De Francia, Peter

Peter Laurent de Francia (25 January 1921 – 19 January 2012) was an Italian-British artist, who was Professor of Painting at the Royal College of Art (RCA), London, from 1972 to 1986. His paintings and drawing are included in art collections in Britain, and he was the author of two books on Fernand Léger, Leger: The Great Parade (Painters on Painting) (1969) and Fernand Léger (1983), and of several articles on art. Influenced by nineteenth-century socialist painters such as Gustave Courbet and Honoré Daumier, as well as by socially committed artists of his time like Renato Guttuso, Pablo Picasso, Max Beckmann and George Grosz, de Francia used subjects that exposed the contradictions in everyday life to try to inspire change.