14. COMISSO AND DE PISIS

The Ampezzo valley is a place for encounters, friendships, and love stories. The relationship between the writer Giovanni Comisso (1895–1969) and the painter Filippo de Pisis (1896–1956) embodies a bit all of these aspects. Comisso, author of novels and stories such as Gente di mare, Gioventù che muore, and L’italiano errante per l’Italia, had visited Cortina from the time he was a child. He returned as an adult, meeting de Pisis on several occasions and staying with him in Campo di Sotto. He wrote about it in Mio sodalizio con De Pisis, “My Partnership With De Pisis”, which appeared in 1954 in the magazine Il Mondo and was later published by Garzanti, with a recommendation from Eugenio Montale. In this work, Comisso recounts happy, contemplative summers, surrounded by mountains, flowers, and the people of Cortina. He also describes the first meeting, arranged by Comisso, between de Pisis and Mario Rimoldi, future mayor of Cortina and creator of a remarkable art collection, described by the Italian Ministry of Culture as “one of the most significant collections in Italy for 20th-century art, essential for the study of the period.” Much of the collection was donated to the Regole d’Ampezzo, allowing the opening of the Mario Rimoldi Museum of Modern Art in 1974. The work Church of Cortina from 1937 was Mario’s favorite piece. At the time he paid a thousand lire for it and refused to sell it, even when offered a much larger sum shortly thereafter. De Pisis was the first of Mario’s “five great friends,” which also included painters Campigli, Mušič, de Chirico, and Sironi. The final meeting between Comisso and de Pisis was in the hospital, where the painter was under care. The scene, filled with beauty and sorrow, closes the book. “As we parted, he accompanied me to the stairs, and in the hallway, our steps were in unison, as when we walked, confident and happy, through the streets of Paris and Cortina. It seemed, in that moment, that he wanted to come with me and return to our sublime life. I descended the stairs feeling gloomy, thinking, as if in a revelation, that we  are nothing but magnificent waves, always waiting to be undone in the collapse.”