Sculpture by Marco Cornini - Girl in armchair

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.

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.

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.

Tableau doré

Mixed technique on plywood (painting and silver paper sheets). On the back, authentic with stamp and signature of the artist's sister. The work belongs to the series of Tableaux dorés, works created by the Milanese artist Remo Bianco starting from the 1950s. Born and educated in Milan, Remo Bianco was a pupil of De Pisis, in whose studio he frequented the great Italian artists of the twentieth century (Carrà, Sironi, Savinio, Soffici, Soldati, Marini, Cantatore). After the interlude of the war (enlisted, sank with his ship and was taken prisoner in Tunis), he resumed his artistic activity in Milan, participating in the Nuclear Movement and Spatialism, coming to completely detach himself from figurative painting to create works made of brushstrokes mashed potato. At the beginning of the fifties he began to create works, pictorial and sculptural, with different materials and to experiment with different themes and techniques; to this production belong the Tableaux dorés, composed of silvered or gilded aluminum foils on painted bases. The work is presented in a frame.

Oil on canvas. Central European school of the first half of the 20th century. Unidentified signature on the lower left. In a wide valley under sharp mountain peaks, a small lake opens up, on which some houses overlook and boats sail; some common people's figures are busy with daily activities. Pleasant and serene in the green-blue hues of nature. It is presented in a period frame.

Allegory

Oil on canvas. Signed lower left. The large painting features two figures: on the right a man sitting at a table, dressed in a red dressing gown, with a sad and concentrated expression, playing with his hands with some disheveled flowers, coming from the composition on his head; on the left standing the Christ of the Passion, crowned with thorns, with a gray cloak on his shoulders. Behind the seated man, a leaden sky in which, however, a ray of light opens. The painting probably wants to allegorically depict the painful and suffered end of the life of a person, who lives the same Passion as Christ, but who yearns for a new, bright life. The work is presented in a frame.

Oil on canvas. French school of the early 1900s. At the bottom right the signature Carlo Rossi, on the left the title in French ("Duels et enlèvement"). The scene, which recalls the narrative of the "Cloak and sword" genre, sees a gentleman in an elegant doublet dueling with a group of men, who are meanwhile trying to take away his lady by force. The scene is set in the street of a village with Nordic-style houses. The painter Carlo Rossi was active in France at the end of the 19th century, as can be seen from another of his works of the same genre, sold at auction in Tours. The painting is presented in a period frame.

Oil on hardboard. Venetian school of the late 19th century. Signed Carlini on the lower left. Moving family scene, with the fisherman just landed embracing his family - wife, mother, children and dog! - who have come to welcome him, while his colleagues unload the catch and arrange the nets. The colors are intense, especially the earthy ones of the figures, the sand and the boat, which contrast with the blue of the sky and the sea. The painting is presented in a period frame.

Oil painting on canvas. Central European school of the first half of the 20th century. Unidentified signature lower left. Sweetness and tenderness shine through these two embraced figures, similar in facial features and expression, composed in their elegant and lively clothes, with the background of a floral wallpaper. The painting is presented in a period frame.

Three Drinkers and an Angel 1942

Mixed media on board. Signed lower right. On the back further signature, title and date. Beppe Porcheddu, an important Italian illustrator and ceramist, was also a painter. In his evolutionary artistic path "it would seem that the artist has poured "the illustrator" into the painter and vice versa "the painter has prevailed in the illustration". From his first production, alongside his aptitude for the grotesque, Porcheddu showed a natural inclination for what was defined as a "perfect trio of symbols of a world (the medieval one) that expressed itself through metaphors like no other previous civilization" . In this panel, that tendency towards the grotesque is well expressed in the figures of the three drinkers, presented with crude features, clear lines and marked angles, while the figure of the angel appears evanescent, blurred, framed in the single light that comes from the open door.

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.