R. Guttuso Etching on Paper Italy 1986 - Four Women 1986

Oil painting on canvas. Signed lower right. A view of the Ligurian coast, characterized by the mountains looming over the narrow beaches, with delicate chromatic contrasts between the different natural elements, the sea, the sky, the mountains, the narrow countryside in which some houses are inserted. Ezio Pastorio, originally from Cremona but transplanted to Valseriana after his studies, is considered "a great Italian master of the 20th century, who knew how to renew the artistic language of the landscape while maintaining a strong link with 19th century painting". His production is post-impressionist in nature, especially in the large landscape production that depicts the Po and Bergamo plains, the Venetian lagoon and some Parisian glimpses, admired during some travels. In his works, Pastorio creates suggestive atmospheres using infinite ranges of colours, which harmonize and sometimes even contrast, but always presented as a transparency which annuls the static nature of the representation and with a delicacy which expresses his devout religiosity towards nature and the created. The work, coming from a private collection, is presented in a frame.

Ligurian Beach

Oil on canvas. Signed lower left. It is a glimpse of the Ligurian Riviera, near a cove, surmounted by houses close to the coast. Berto Ferrari, born and always lived in Liguria, was a skilled and sensitive marine and landscape painter of the post-impressionist tradition, who painted the beauties of the Ligurian Riviera and numerous views of the Apennine hinterland. The painting has drops of color and traces of restoration. It is in a coeval frame.

Flowers in Vase

Oil on wooden hardboard. Signed lower right. The floral composition presented here is an infrequent subject in the production of the Palermitan painter Aurelio Catti, best known for the urban views and landscapes of the Italian and European cities he visited. However, the work is stylistically part of that post-impressionist repertoire which was adopted by numerous Italian artists in the first half of the 1900s. The work is presented in a frame.

Portrait of Dogs 1998

Oil on canvas. Initials D.B. on the lower right corner. Signature and date on the back. Painting of Paola Dabbene expert of "dog painting"; she paints dogs, hourses, nature and "everything that is part of my life" using diffrent techniques (oil, acrylic, paste) even on commission

The garden of the house of Camerano Casasco

Watercolor and ink on paper. Signed and dated September 14, 1952 in the lower left corner; location at the bottom right. On the back this title of the work of the famous Russian set designer, painter and draftsman, who since 1935 was the main scenographer of the Teatro Alla Scala in Milan. In an exposed frame.

Mixed media (pencil and watercolor) on paper. Signed at the bottom. On one of them there is also the date (1946 and 1947). It is a small collection of sketches on paper, six faces of children and women and four landscapes, still with pencil strokes and incomplete watercolor paints, in the typical ranges of Mantovani, those clear and transparent colors that are considered one of its characteristic features. Lugi Mantovani, Milanese by birth and training, established himself in the artistic panorama and became an active part in the Milanese cultural cenacles of the city, to which he dedicated his production, consisting mainly of landscapes and city views. The paintings, of different sizes, are presented in style frames, with small lacks (one missing the glass).

Oil painting on canvas. 1930s ca. The woman depicted wears an overcoat which in its style recalls the military clothing of the fascist period, to which the painting dates back. Even the pose of the woman seems to be military, proud and erect, with a stern gaze that understands her role. The work is presented in a gilded frame from the early 1900s.

Portrait of a child

Oil on canvas. Signed lower right. Palermitan painter, Francesco Camarda distinguished himself for figure painting, dedicated to portraits and the nude, and above all for animalist painting, in the wake of the realist production of the Palizzi brothers. He was able to express a painting with a lively and fresh color. In this small canvas is proposed the portrait of a child sitting on a chair, hooded to frame the plump and smiling face, the direct gaze, the plump little hands resting on the knees in a proud and resolute pose. The work is presented in a contemporary frame.

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.

The Country Road

Oil on hardboard. Signed lower left. Having moved as a child with his family to Milan in 1898, still very young, Raoul Viviani enrolled at the Brera Academy, where he studied under the guidance of Giuseppe Mentessi (1857-1931). At the same time he attended the nude school of the Artistic Family, with which he exhibited for the first time at the age of 17, immediately enjoying great success with the public and critics, as a landscape painter with a strong personality and modernity and for his highly original style characterized from strong chromatic experiments. In 1912 he participated in the Venice Biennale and subsequently participated in numerous national and international exhibitions. From 1926 he began his career in the field of art criticism, writing for various newspapers, but his opposition to fascism led him to choose voluntary exile: in 1931 he moved to Uruguay, where he founded and directed the Academy of Montevideo Fine Arts. Returning to Milan in 1937, he resumed his activity as a painter and as a critic. In the 1950s he moved to Rapallo for health reasons and remained there until his death. Extremely original landscape painter, who engages in oil painting but also in watercolor and engraving, is very close to pointillist painting, however, developing his own personal technique, characterized by very thin filaments of color in the form of thin commas, which define the structures of the its landscapes. With his transfer to Liguria, the Ligurian landscape becomes the protagonist of his works and also his mute technique, moving away from the original pointillism to open up to a broad and summary brushstroke, which finally leads to a production of still lifes from violent and contrasting colors. In this work in which the technical characteristic of Viviani is well appreciated, along the country path that runs along the canal, a figure of a woman appears, which constitutes an exception in his production, usually lacking in figurative elements. Work in 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.

Libeccio

Oil on table. Signed lower right. On the back, further signature, title and cartouche of the Galleria Dedalo in Milan. Giulio Cesare Vinzio, an artist of Livornese origin, artistically trained in Florence, attending the studio of Giovanni Fattori. In the countryside around Florence he begins to paint landscapes from life, with oxen, peasants, horses as protagonists, landscapes of the Maremma, rendered with bright colors and strong chromatic contrasts. From the beginning of the twentieth century, while exhibiting throughout Italy and abroad, he moved to Piedmont and approached pointillist painting: while continuing to prefer rural landscapes and bucolic realities, he represented them in the atmospheres of twilight, nocturnal, dawns, no longer made with broad brushstrokes, but small strokes divided between them. In 1921 he joined the Labronico Group, which brought him closer to the realist naturalism of the origins. The work presented here offers a glimpse of a Maremma beach, beaten by the libeccio, the wind that blows from the south across the Mediterranean. The technique is that of realism, using large and superimposed brush strokes. In frame.