Contemporary Painting O. Steffenini Oil on Canvas Italy 1930s - The Organ-Grinder

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.

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.

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.

Trees in the Snow, 1978

Oil painting on canvas. Signed and dated lower right. The painting, coming from a private collection in Pavia, is published on page 73 of Simona Morani's monograph dedicated to the artist Primo Carena (Bolis editions), with the presentation signed by the art critic Rossana Bossaglia. The lake landscape well expresses the subdued intimacy associated with the rigorous realism that characterize the pictorial production of the painter from Pavia. In his landscapes Carena tends "to capture the atmospheric reality of the places without indulging in descriptivism... but constantly supported by a lyrical vein, which is the underlying motif of all his production". The work is presented in a style frame. It is published on page 75 of Simona Morani's monograph dedicated to the artist Primo Carena (Bolis editions), with the presentation signed by the art critic Rossana Bossaglia. The landscape well expresses the subdued intimacy associated with the rigorous realism that characterize the pictorial production of the painter from Pavia. In his landscapes Carena tends "to capture the atmospheric reality of the places without indulging in descriptivism... but constantly supported by a lyrical vein, which is the underlying motif of all his production". The work is presented in a period frame.

Via di paese, 1941

Oil painting on canvas. Signed and dated lower right. The painting, coming from a private collection in Pavia, is published on page 59 of Simona Morani's monograph dedicated to the artist Primo Carena (Bolis editions), with the presentation signed by the art critic Rossana Bossaglia. The view of the town well expresses the subdued intimacy associated with the rigorous realism that characterize the pictorial production of the painter from Pavia. In his landscapes Carena tends "to capture the atmospheric reality of the places without indulging in descriptivism... but constantly supported by a lyrical vein, which is the underlying motif of all his production". The work is presented in a period frame.