Giuseppe Verzocchi was born in 1887 in Rome, where his family had moved from Forlì for work reasons. The small Roman construction company of his father, Antonio Verzocchi, soon had to close down and the family returned to Forlì, more precisely to Villanova, where they repaid their debts by working in the fields. The childhood of Giuseppe, the fourth of the five surviving children (four others had died at an early age), was indeed a poor one.
After paying off his debts in Rome, the family followed his father to Liguria, where he restarted his business. In Genoa, in 1907, Giuseppe Verzocchi found employment with a company that imported refractory bricks from England. In 1908 he moved to London, where he worked in the subsidiary of the same company. In 1909, he joined the refractory factory Henry Foster & Co. Ltd, in Newcastle-on-Tyne, where he was responsible for the export of refractory bricks to the Italian market. More and more established in the industrial field, in 1912 he founded a company with his brother-in-law, "Verzocchi & De Romano", producer of the famous brick marked "V & D".
In 1914 he was asked by the then Undersecretary for Arms and Munitions, H.E. Dall'Oglio, to supply Italy with refractory materials from England, independently from the Italian Military Mission established in London specifically for the supply of all materials necessary for war production. The idea was to emancipate Italy by replacing the importation of refractory bricks with the easier and less expensive importation of raw materials. This project was realized in 1927 with the construction of the factory in La Spezia for the manufacture of the same bricks, with the same raw materials, the same machines and the same English processing systems.
Crucial for wartime production, so much so that between 1938 and 1944 it was the only supplier to the Navy with the production of "Diasporo Marina", the Refrattari Verzocchi factory was the only refractory factory dismantled by the Germans, aware of its great usefulness to the Allies. Verzocchi managed, however, to restore the factory and the company after the war with hard work. His entrepreneurial ability was accompanied by an intelligent artistic patronage.
Already in the Catalogue of English refractory bricks of 1924 he collected 34 works by well-known painters, commissioned by him for the occasion. It was a catalog appreciated by all the intellectuals of the time. He also collaborated with various artists to create an advertising campaign in 1948, in the "Corriere della Sera", as well as in his publication of 1964.
The highest point of his activity as a patron remained, however, the collection "Il lavoro nella pittura contemporanea (1950)", ("Work in contemporary painting") exhibited for the first time in the Ala Napoleonica of Piazza San Marco in Venice.
Talking about Giuseppe Verzocchi's life, we must not forget his special bond with the city of Forlì to which, in 1961, he donated this last collection and his very rich correspondence with numerous artists, evidence of his love for this kind of workers.
Verzocchi was still preserving his company, working and carrying out various initiatives involving art, when he died on October 1st 1970 and he wanted to be buried in Forlì, in the cemetery that his grandfather and great-uncle helped to build. (from Katia Severi "La collezione Verzocchi e il suo carteggio" Accademia degli Imperfetti, Meldola 2008)