Murano Mirror Italy XX Century - 20th century

Oil on canvas. The painting celebrates the memory of a deceased person: it represents a tombstone with the name of the dead and the dates, laying on the bare ground in a desert landscape, faded with a sunset in the background, but surrounded by a garland of lively flowers. A white lily stands out from all, stretched out upwards, but with a broken stem, forcing the corolla to turn towards the ground: it is the "memento mori", the symbol of the transience of life. The beautiful painting is presented in a gilded coeval frame.

Woven from bark and decorated. Splendid example of art-craftsmanship, which refers to one of the most ancient methods to obtain clothes without resorting to weaving or weaving, but using the internal bark of certain species of trees. It’s a method that’s been practiced in Central Africa, in Southeast Asia, in Japan, in North America and from Mesoamerica to the Andes, to the Amazon and the Great Chaco regions. The term Tapa denotes in particular all the bark tissues of Oceania, but in reality it is a word native to Fiji. Depending on the area where these bark tissues are produced, different tree species are used: while in Africa the fig tree is used, in Indonesia and in the Pacific islands the bark most used is that of the paper mulberry tree, with which the highest quality fabrics are produced, which remain white and can be decorated in different ways. If once the bark fabric was worn daily, even simply wrapped around the body, over the centuries it has been replaced by cotton, but still today it is preferred to western fabrics for ritual and ceremonial occasions; above all, these fabrics continue to be important goods of exchange, gifts of value in occasions of births, birthdays, marriages (with exchanges between the relatives of the groom and those of the bride), funerals and ceremonial presentations to the royal family. Added to this is the production generated by the thriving tourist market of this fabric. The tapa presented here is decorated with repeated geometric motifs, which evoke the huts and the village road. The upper edge is not straight, but shaped with large triangular fringes. It is placed on a panel covered with a plexiglass case.

Lombard Landscape

Oil on board. Signed lower left. Considered one of the most poetic landscape painters of the 1900s, the Lombard painter Ambrogio Vismara transposed his love for his native places into his works, dedicating most of his life to the Lombard landscapes - the mountains, the plains, the hills of his native Brianza production, and evoking almost all of them in autumnal atmospheres and tones. His peculiarity was the use of the spatula instead of the brush, which allowed him to obtain an effect of tonal spots, with a clear contrast of planes. Here is a small glimpse of a pond, with Alpine peaks that can be glimpsed in the background, and which refer to the Lombard plain. Framed in style.

Caricatures of Gandusio and Melato

Tempera on paper. Signed at top right. Luigi Daniele Crespi was a painter, journalist and illustrator active in Rome from 1912 to 1940, of whom no other biographical information is available. Linked to the Futurist movement, he was also active in advertising posters and set design. His elegant caricatures and satirical drawings were published in many magazines and covers. In this drawing Crespi offers caricatures of two well-known show business personalities of the time, Antonio Gandusio (1875 - 1951), who was one of the most interesting Italian comic actors, both film and theatre, almost a commedia dell'arte mask, and Maria Melato (1885 - 1950), a theatre, radio and cinema actress. Framed.

Nude Concept

Crayons on paper. Signed lower right; further signature on the back, with the title. Delicate female nude, with soft colors, by the Venetian painter Eugenio Polesello, best known for his landscapes. In frame.

Grado

Oil on canvas. Signed lower left. Further signature and title on the back. It is a landscape glimpse of the lagoon from the beach with the mooring piers of the Friulian town, in the warm and bright colors and in the suspended atmosphere typical of Silvio Consadori's painting. Born and trained artistically first in Brescia, his hometown, then at the Carrara Academy in Bergamo, Consadori discovered Burano in 1935, immediately joining the circle of artists who spent long periods on the island. He was initially a painter of genre scenes (the interiors of cafés and maternity hospitals were among his most recurring subjects), while after the war he devoted himself constantly to sacred painting. Starting in the 1950s, his great cycles of frescoes with sacred subjects, which culminated in 1971 in what he himself defined as "the most complete result of my fresco painting": twelve frescoes in the church of San Giuseppe al Trionfale in Rome. In the last years of his life he spent long periods not only in Milan, where he taught at the Brera high school, but also on Lake Garda and Burano, where he died in 1994. Framed work.

Oil on wooden board Unidentified signature lower right. In imitation of Renaissance painting, the painting presents the three figures seated in a meadow with a large and gentle landscape in the background; Mary holds the prayer booklet in one hand, but her gaze is directed to the two children, Jesus in her arms and John sitting on the ground, who both hold in one hand the stick surmounted by the Cross, the iconographic symbol of the Passion. The painting is presented in a coeval frame.

Oil painting on canvas. Great presentation of the Sacred Maternity, with Mary seated on the clouds and the Child in her arms, blessing, while holding a rose in the other hand. The background is neutral, in a golden color which helps to give solemnity to the scene. The painting is presented in a gilded frame from the late 1800s-early 1900s, which needs restoration of the stuccos.

In Brianza

Oil painting on canvas. At the bottom left there is the DB monogram. Title and gallery stamp on the back. The glimpse of the Brianza countryside, still flat, sees a shepherd who lets his cows graze in the meadows immediately outside the village, near the dirt road flanked by light poles; two bare and thin trunks stand vertically, almost parallel, dividing the scene into three shots. The work is presented in a coeval frame.

Figure with Tambourine 1927

Drypoint print. Signature printed lower left. Further signature in pencil at the bottom, with serial number 67/125. In the vast production of Ardengo Soffici we also find various human figures, which well express his choice to return to traditionalism, after having attempted various avant-garde experiences. The work is presented in a frame.