Wall Mirror Glass Italy 1950s-1960s

The Seeding 1979

Oil on glass. Signed and dated lower right, with the symbol of the artist, the stylized figure of a man in a wheelchair. On the back label with further signature and data of the work. The naive style painting proposes a moment of peasant life, or rather the sowing of the small field; the farmer works in the small plot of land, almost a vegetable garden, with the hens pecking around him, and green hills all around, illuminated by a huge, sparkling sun. It is a work on glass by the painter Mario Previ, who has been living and painting in a wheelchair since the age of eighteen, due to a tetraplegia resulting from a dip in his Taro. He said of himself : "The world, the passage of time, from this point of view (the wheelchair) teach many things. You learn to wake up every morning with a purpose, even if your body is in pain, if every gesture generates suffering and depend on others and giving up could be an easy solution. And instead, art, painting, together with the serenity of my world, of friends, give me incredible energy. They saved me, giving me the strength to live" . In 1974, three years after the accident, inspired by a television broadcast on Yugoslav naive painters, in particular by the works on glass of Mijo Kovacic, Previ began to paint and to learn the art of self-taught painting on glass, up to to be known and appreciated for his paintings. In his naif Mario Previ tells a reality that has almost disappeared, real stories even if in a fairytale tone, he revives lost traditions, slices of life that belonged to other generations, those of peasant civilization (from which, however, he comes), but what most emerges from his visions are the "forë", those that could once be heard in the "firossi", the traditional evenings of the hamlets of Parma dedicated to getting together to tell anecdotes, stories and historical curiosities, often in front of the fire in the fireplace, when outside it was cold and snowing. The work is presented in a frame.

Wood Nymphs

Oil on cardboard. Signed lower right. The Cremonese artist Antonio Rizzi includes in his production several works that have the mythological nymphs as their subject. In particular we remember the "Nereids under the moon", a work dated 1906 and preserved in the Ala Ponzone Civic Museum in Cremona. The work proposed here instead depicts the Nymphs of the woods, girls riding naked on the backs of donkeys, coming out of the woods in a festive and playful procession. The work is influenced by the Liberty style, which Rizzi knew above all in his Roman period. The work is presented in a frame.

Landscape with River and Figures

Watercolor on paper. Signed lower right. Giuseppe Gabani, who was a Cavalry officer and participated in many uprisings of the Risorgimento, stood out in particular for his equestrian subjects, battle scenes, orientalism, made with vivacity of color and pictorial emphasis. Here instead we have a delicate watercolor of his, which offers a landscape with a river flowing in the countryside and walking figurines: in Gabani's production there are actually many of these landscapes, calm in colors and rather pervaded by peace and tranquility. In coeval frame.

Oil painting on canvas. Bolognese school of the XVII -XVIII century. Mary and the Child Jesus, who is in the arms of his standing mother, with his arms already extended to recall the Cross, are placed against a naturalistic background, which fades into a rosy sky in the distance, while on the right stands the shaft of a column. The faces of the two figures show a strong resemblance in the somatic features, in particular the eyes stand out, highly expressive in their seriousness. The pictorial methods look to the painting of Elisabetta Sirani (1638 -1665), who influenced Bolognese painting by introducing expressive and emotional modalities very early in the gazes of her characters. The work, restored and relined, is presented in an antique frame.

Ink and watercolor on paper. Flemish School. On the back there is a lebel of a importantant private collection. The scketched drawing shows a view of a valley from a path on a hill that leads to a wood. Displayed in a revival frame.

Oil on cardboard. Delicate portrait of a sober bourgeois woman, with a set of jewels and a delicate lace on the collar to embellish and lighten the black coat. The painting is presented in a coeval tray frame.

Campania Landscape with Figures and Buildings

Oil painting on canvas. Signed lower left. The landscape view offers a glimpse of a village on the slopes of barren rocky peaks, which refer to the Campania hinterland; some polar figures transit on the bridge which gives access to the village. Micheroux, belonging to the Posillipo school, or the nineteenth-century school of Neapolitan artists dedicated to landscape painting, created several glimpses of the Campania hinterland, but little is left of his production and little is known about his life. The painting has some small drops of color. It is presented in a late 19th century frame.

Saint George 1992

Oil on panel. Signed bottom right. On the back, with Cyrillic characters, there is the title, the date and the location, Bergamo. The Lithuanian artist, who currently lives and works between Moscow, Italy and the United Kingdom, is considered one of the most important contemporary Russian artists. In his large production there are landscapes, still lifes, many portraits of famous people and his surreal compositions, an expression of his peculiar "dream vision" of reality. Even in this table, albeit in the style of traditional icons, the depiction of the famous St. George is proposed in a surreal key that reminds of De Chirico, in which the dragon is replaced by a goose, the Saint's head is an egg, in the outlines there are figures of sorceresses... a clearly unorthodox interpretation! The panel has a vertical slit. The piece is presented in a frame.

Wooden sculptures. It is a composition of two wooden heads, a male one and a female one, placed on a board and framed by a gilded frame of 19th century. The heads might had been the handles of a canteran of 17th century.

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.

Oil painting on canvas. It is certainly a king due to the presence of the crown and scepter at the bottom right; the man is clad in armor and rests his left hand on the helmet, to underline his prestige as a leader. Portrait in old age, as evidenced by the hoary hair, due to the physiognomic traits, the so-called "Habsburg chin" (or Habsburg chin, Habsburg lip, Habsburg lip), a particular hereditary malformation pathology of genetic origin, documented over the centuries , present in many members of the House of Habsburg. The somatic traits would lead back to Leopold I of Habsburg (1640 -1705), Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, who led numerous war campaigns. The painting, restored and relined, has a slight tear on the red surface. It is presented in a frame from the early 1900s.