Toni Del Renzio
Obituary: Zealous champion of surrealism who developed his artistic ideas in fashion and graphic design.
Toni del Renzio, who has died aged 91, was one of the last British surrealists of the classic period. The elegance that characterised his work also made him a sought-after graphic designer. As a theorist, he was intensely involved in the arguments at the centre of the movement, and he went on to become a highly effective, if mercurial, teacher.
Born at Tsarskoe Selo (now Pushkino), outside St Petersburg, he was the son of Carlo del Renzio, an Italian aristocrat attached to the Russian court. His mother, Nina Maria, was a Romanov and the great-granddaughter of Tsar Nicholas I. Tsarskoe Selo had long been the imperial retreat and a glorious architectural and cultural site. In later life, Toni del Renzio, as he became, would muse about the gorgeous artworks he must have seen in the Catherine palace.
The 1917 revolution obliged his parents to flee Russia, taking their infant son to Carlo's estate at Formia in Italy. There, del Renzio spent an idyllic childhood before enrolling at Canford school in Dorset, where he excelled at horse-riding and captained the equestrian team.
After graduating in Italy in philosophy and maths, he travelled in eastern Europe; he was still a teenager when he discovered the surrealist group in Prague. Inducted into the Italian cavalry at the age of 20, he was posted to Abyssinia to pursue Mussolini's conquest of the Ethiopians. When informed that the enemy habitually castrated its prisoners, he deserted and, disguised as a Bedouin, joined a camel-train bound for Morocco; he then crossed to Spain, only to stumble into the civil war. He fought briefly on the Aragon front, but, like George Orwell, was forced to escape from the violent in-fighting of the leftist factions in Barcelona. On reaching France, he made straight for Paris and the surrealists.
· Antonio Romanov del Renzio dei Rossi di Castelleone e Venosa (Toni del Renzio) , artist, graphic designer, writer and teacher, born April 15 1915; died January 7 2007
Born at Tsarskoe Selo (now Pushkino), outside St Petersburg, he was the son of Carlo del Renzio, an Italian aristocrat attached to the Russian court. His mother, Nina Maria, was a Romanov and the great-granddaughter of Tsar Nicholas I. Tsarskoe Selo had long been the imperial retreat and a glorious architectural and cultural site. In later life, Toni del Renzio, as he became, would muse about the gorgeous artworks he must have seen in the Catherine palace.
The 1917 revolution obliged his parents to flee Russia, taking their infant son to Carlo's estate at Formia in Italy. There, del Renzio spent an idyllic childhood before enrolling at Canford school in Dorset, where he excelled at horse-riding and captained the equestrian team.
After graduating in Italy in philosophy and maths, he travelled in eastern Europe; he was still a teenager when he discovered the surrealist group in Prague. Inducted into the Italian cavalry at the age of 20, he was posted to Abyssinia to pursue Mussolini's conquest of the Ethiopians. When informed that the enemy habitually castrated its prisoners, he deserted and, disguised as a Bedouin, joined a camel-train bound for Morocco; he then crossed to Spain, only to stumble into the civil war. He fought briefly on the Aragon front, but, like George Orwell, was forced to escape from the violent in-fighting of the leftist factions in Barcelona. On reaching France, he made straight for Paris and the surrealists.
· Antonio Romanov del Renzio dei Rossi di Castelleone e Venosa (Toni del Renzio) , artist, graphic designer, writer and teacher, born April 15 1915; died January 7 2007
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