paris and make it his new home.    

According to the most accredited version of events, the painter showed some of his sculptures to his friends at the café, without receiving any compliments: in fact they mocked him to the point he decided to get rid of them immediately and threw them in a nearby canal. Instead, according to another version, he loaded them onto a car and through them in the canal at night, a few hundred metres away, close to the supplies market. 

After the café closed in 1921, the original frescoes were removed and only a part of them, the panels, were saved by the Bardi family. The premises were renovated and became first a bank for several years, and are now used as a shop for home products. The presence of the café is remembered on a plaque placed on the front of the building overlooking Piazza Cavour in 2003.

(Sources: Wikipedia, http://www.comune.livorno.it/_cn_online/index.php?id=715)

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Livorno
provincia di Livorno

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