Glimpse of a snowy town

Oil on hardboard. Signed lower right. Born in 1905, Gaetano Valbusa worked for over forty years as a worker in the Brescia Mechanical Workshops, until retirement, devoting himself to painting only as a passion. Landscape painter, thanks to business trips he was able to portray "en plein air" glimpses of the whole world, even if the glimpses of the places in Brescia are the most recurring subject. Affiliated to the Brescian Artists Association, he was able to exhibit his works and make himself known by critics. In his canvases the landscapes are permeated with great serenity and tranquility, an elegy of serene memories of real life. The glimpse proposed here is presented in a 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.

Female portrait 1869

Oil painting on canvas. Signed and dated on the right. Little is known about this French artist, who was basically a portrait painter, as his known production all fall into this category of subject. The painting denotes expressive intensity and good pictorial ability. Restored and relined, it is presented in a period frame.

Mixed technique on paper. On the back the artist's stamp with the signature and the date of the work. Caccioni, an artist who was born, trained and still lives in Bologna, is one of the protagonists of a generation that has now reached a definitive linguistic maturation and occupies a prominent space within the contemporary art scene. His research mainly uses unusual materials such as acetates, pvc and, more recently, scenic backdrops from nineteenth-century theatrical works, on which he intervenes by painting shapes drawn from a personal memory and from suggestions coming from different cultures and historical periods. A recurring element in Luca Caccioni's work is writing, a self-signifying sign that draws the work and is capable of narrating thoughts; working by superimposition, the images are built by adding or subtracting the color on the various supports. Framed work.

Mixed technique on paper. On the back the artist's stamp with the signature and the date of the work. Caccioni, an artist who was born, trained and still lives in Bologna, is one of the protagonists of a generation that has now reached a definitive linguistic maturation and occupies a prominent space within the contemporary art scene. His research mainly uses unusual materials such as acetates, pvc and, more recently, scenic backdrops from nineteenth-century theatrical works, on which he intervenes by painting shapes drawn from a personal memory and from suggestions coming from different cultures and historical periods. A recurring element in Luca Caccioni's work is writing, a self-signifying sign that draws the work and is capable of narrating thoughts; working by superimposition, the images are built by adding or subtracting the color on the various supports. Framed work.

Oil on copper. The Magdalene, wrapped in her long hair with which she covers her nakedness, turns her eyes to the sky where angels look out. Around her a barren landscape. The painting is presented in a frame from the 1900s.

Oil on canvas. A seduction scene is described on a country path: a standing young woman shows her body to the man sitting to rest with her partner; while he looks away, his wife looks sorrowfully at the young harlot, holding her partner by the hand. Other travelers appear on the path. Perhaps of allegorical significance, the painting underlines the contrast between the freshness, brightness and ardor of the young female body, whose beauty is flaunted, and the ill-defined, bundled, almost hidden shape of the two elderly bodies. On the back of the painting there is a hypothesis of attribution to Giuseppe Gambarini (1680-1725) in pencil. Despite the dubious attribution, the painting is well done in the pictorial quality and in the rendering of the subject. Restored and relined, it is presented in a re-adapted antique frame.

Poppies in Vase 1948

Oil on canvas. Signed and dated lower left. Composition of poppies in vase, with ceramic Madonnina on the rear wall. Noel Quintavalle (known under the pseudonym Noelqui), a native of Ferrara but raised and artistically trained in Milan, was a multifaceted artist. Graduated in architecture, he was self-taught in the arts, but after the great war in which he actively participated, he quickly distinguished himself and exhibited in numerous national and international exhibitions; in the meantime he also carried out literary activities by publishing various volumes (satire, fairy tales, short memories of the war) and also experimented with sculpture and xylography. His pictorial production, which began as a pointillist, was then influenced by the synthesis of modern painting. The subjects most dear to him were the portrait (with a preference for particular female figures, such as dancers) and the landscape. His production of floral subjects dates back to the 1940s, linked to the period in which he recovered the need for interiority, approaching the aesthetic concepts of the art of the "twentieth century". The work is presented in a contemporary frame.

Oil on canvas. The composition is not a traditional still life because the fruit (grapes and apples) and the bird are inserted in a large landscape, as its added elements in the foreground; Behind them opens a verdant countryside with a village on the hill. Restored and relined, the painting is presented in a period 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.

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.

Eyes 1995

Oil painting on canvas. Dated and signed on the back. Born in Seregno, Danilo Martinis was trained with Osvaldo Minotti. Painter and designer, he has furnished prestigious residences all over the world, his works are particularly appreciated in the United Arab Emirates and in Russia. He loves to express his thoughts through graphic-figurative images rendered through geometric effects and chromatic games, using mainly female figures as interpreters. In this work he proposes a very close-up of a female face, in particular framing the eyes.

Flowers

Oil on hardboard. Signed lower right. On the back there is a paper label with the data of the work. A beautiful bouquet of daisies fills a vase, placed in front of a drapery that creates a play of white and green colors. The painting is presented in a beautiful 1950s frame, box-like with a raised gilt edge.

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.

Still Life

Tempera on canvas. Chaekkori, which translated literally means "books and objects", is a type of painting of the Still Life genre belonging to the end of the Korean dynastic period called Choson (1392 -1910), in particular which developed from the second half of the 18th century to the first half of the '900, which was widely successful in all social states, to express the love for the culture of the Korean population. It is characterized by the depiction of various objects that define the man of letters, in particular books are always present, as in this one proposed here, in which a goose pen for writing is placed side by side, a set of porcelain bowls, a fan folded in its case. Relined and restored, the painting is presented in an early 1900s frame.