Painting by Marisa Mezzadra - Untitled

Untitled 1958

Oil on canvas. Signed and dated lower right. The work of strong emotional impact proposes an almost monochromatic purple background, in which a few black and white strokes are inserted to define a silhouette curled up on the left, perhaps a human form, collected and closed in on itself. Born in 1934 in Viareggio, where he still lives, the painter and sculptor Mario Francesconi is considered one of the few survivors of Dadaism, which since the end of the 1950s has gone through the seasons of Italian and European art in a distinctly personal search for forms and techniques. Starting from his first solo show in 1959 he develops an artistic path that goes through different phases, often attributable to a passion for poor and recycled materials. His artistic activity moves between the areas of painting, sculpture, collage and installation and borders on the adjacent areas of poetry and literature, also thanks to friendships and professional relationships with some of the most significant figures of the intellectual world. Italian of the second half of the last century, from Emilio Villa to Cesare Garboli, from Leonardo Sciascia to Mario Luzi, from Cesare Zavattini to Pier Paolo Pasolini, from Alfonso Gatto to Sandro Penna to Venturino Venturi. The work is presented in a frame.

Tableau doré

Mixed technique on plywood (painting and silver paper sheets). On the back, authentic with stamp and signature of the artist's sister. The work belongs to the series of Tableaux dorés, works created by the Milanese artist Remo Bianco starting from the 1950s. Born and educated in Milan, Remo Bianco was a pupil of De Pisis, in whose studio he frequented the great Italian artists of the twentieth century (Carrà, Sironi, Savinio, Soffici, Soldati, Marini, Cantatore). After the interlude of the war (enlisted, sank with his ship and was taken prisoner in Tunis), he resumed his artistic activity in Milan, participating in the Nuclear Movement and Spatialism, coming to completely detach himself from figurative painting to create works made of brushstrokes mashed potato. At the beginning of the fifties he began to create works, pictorial and sculptural, with different materials and to experiment with different themes and techniques; to this production belong the Tableaux dorés, composed of silvered or gilded aluminum foils on painted bases. The work is presented in a frame.

The Conversation 1992

Mixed media on paper. Title at the bottom. On the back, the artist's stamp with signature, date, and title. 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 maturity and occupies a prominent place within the contemporary artistic panorama. His research mainly uses unusual materials such as acetates, PVC and, more recently, stage backdrops from 19th-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 designs the work and is capable of recounting thoughts; working by superimposition, the images are constructed by adding or subtracting color on the various supports. Work in frame.

Fantastic Vision with Figures

Oil on canvas. The signature of the painter Franco Rognoni appears at the bottom right, but the work has not been recognized as authentic by the artist's archive. It also well reflects Rognoni's pictorial style, characterized by figures, both men and houses drawn in black with a few precise strokes, and then filled with color that fades into the background. In the canvas, an elegant male figure appears, leaning impassively and indifferently on the flowered railing of a terrace overlooking a city; below him, at the bottom left, another face emerges (the same man?) wearing a military helmet and placed on a darker, less sunny city background: whether it is the man at war who recalls the time of peace or vice versa, the reference to the alternation in life of peace and war, of serenity and drama is evident. The work is presented in a frame.

Duck Flight

Bronze sculpture. Signature engraved on the base. Gino Masciarelli, a sculptor originally from Abruzzo but who lived in the Milan area, after having also worked at the Experimental Center for Scientific Research “F. Marinotti” in Lombardy, dealing with high-frequency cinematographic shooting, learned to capture the instability of bodies in movement and the dissolution of matter in space in many of his works. In the sculptures "Human groups" and "Flight" - to which the work presented here belongs -, the dynamism of flight can be observed almost as if it were a photographic sequence. The artist himself said: "Only 8 seconds made an impression on 300 meters of film, the aim was to slow down what the human eye cannot see, I wanted to capture the movement and the projection of these seconds lasted a couple of hours".

The Woodcutter 1980

Oil on glass. On the lower left are the signature and date, accompanied by the artist's symbol, the stylised figurine of a man in a wheelchair. This is a work on glass by the painter Mario Previ, who has lived and painted in a wheelchair since the age of eighteen, due to quadriplegia following a plunge into his Taro river. He said of himself: ‘The world, the passage of time, from this point of view (the wheelchair) teaches you 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 you 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 have saved me, giving me the strength to live'. In 1974, three years after the accident, inspired by a television programme on Yugoslavian naïve painters, in particular by the works on glass by Mijo Kovacic, Previ began painting and learning the art of glass painting as a self-taught artist, until he became known and appreciated for his paintings. In his naifs, Mario Previ recounts a reality that has almost disappeared, real stories albeit in a fairy-tale tone, revives lost traditions, glimpses of life that belonged to other generations, those of the peasant civilisation (from which he comes), but what emerges most from his visions are the ‘forë’, those that could once be heard in the ‘firossi’, the traditional evenings in the hamlets of Parma dedicated to getting together to tell anecdotes, stories and historical curiosities, often in front of the fireplace, when it was cold and snowing outside. The work is presented in the frame.

Landscape with Figures

Oil on canvas applied to board. Signed lower left. On the back there is a cartouche with expert authentication dated 1944 and signed by a Milanese art critic. In the vast plain, green but with few trees, which recalls the Lombard plains, two farmers work near a pond, close to their farmhouse; in the background you can glimpse the mountain peaks of the Alpine chain. The subject is part of the production of strong naturalistic matrix of the painter, born in Modena but artistically raised in Milan and its surroundings, places that were frequent themes of his landscape production. The painting is presented in a period frame.

Painting on canvas. Unlike most contemporary banners, this one is hand painted and not printed on canvas. The scene is divided into three parts, enclosed within a frame painted with floral motifs and separated by the design of small columns. In the center are depicted the Madonna with Jesus on the throne, on the sides two angels with the appearance of girls. The painting is then framed by a trimming.

Tempera on canvas. Signed Mimy and dated lower right. The scene, set in an elegant living room, features a group of ladies and gentlemen entertaining themselves musically during a reception: while a woman plays the spinet, a young couple dances. The work is presented in a period frame, with a large lack in the upper part.

The Country Road 1905

Oil on canvas. signed and dated lower right. The Hungarian painter Antal Berkes painted landscapes in the early years of his career, but later devoted himself to glimpses and views of cities, Budapest, Paris, Vienna. This painting still belongs to the first production, proposing the view of a country road, which passes through a forest where some farmhouses are located; on the dirt road there is a cart pulled by horses. The painting is presented in a period frame.

Portraits of Children, 1930

Photographs retouched with pastels. Signed bottom right. On the back of three of them is the date 11 November 1930. A photographic sequence of the portrait of three children is shown, who slightly change their pose or expression. They are the work of the British photographer Eva Barrett who, after an initial experience as a painter, decided to dedicate herself to photography, thinking that "it was better to be a first-rate photographer than a second-rate [painter]. Having moved to Rome in 1913, she established her laboratory here. Pictorialist, with a small camera, Eva Barrett created her own photographic method that was reminiscent of drawing sketches: she applied a few very light pencil strokes, managing to create subdued images but with particularly dense blacks, thus maintaining the characteristics of photography and portraits. In this way he was very successful and his career took off. Eva Barrett photographed the Italian royal family, the wives and children of foreign ambassadors, as well as received numerous commissions from European royalty in Belgium, Sweden, Greece. The four portraits are presented in style frames.

Glimpse of the Cloister of the Dome of Monreale

Mixed technique, with canvas, wooden panels, metal threads, small beads, etc. At the bottom center is the artist's name, unidentified. It is a three-dimensional and perspective reconstruction of the cloister of the Monreale Cathedral, with the fountain in the foreground. The work is presented in a display case with a gilded frame from the early 1900s.