Antique Painting with Landscape Oil on Hardboard 1931

Oil on hardboard. The large country landscape, with leafy trees and hills, sees a lady and some knights engaged in a hunting trip, with dogs accompanying them in the race. The painting is presented in a wooden frame, covered on the front with gilded stucco.

Embroidery on cotton fabric. Japan, Meiji period (1868 -1912). The large panel in embroidered cotton fabric offers a naturalistic subject: eagles and other birds are depicted among stylized mountains, and pine and wisteria branches. The embroidery is presented in style frame.

Oil painting on canvas. At the bottom left there is an unidentified signature. Large composition of variegated flowers, placed outdoors on bare, deserted ground. The colors of the flowers are applied with a certain material consistency, making them stand out and emerge from the almost monochromatic background. The painting has some dirt splashes in the lower left corner. It is presented in a contemporary frame.

Oil painting on canvas. The composition looks at the productions of the 17th century and offers a table richly laden with fruit trays, baskets of cherries, baskets with peaches and bunches of grapes with decorative vine leaves, terrines with seeds, and glasses, surmounted by a curtain and placed on a fabric. Color was used in a highly material manner in some points, to underline for example the stems of grape leaves, or to create reflections of light on the fruit. The painting presented in a style frame.

The Organ-Grinder

Oil painting on canvas. Signed lower right. Trace of a date, not readable. The Cuneo artist Ottavio Steffanini had a life in constant movement, divided between Italy, Europe, America (in particular Venezuela). A restless and unpredictable artist, he concentrated his painting above all on female figures, portrayed with placid sensuality and an opulence influenced by the Spanish masters with whom he studied. But in his production there is no shortage of other subjects, united by an incessant exaltation of life, of nature. Here, however, a male figure is proposed, a half-length portrait of an accordion player, dignified and proud in his pose and gaze. The work is presented in a period frame.

Figure in Rest 1969

Pen on paper. Signed lower right. Accompanied by photo authentication from the Mario Tozzi Archive. In Maestro Tozzi's extensive production there are many drawings, such as this one presented here, made with different techniques (ink, pastel, pencil, sanguine), dedicated to the human figure: in his dry and stylized style, Mario Tozzi outlines stylized, refined figurines in their silent and discreet geometry, favored by the absence of color, which brings out the forms on the white paper. Even in his pictorial production, Mario Tozzi's favorite subjects are, classically, figures and still lifes, but both figures and death are a set of solid geometric elements, the sphere, the cylinder, the cone, etc. The bodies are elementary, essential in the lines and details, powerful, statuesque, composed of just modeled solids, while the still lifes are a celebration of Euclidean geometry such as the jugs, bowls, flasks which are paradigms of volume and geometric rigor . Mario Tozzi's compositions are influenced by Cubism for certain cuts, by Metaphysics for certain architectural insertions and by Abstractism for the insertion of geometric figures. The work is presented in a frame.

Mixed media on canvas. The large scene, painted in the unique reddish-pink range, features two large figures on the right, while the entire left side is occupied by a desert landscape, with the waves of the dunes fading into the distance. The two figures depict a seated horseman, wearing a turban and Saracen dress, being fed by a maiden in Western dress, who is handing him a tray laden with food, while on the shelf below is a basin of water, ears of corn and various fruits. This could be one of the many representations of the story of Angelica and Medoro, recounted by Ariosto in Orlando Furioso, which tells of the love between the Christian maiden and the Saracen knave wounded in a clash, who then fled together to Catai, thus triggering Orlando's madness. The work is presented in a frame.

In Brianza

Oil painting on canvas. At the bottom left there is the DB monogram. Title and gallery stamp on the back. The glimpse of the Brianza countryside, still flat, sees a shepherd who lets his cows graze in the meadows immediately outside the village, near the dirt road flanked by light poles; two bare and thin trunks stand vertically, almost parallel, dividing the scene into three shots. The work is presented in a coeval frame.

Portrait of a child

Oil on canvas. Signed lower right. Palermitan painter, Francesco Camarda distinguished himself for figure painting, dedicated to portraits and the nude, and above all for animalist painting, in the wake of the realist production of the Palizzi brothers. He was able to express a painting with a lively and fresh color. In this small canvas is proposed the portrait of a child sitting on a chair, hooded to frame the plump and smiling face, the direct gaze, the plump little hands resting on the knees in a proud and resolute pose. The work is presented in a contemporary frame.

Les Bouches de Naples gemissent de Terreur ou de Plaisir 1969

Ink on paper. Signature, date and title below. Accompanied by authentication on photo from Galleria Giò Marconi in Milan and stamp from private archive. It is the drawing of the young artist who soon became one of the most important exponents of world surrealism, who was a poet and painter, but also a filmmaker, art and film critic, photographer and humorous designer. Born in the north of France, in 1927 he settled in Paris, where he came into contact with a group of young poets and philosophers, with whom he founded the '' Grand Jeu '' movement: play is understood as an art of living. Since 1928 he has collaborated with texts, poems and drawings for the movement's magazine and in the meantime he collaborates as an editor and reporter with various Parisian newspapers.In 1932, having exhausted the experience of the `` Grand Jeu '', he passes to the surrealist movement, collaborating on its publications and participating in its exhibitions. His humor turns towards the unusual and cruelty, more and more derisive of the absurdity of everyday life, of the tragic side of common existence, to which the spirit and the unconscious rebel, trying to access the unobservable. Knows Salvador Dalí. In 1939 he also began his activity as a filmmaker. In 1941 his first personal exhibition took place in Paris: the first buyer was Pablo Picasso. Participate in all surrealist exhibitions, including the 1947 international one in Paris. In 1951, for reasons relating to the internal discipline of the group, he abandoned the surrealist movement with others, while continuing to practice its poetics. In 1955 he also became passionate about photography. Since 1968 he has devoted himself almost exclusively to painting, abandoning the activity of humorous draftsman. In the same year he settled permanently in Milan: in Italy he exhibited in various personal exhibitions, those in Milan at the Galleria Marconi. The work presented here, an early drawing, comes from an important Milanese private collection. It 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.

Glimpse of the Country with Figures

Oil on wooden panel. Signed lower left. Vittore Antonio Cargnel, father of Lucio Cargnel, was mainly a landscape painter, author in particular of evocative views of Treviso and exciting glimpses of Friuli, his homeland. He is considered the spokesperson of intimate landscape painting, for his ability to freeze landscapes in the immediacy of atmospheric changes, often on small panels, so as not to miss the moment of a particular luministic condition responsible for the impression aroused in the artist. In this part of the town, the luminous contrast stands out between the square still dominated by the gray rain, highlighted by the umbrellas of passers-by - figures that are only indistinct spots, neutral elements of the landscape - and the light which, cutting through the clouds, illuminates and colours. the top of the buildings. The painting is presented in a contemporary frame.