Ancient Painting M. Moretti Foggia '900 Mountain Cabins Oil on Wood - Mountain Cabins

Tarasp Castle 1960

Oil on cardboard. Signed and dated lower right. The Roman artist Cesare Maggi established himself as a landscape painter of the divisionist style, portraying Alpine landscapes of the Engadine and Aosta Valley, often enlivened by the inclusion of figures and animals. Having become friends with the painter Giacomo Grosso in Turin in 1901, he then successfully turned to the portrait genre, setting aside the divisionist technique. Although he still preferred high mountain views, he expanded his subjects by also working on marine and still life paintings. Shown here is the snow-covered glimpse of Tarasp Castle, an 11th-century fortress in Lower Engadine, Switzerland. This is a late work by the artist, who remained attached to his favorite subject, the Alpine landscape, until the end, despite having now abandoned the divisionist technique of his early period. The work is presented in a period frame.

Gallant Scene

Oil on canvas. Signed both lower and upper left. The scene is set in a rich noble hall, where ladies and knights in eighteenth-century clothes entertain. It is the work of the prolific Neapolitan painter Salvatore Balsamo, who died very young. It is presented in a mid-1900s frame.

Mountain Landscape

Oil painting on canvas. Signed lower left. The Milanese painter Gino Federici specialized in Alpine views, as in this view, where in the foreground a flock of sheep drinks water from a stream, in the wide valley, under steep peaks. The painting is presented in a contemporary frame. It shows signs of previous restoration.

Oil painting on canvas. Unsigned, there is a label on the back with attribution to Ferdinand II Wagner (1847 -1927), a German painter appreciated for his decorative painting. The large painting offers, according to an ancient taste, a glimpse of a city market in a Nordic village, with figures in 17th century Flemish clothes. The central part is occupied by a stall full of fruit and vegetables: on the left the seller, sitting with the steelyard hanging above her, is bargaining with the couple of buyers on the right, intent on testing the quality of the products. The painting 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.

Winter landscape

Pastels on paper applied to canvas. Signed lower left. The large landscape is completely dominated by the play of colour: divided into two hemifields given by the sky and the earth (a mountainous land where sporadic fir trees sprout), it sees the pinkish blue of the sky prevail above, under the greenish blue of the snow on the ground , two shades of the same color range that then meet in the skyline of the mountains. Cinotti was a landscape painter who was an exponent of Italian Divisionism, whose painting is characterized by a material and pasty application with touches of spatulated color. In coeval frame.

Sur le Canapé d'Argent pâle 1911

Color lithograph on vellum paper. The title at the bottom left. On the passepartout the name and the wording "original lithographie". It is planche n.10 of the "Amour" series, created in 1899 by the French artist and inspired by the love poems Denis wrote for his future wife, Marthe Meurier. Some replicas of the initial series were made, of which the one on tissue paper dated 1911. Maurice Denis, French painter, was artistically formed in coincidence with the birth of the symbolist movement that strongly influenced him, imposing himself for his simplicity and for his philosophy of a art that was a synthesis between the external world and the artist's spirituality. In his earliest works, the pictorial style was naturalist and neo-impressionist, but over time tended towards a pure decorativism, characterized by areas of flat color and clear outlines. In 1888, at the Julian Academy in Paris, Maurice Denis founded with Paul Sérusier, Pierre Bonnard and Paul Ranson, the group of painters Nabis (Prophets), a group that drew on the works and poetics of Paul Gauguin in their aesthetic ideals. , for the overcoming of Impressionist naturalism through a return to primitive and Japanese art. Of the Nabis meetings, usually held in the editorial office of the magazine "Revue Blanche" or at the Ranson Academy, Denis particularly appreciated the mystical climate, the esoteric jargon and the nickname that each painter received from the group: Denis was called "the Nabi by the nice pictures". As "Nabi" Maurice Denis painted intimate, enigmatic pictures and the themes of his painting, of a religious nature or situations of everyday life, were brought into an ideal and unreal dimension, in an atmosphere of warm and serene intimacy, obtained with an extremely delicate feature. A constant in his life was the profession of the Catholic faith, which always had a priority role for him. He received numerous commissions for the decoration of churches and this made him return to the great tradition of mural painting by performing solemn frescoes of monumental structure, inspired by a literary Catholicism. The religious fervor led Maurice Denis to found, in 1919, the Ateliers d'Art Sacré, dedicating a lot of time to prayer, so much so that he became the tertiary of San Domenico, without isolating him from the world, for which he participated in the social life of the time. In addition to his vast production as a painter, Denis was a great draftsman and illustrator. Until his death Maurice Denis continued to paint in a modern interpretation of the great ancient painting, supported by his strong artistic vein, continuously fueled by his travels, many of them in Italy, which led him to come into direct contact with the Pre-Raphaelites and the neoclassicals.

Sunny Landscape

Fresco on canvas. Signed lower right. Further signature and technique on the back. Placed in the informal Emilian naturalism, Bruno Saetti's painting is distinguished by a significant love for the pictorial material, rich and consistent, pasty and fermenting, but also open to the modulations of luminous vibration. His series of "frescoes" with the Sun as the dominant subject is rich, as in this work, which presents a large bright sun shining on a brick red background, above an indefinite landscape, where only a basilica can be recognized at the top right. If Saetti's Emilian origin is evident in the warm tones of the red bricks and in the very peculiar taste of the material (the favorite fresco), on the other hand the Venetian contamination is recognizable (Saetti lived for a long time in Venice) in his lingering on the color, on its luminous vibrations, on the feeling of astonished amazement of space. The work is presented in a frame.

Female Figures

Oil painting on canvas. Signed lower left. Mino Maccari's artistic production is mainly aimed at social and political satire, expressed above all through drawing; moreover, he never positioned himself as a judge of Italian customs, but rather as an amusing and amused chronicler of the vices and weaknesses of society. In his pictorial production, although he does not deviate excessively from the themes of his drawings, he accentuates the fantastic aspect more: with rapid and decisive brushstrokes and bright, often violent colours, he characterizes almost unreal or rather caricatural figures. The work is presented in a frame.

Saint George 1992

Oil on panel. Signed bottom right. On the back, with Cyrillic characters, there is the title, the date and the location, Bergamo. The Lithuanian artist, who currently lives and works between Moscow, Italy and the United Kingdom, is considered one of the most important contemporary Russian artists. In his large production there are landscapes, still lifes, many portraits of famous people and his surreal compositions, an expression of his peculiar "dream vision" of reality. Even in this table, albeit in the style of traditional icons, the depiction of the famous St. George is proposed in a surreal key that reminds of De Chirico, in which the dragon is replaced by a goose, the Saint's head is an egg, in the outlines there are figures of sorceresses... a clearly unorthodox interpretation! The panel has a vertical slit. The piece is presented in a frame.

Tempera, pencil and charcoal on paper. Signed on the back. The drawing is registered in the Archive Fausto Melotti with code DIS 84020. Fausto Melotti was a multifaceted and very prolific artist and it is almost impossible to link his production to a particular technique or theme, without providing only a partial view of his artistic vision. The salient features that are constant in Melotti are geometry, the study of abstraction, which leads him to use realistic but not scientifically accurate elements, and arranging the elements so that they recall a musical rhythm, a detail that refers to his training as a musician Sculptor, painter, musician, poet, he made numerous design drawings for his works. Drawing represented for him a fundamental exercise, to transfuse the original graphic trait from sheets of paper into sculptures and ceramics. The sculptures for which he is best known are made up of geometric elements made with metals (brass, iron and gold) worked into thin filaments, giving life to ethereal, weightless and almost fragile compositions. The work is presented in a frame.

Composition with Bread and Tomatoes

Oil on canvas. Signed lower right. The artist's stamp is on the back of the frame. De Bernardi's painting is part of the Lombard landscape tradition of the 19th and 20th century. He always lived in Besozzo, his hometown in the province of Varese, but he traveled a lot, in Italy and outside of Italy, collecting impressions and researching, to relive them in his work, new landscapes. He preferred landscape production, even if declined with a changing style in his different pictorial phases. His production does not lack some still lifes, dating back mainly to the 1940s, compositions scrupulously drawn and aimed at dealing with the problems of light and atmospheric depth with agility and freshness, as in this presentation of some bread and tomatoes on a rustic table. Restored and relined, the painting is presented in a frame.