Verism

Verism is a term derived from the Italian word verismo (realism), denoting an extreme, sometimes harsh truthfulness in depicting reality without idealisation. In its broader historical sense, verismo first described the Italian literary and operatic movement of the late nineteenth century, focused on the hard lives of ordinary people; in opera it was embodied by Giacomo Puccini, Pietro Mascagni and Ruggero Leoncavallo. In the visual arts the concept is used for an intensely precise, documentary naturalism, from ancient Roman portrait busts that mercilessly recorded a sitter's wrinkles and flaws to later realist tendencies. In the twentieth century the word was also applied to a wing of the German Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), whose figures such as Otto Dix and George Grosz exposed the social wounds of postwar society with pitiless candour. Common to all forms of verism is a refusal of embellishment and a determination to show life as it really is.