Contemporary Painting A. Scanavino Acrylic on Cardboard 1971 - Untitled, 1971

Sestante 14 1989

Color screenprint on paper. Signed in pencil lower right, numbered n. IV/XV bottom left. It is accompanied by photo authentication from the "Il borghetto" art house in Milan. The work was part of the "Sestante" series, consisting of 16 different serigraphs. In 1982 Alberto Burri created Sestante, a large cycle of seventeen cellotexes and an iron sculpture, which was exhibited from May to September of the following year in the space of the former Giudecca shipyards in Venice. The evocation of the old nautical instrument, which was used by travelers to establish the position of a given point with respect to the horizon, is a tribute to the maritime destiny of Venice. The paintings are Burri's umpteenth challenge: in their combinations the shapes and colors of the "sextant" create an inexhaustible cycle where there is not the slightest repetition. Within the same painting, or in the juxtaposition of one to the other, the kaleidoscope of shapes allows square and curvilinear structures to coexist, together with large chromatic backgrounds and dense visual patterns. In 1989 the artist proposed the cycle again as a graphic work, creating the "Sestante" series. The art historian Bruno Corà said that "in Burri's case, speaking of graphics does not mean speaking of a lesser production compared to paintings, but only of a different and parallel artistic modality, in conception and execution, in short such as to be able to be included with absolute importance in the production of the great painter, alongside all his other revolutionary innovative pronouncements". The work is presented in a frame.

Winter scene

Oil painting on canvas. Italian school of the early 1900s. The large scene is set in a desolate landscape completely covered in snow: on the left in the foreground, behind a group of carts and mobile homes (probably a gypsy camp) a woman cries while peeking out from behind a cloth; observe the figures moving away from the center of the scene, only silhouettes but clearly definable: two gendarmes flank a man in plain clothes, evidently under arrest. A street lamp and some dry and bare trees occupy the space on the right. The whole scene, painted with broad brushstrokes and without contours, is dominated by the greyish-white shades of the snow, the gray sky, the indistinct peaks in the background, or rather all the naturalistic elements, including one of the two horses tied to rest, while the other elements, the figures, the house, the street lamps, the other horse, and also the footprints on the snow that trace the path of the three figures in the distance, are characterized by brown and ocher colours, rather dull: the whole underlines the drama of the scene, perhaps also the desperation and sense of loneliness and abandonment of the woman. Restored and relined, the painting is not signed on the front (possible signature on the back covered by the relining?). The painting is presented in a period frame.

Glimpse of Mandello Lario 1909

Oil on canvas. Signature and location (Mandello) lower left. On the back additional signature, date and title in full. Riccardo Pellegrini, a Milanese painter, was a pupil of Domenico Morelli and was educated in the climate of romanticism. He was a landscape painter and genre painter, but he also created valuable still lifes, with bright colors and a precise and realistic drawing. His landscape production drew on the various places he visited and lived, in Italy and abroad, especially in Spain and France. In this landscape, Pellegrini offers a glimpse of the mountain that overlooks the town on the shores of Lake Como: a barren and bare mountain, albeit inhabited, with the hut on the top and a female figurine that fills the buckets at the stream of flowing water. between the rocks; the colors are those of the winter mists, divided almost transversely between the gray-blue of the upper part, with clouds laden with rain that dominate the peaks on the other side of the lake (which can be sensed, without being seen), and the green-brown of the land that occupies the lower half, with the branches of the bare trees stretched out to connect the two halves. The quiet of the mountains, the title of the work, clearly shines through and pervades the mind of the observer. The painting is presented in a contemporary frame.

Before Dinner 1970

Oil on hardboard. Signature, date and title top right. Udo Toniato, a naive painter, is known for his works that tell the story of his homeland, the Bassa del Po, with its characters. Here he depicts three little priests who, armed with umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun of the Bassa, head towards the votive chapel on the country road, observed by an amused goat, for the last prayers of the day. The work is presented in a frame.

Man with Dog, 1962

Lithograph, numbered bottom left N.138/170, signed bottom right. Pisan painter and engraver, he achieved national recognition only when he became professor of engraving at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence in 1948, under the chair of Giovanni Fattori. Viviani was able to transfer his personal vision of the world into his engravings, through images that drew on the life of the Pisan coast, the land he loved and where he lived, dedicating himself to his other great passion, hunting. Presented in a plexiglass frame.

Family Album 2001

Oil and acrylic on canvas. Signature, date and title on the back. Concetto Pozzati was an eclectic artist: after his debut in the Informal climate, the artist reworked the influences of international Pop Art in a personal key, always remaining linked to a simplified, ironic figuration, with surrealist atmospheres. The work presented belongs to the 2001 series of Family Albums, in which the artist portrays the faces of his family members: here the same artist appears, on the left, flanked by the childish faces of his two children, and in addition the head of a cockerel, in accordance with Pozzati's habit of adding elements of everyday life into his works.

Untitled, 1961

Mixed media on paper and cardboard. Signed and dated '61 top right. The composition - because such are the works of the artist originally from Bari but lived in Paris - presents some objects from the world of toys (the two plastic bottles) assembled together with nails, painted tape, waxed paper, trimmings, on a based on paper and cardboard, to create an imaginative landscape, a sort of scenography for a childish world. The work is presented in a frame..

Nature's Poetry 1962

Mixed media, with metal applications on canvas. On the back there is the name of the artist, with the title and the date. James McClintock is an American artist who joined Post Painterly Abstraction, a movement that developed in America in the 60s and 70s which strongly claimed its descent from American Abstract Expressionism and the work of the action painters of the group by Pollock, cutting off all dependence on Europe starting in the 1940s. McClintock also worked in Europe, in particular in Florence where between 1961 and 1967 he worked in collaboration with the Galleria Numero di Fiamma Vigo, a non-conformist place created by the Argentine gallerist to present and promote innovative works. 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)

Untitled, 1998

Oil painting on canvas. Signed and dated lower right. Riccardo Licata, an eclectic artist who dedicated himself to painting, engraving, mosaic, sculpture and also scenography, has gone through various phases of artistic research and has been able to combine abstraction with a profound search for spatial rhythms marked by signs . His graphic-pictorial writing, inspired by music, has given a unique identity to his works, which stand out for the skilful use of symbols and graphic features. The work is presented in a frame.