CONTEMPORARY ART - Page 2

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.

Segnali 1991

Mixed media on paper. Title on the bottom left. Artist's stamp on the back with title, date and signature. 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.

Studio, 1993

Mixed media on paper. On the back, the artist's signature, the title, the date and a dedication to a friend. 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 space within the contemporary artistic panorama. His research mainly uses unusual materials such as acetates, PVC and, more recently, stage backdrops of 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 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.

Studio Still life 1992

Mixed media on paper. Title at the bottom. On the back the artist's stamp with signature, title and date. 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 of 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 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. Framed work

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.

Untitled, 2003

Mixed media on paper. Signed and numbered on the back. Copy No. 40 of an edition of 350, of which the first 50 copies are numbered and signed by the artist. These works were created as an attachment to the Catalogue of the 1040th exhibition at the Galleria del Cavallino -Venice, held in October 2003 and dedicated to the works of Paolo Patelli, as indicated in the colophon of the brochure, where there is a further signature of the artist and dedication. Paolo Patelli, an artist of Istrian origins, expresses the joy of painting, creating works that are enriched by his passion for music. The rhythmic spirit of the artist's style captures movements, translating them into a visual language that breaks the mold of traditional artistic models, making every line and every brushstroke visible, leaving a wide exposure of the paper surface.

Burnished and wrought copper plate, with lighter spot decorations, embossing and holes, mounted on a red-stained plywood panel.

Bas-relief in wood, fabric and white tempera, evoking a stylised Crucifix. Mounted on a panel and presented in a display case.

The Angel of Death 1979

Oil on hardboard. Signed and dated lower left. Further signature, date and title on the back. Angelo Peratici's artistic production is characterized by a desire for expressive freedom that draws on his fervent imagination to represent reality. Starting from this innate impulse to transfigure reality, his art has transformed into a laborious research process, fertile with metaphorical and visionary images, sometimes grotesque, eccentric, which we see realized in particular in the production of the early 80s.

Untitled

Oil on linoleum, with applications in polystyrene covered with foil. Signed on the back. Accompanied by authentication from the Aldo Mondino Archive. The eclectic Turin artist Aldo Mondino has articulated his artistic research through continuous metamorphoses that have made his production polymorphic: an incessant attempt to find a personal response to the transformations that were taking place in the Seventies, trying to make the history of art coexist with images of mass consumption, personal fantasies, religion, classicism, mysticism, travels to the East, friends and kitsch. His obstinate need to experiment with materials – such as coffee, sweets, sugar, chocolate castings from his beloved Piedmont, marshmallows imported from America, bronze, flowers, strictly blue Bic pens, ceramics and Heraclite carpets – demonstrates his ability to make art, craftsmanship, common life, nature and religion dialogue. All seasoned with the use of irony, to unmask conventions with grace. In the 1980s Aldo Mondino undertook a journey between Morocco and Palestine that left a real mark on him, so much so that it generated the series of works of the Dervishes, dancing subjects painted on linoleum, who practice the ritual dance characteristic of the Turkish tradition by performing fluid and circular movements. 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.

The Bonfire under the Snow, 1979

Oil on glass. At the bottom right are the signature and date, accompanied by the artist's symbol, the stylized figurine of a man in a wheelchair. It 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 resulting from a dive into 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 depending 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 program on Yugoslavian naïve painters, in particular by the works on glass of Mijo Kovacic, Previ began to paint and learn the art of painting on glass as a self-taught, until he to make himself known and appreciated for his paintings. In his naifs Mario Previ tells a reality that has almost disappeared, real stories albeit in a fairy-tale tone, he revives lost traditions, slices of life that belonged to other generations, those of peasant civilization (from which he also comes), but what emerges most 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 meeting to tell anecdotes, stories and historical curiosities, often in front of the fireplace fire, when outside it was cold and snowing. The work is presented in a frame.

Oil on plywood

Charles Moody (1979), oil on plywood. Signed on the back. The work was exhibited at the solo exhibition "Borderland" at the Gallery 8 in Milan Corso Venezia, as evidenced by the paper to the back lable. Charles Moody graduated in 2003 at the Art Institute of Boston and, after three years in Milan, chooses to live in New York. In his art the focus at trial (conceptual art, process art) rather than to the image content and it is in this scrap that painting is at its best. An art that was created by the approval of television images (almost never films) and in particular from popular soap operas. Moody's work goes beyond the mass media image by customizing the selection for special images that, in his view, offer a potential narrative; are images of transition, moments of transition from one scene to the next. The artist uses a manual oil painting to reproduce the low quality of the tv picture extolling the "blurring" of blur. We are facing a loss of spatial dimension, in a temporality confused-diffuse-intangible which is difficult to recognize the boundaries ("Borderland"). In these perceptual distortions, in which time dilates expands, each painting represents a "indiscernibilità" in which the recognition of the object that takes second place. The time of Moody is neither Chronicle nor history but suspension. (From "Charles Moody, Borderland", curated by Gianni Romano, exhibition catalogue, CorsoVeneziaOtto, November-December 2009)

Plato and Aristotle

Mixed media on canvas. Signature, title, date and dedication on the reverse. Paolo Baratella, a recently deceased artist from Ferrara, developed his art by composing vast pictorial cycles inspired by contemporary subjects; we therefore have series of works by him gathered under significant titles. From the mid-1980s and into the 2000s, his scenographic apparatuses became more enriched with cultural, pictorial and literal iconographic references. In particular, Baratella pays greater attention to the iconography of art, philosophy and history. In this work the artist presents the portraits of the two great Greek philosophers (taken from their traditional classical depictions) and shades them in a frame of pink-blue colours. The two individual canvases are placed side by side inside a worked wooden frame, on whose two horizontal crosspieces the words "Timaeus" a work written by Plato, and "Ethics", a recurring theme of Aristotelian philosophy, are engraved.

Female Figure 1993

Polychrome bronze sculpture on stone base. Signature and date on the base. Guido Lodigiani, a Milanese sculptor who is still active and a passionate teacher at the Brera Academy, said of his art: " believe that the artist is called to show the root of human experience and in this way to excite again". And the root of existence, its womb, is the woman, whom Lodigiani considers the Woman of the Announcement, an expression of the restless and intimate tension towards the mystery of creation. Lodigiani's sculpture extracts form, as if from a mother's womb, starting from an original nucleus of matter in which it excavates voids and tensions. This plastic tension is well expressed in this naked female figure, seated but twisted, as if she had just emerged from indistinct matter and tended upwards, towards life, towards the light.

Girl in armchair

Terracotta sculpture. Signed lower right. Marco Cornini, a Milanese artist trained at the Brera Academy, works mainly with terracotta, with which he creates human figures, both male and female, men and women, or better yet boys and girls of more or less the same generation, in moments of their intimacy, often as a couple but also individually, with sentimental, erotic and passionate values. Here we see a naked woman sitting in an armchair in a room, in an attitude of intimate desperation.

We created Atypical Systems 1963/74

Serigraphs and photos. The work consists of three silk-screened cartoons (in cardboard box) with the text in English (original title "We have created atypical systems") and six photos portraying the artist, individually framed. On the back of the three serigraphs in English, numbered in sequence, there are the edition number 13/15, the date 1974 and the artist's signature; they also accompany three unsigned serigraphs with the text in Italian. Cioni Carpi, Milanese artist, engaged in conceptual and minimalist art, produced works in which imagination, sensitivity, expressive flair were fundamental. His creativity was also expressed in photography, installations, video, drawing, writing, the artist's book, as well as painting. The dimensions indicated are those of the single frame.

Indiscreet Lock 2019

Mixed media: plexiglass artpiece with fabric inserts and oil finishings. datend and signed on the back. The artist says of himself: "It is the great love for art that has driven me to realise emotions and colourful visions that have always lived in my lively imagination. Suggestions that derive from various pictorial influences that I have revisited in a personal interpretation".

Tribute to Nannarella 2017

Mixed media: dripped panitn and paper on wooden base. Signed and dated on the back. The artist says:" It is my great love for art that has driven me to realise emotions and colourful visions that have always lived in my vivid imagination. Suggestions that derive from various pictorial influences that I have revisited in a personal interpretation".