Ugo Celada of Virgil - Male portrait
Features
Male portrait
Artist: Ugo Celada da Virgilio (1895-1995)
Artwork title: Ritratto Maschile
Age: 20th Century / 1901 - 2000
Subject: Portrait/Face
Origin: Italy
Artistic technique: Painting
Technical specification: Oil on Plywood
Description : Ritratto Maschile
Oil on plywood. Signed lower left. Born in 1895 in Virgilio, in the province of Mantua, - hence the addition to the surname of the toponym probably in homage to the Latin poet-, Ugo Celada first studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Mantua and then moved on to the Brera Academy in Milan as a pupil of Cesare Tallone. After the interlude of the First World War, in which he participated as a volunteer, he devoted himself completely to pictorial research, also staying in Paris to study and deepen the new artistic trends. Already in 1920 he participated in the Venice Biennale, immediately revealing his tendency to a lenticular realism, played on the transparency of the bright and clean color, and on the meticulous search for precision. Still lifes, nudes, portraits, trompe l'oeil, were inserted by him in almost surreal contexts but very close to reality, in enigmatic atmospheres defined with a clear and precise design. At the beginning of the 1930s Celada definitively broke with the twentieth century current and indeed founded an anti-nineteenth century Manifesto in Mantua, in which she attacked the monopoly of the regime culture, and rather approached Magic Realism and the New Objectivity of the contemporary Sciltian. Since then he avoided any exposure (he was one of the few successful artists not to be compromised with the fascist culture and its celebration), living thanks to the orders of the Milanese bourgeoisie who adored him, and dedicating himself exclusively to a pictorial research based on the objective description of the reality, resulting in the founding of the Objectivist Painters movement in 1959. He continued to paint until old age, dying in Varese at the age of one hundred. Celada's painting is capable of blocking reality in time and space, in a way that appears detached, analytical and scientifically exact (colors, reflections, transparencies), but communicating - as opposed to a total unreality - a great narrative pathos. In the portrait presented here the strong realism of the reflections of the glasses and of the details of the character stands out (the vein on the forehead, the hint of a beard, the displaced tie), while on the other hand the aseptic monochrome of the background places the person in an indefinite context, surreal. The work is presented in a frame.
Product Condition:
Product in good condition, with small signs of wear.
Frame Size (cm):
Height: 60
Width: 54
Depth: 6
Artwork dimensions (cm):
Height: 46
Width: 40