Emilio Vacchetti - Vase of Flowers 1956

Venetian glimpse

Oil on canvas. Signed lower right. Painter, sculptor and ceramist, the Turin artist Giovanni Riva participated in numerous national reviews and exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale in 1940 and 1942. Among his production as a ceramist, the faces of many Lenci dolls are particularly remembered. In painting he devoted himself above all to glimpses of Turin, Milan and Venice, rendered with great spontaneity and immediacy, as well as genre scenes. The systematic study of ancient art, the adherence to the Renaissance ideals of the sculpture of Donatello, Michelangelo and Giambologna pushed Giovanni Riva towards the adoption of an expressive code similar to the taste of the romantic nineteenth century, rather than to futurist dynamism or surrealist visions . The Venetian glimpse proposed here is presented in a style frame.

Composition with Hourglass Armor and Books

Oil on the table. Signed lower right. Born in Milan in 1913 and trained at the Brera Academy (of which he will later become a teacher), Adriano Gajoni became passionate about the study of seventeenth-century Lombard painters and Dutch and Flemish painting of the seventeenth century, from whose meticulous realism he let himself be inspired. Of strict figurative observance, Gajoni preferred landscapes, portraits and above all still lifes, which he expressed in fairy-tale and allegorical compositions. He mainly practiced oil painting on wood and hardboard. This composition proposes an armor, placed on a table together with some illuminated texts and an hourglass. The taste for ancient flavor compositions is rediscovered. In frame.

Landscape with Ancient Style Figures

Oil on hardboard. Signed lower right. Born in Milan in 1913, and trained at the Brera Academy (of which he later became a teacher), Adriano Gajoni became passionate about the study of seventeenth-century Lombard painters and Dutch and Flemish painting of the seventeenth century, from whose meticulous realism he let himself be inspired. Of strict figurative observance, Gajoni preferred landscapes, portraits and above all still lifes, which he expressed in fairy-tale and allegorical compositions. He mainly practiced oil painting on wood and hardboard. Also this painting proposes a landscape of ancient taste: in the countryside, on the path that runs along a wide river, a pastoral figure passes on his donkey, followed by his small herd. The work is presented in a style frame.

Male face

Oil on canvas. Signed lower right. The Milanese artist Carlo Jacono was an illustrator and painter: his unmistakable style, the mastery in the execution, the prolificacy and artistic ability in over 50 years of career, the knowing how to lend himself to different genres and the great success at readers and publishers made him one of the masters of Italian illustration and one of the most appreciated and well-known names on the national and international illustration scene. He was also known as the "Man of the circle", a pseudonym due to the layout of many of his covers in pink, police, science fiction, Italian, English, Swedish, Norwegian, American (we recall, among many, the covers of the series "Il giallo Mondadori "), or more simply with the surname only, Jacono, with which he signed himself. Starting from 1970 Jacono also embarked on a career as a painter, exhibiting in personal exhibitions both in Italy and abroad, preferring a figurative vein with a romantic connotation that finds its masterpiece in the series of "The warriors". They said of this production: "they are apparitions of warriors of other times, which the imagination comes to realize even in the minute features of the face, and to imagine in the most reckless actions". Probably the painting presented here is also part of this series: it is the face of a Nordic warrior, as can be deduced from the fur headdress that frames the proud and concentrated face in which the cold blue eyes stand out, and from the burnished metal collar engraved with signs graphics that refer to the Nordic runes; half-length, the shoulder straps of the armor can be seen. The painting is presented in a frame.

Portrait of Dr. Libero Mazza 1972

Oil on canvas. Signed and dated lower left. On the back the handwritten "Portrait of Dr. Libero Mazza, prefect of Milan, made in my studio", followed by the artist's further signature and the date. Venetian but Milanese by adoption, Attilio Melo studied at the Brera Academy and together with his father, an appreciated fresco painter. From an early age he established himself as a portraitist; in his long and brilliant career, figures of national and international fame posed for him, from different worlds: politicians (such as De Gasperi, Gronchi) and religious (Cardinal Martini), artists from the world of entertainment, music, theater (Ingrid Bergman, Frank Sinatra, Sophia Loren ....) and dance (Rudolf Nureyev). He was also a landscape painter, even of foreign places, but always favoring the landscape of his lands of origin and inspiration, Milan and Venice. His style is peculiar, made up of long brushstrokes, almost stripes of color, which create an evocative chromatic setting around the portrayed figures. The painting proposed here is presented in a contemporary frame.

The Wanderers

Oil on pressed cardboard. Signed lower right. On the back the title. Originally from Mantua but artistically trained at the Brera Academy, as a pupil of Cesare Tallone, Lino Baccarini exhibited at the Milanese Biennale and then throughout Italy, distinguishing himself above all as a portraitist, even with famous personalities. The work proposes a landscape of cultivated plain, with a line of wagons of wanderers that advance slowly on the road in the middle of the fields. It is presented in a stylish frame.

Glimpse of Lake Maggiore

Oil on canvas. Carlo Monti, born in Arona, and trained in the nude school of the Brera Academy and in the studio of his friend Usellini, was an artist who lived and worked rather isolated from the world, following his own inner vein, shunning groups, by currents and schools; his very presence at the personal and collective exhibitions takes place at the request and invitation of the gallery owners themselves. He mainly devoted himself to the landscape, mostly set in the Lombard nature and its Piedmont, and expressed through strong and warm tones, capturing nature from life and transfiguring it, without lingering in detail. Monti has also made portraits, which are in great demand, but with a very different executive technique from that used in landscapes: if in these he has given vent to the sign and personal calligraphy, in the portrait, in general, he has dedicated himself to the introspection of the subject to be painted, resulting in a more rigorous drafting and a less evident display of signs. The painting is presented in a styled frame.

Untitled, 1970

Oil on canvas. Signed and dated on the back. Eclectic and versatile artist. Libico Maraja was an illustrator and graphic designer of great importance, but also a painter considered among the best interpreters of Como's rationalism (his adopted city) and in part also of Futurism; her personal artistic research led her to create refined forms of abstract art. Work presented with frame.

Oil painting on canvas. Undecrypted signature lower right. Eastern European school, perhaps Hungarian. A bouquet of pink and white carnations in a glass vase is placed, together with a mirror and a gilded metal storage bowl, on a surface covered and surrounded by blue velvet draperies. The painting is presented in a contemporary relacquered frame.

Landscape With Steam 1910

Oil on cardboard. Signed at the bottom left. On the back there is another signature with date. The hilly landscape, crossed by a stream, is the work of the Larian artist Achille Zambelli, whose pictorial production can be found in several places in Como, the city where he lived and worked for years as a teacher at the Carducci Institute. In 1923, Zambelli painted a series of frescoes depicting the history of the animal and plant world at the Casartelli Science Museum in Como. In 1927, on the occasion of the "International Conference of Physicists", an event whose scientific sessions were held in Como in the halls of the Carducci Institute and which attracted the fathers of modern physics to the city, Zambelli decorated the walls of the Congress Hall - renamed the Nobel Hall - with medallions bearing the names of the Congress members. Framed painting.

Oil painting on canvas. Signed in the lower right corner and on the back (Verschafeldt). Light losses of color. In coeval frame with missing parts. Early 20th century.

Venetian Glimpse With Boats

Oil on canvas. Signed at the bottom right. The son of Domenico Piatti (1848 - 1915), an appreciated sculptor and marble worker for generations, Antonio Piatti first trained as a sculptor in his father's workshop, then studied at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, where he finally switched to painting at Cesare Tallone's school. He later lived in Paris and Rome, but also in Chioggia, where he painted several lagoon landscapes. He took part in numerous exhibitions and shows in Italy and abroad, bringing with him works that, from the pictorial vaporousness of Scapigliatura, were then contaminated by the new instances of Art Nouveau and the elegance of fashionable painting. The work presented here belongs to the group of landscapes inspired by the lagoons of Chioggia. It comes in a coeval gilded frame.