Fine Art Gallery - Catalogue 2009

AVANT-GARDE ARTMax Bill

Marc ChagallMario ComensoliAlberto GiacomettiRenato GuttusoHans HartungMax HuberMarino MariniHenry MatisseJoan MiróPablo PicassoMario RadiceMimmo Rotella

Avant-Garde Art

Max Bill1908 Winterthur, 1994 Berlin

Architect, painter, designer, pro-fessor and politician, Max Bill was amongst those who gave a new direction to design in the sphere of the Concrete Zurich movement. Proof of this is the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm, Germany, con-stituted by Inge Aicher Scholl and Otl Aicher in 1953 which continued the great Bauhaus tradition, intro-ducing new and important impul-ses.Max Bill was not satisfied by the influences of Kandinsky, Klee, and Schlemmer in his artistic creations. Rather, he experimented with his works on the creation of shapes able to represent the mathemati-cal complexity of modern physics through the senses.

AVANT-GARDE ART M

AX BILL

Member of the Flemish Academy of Science, of the Literature and Fine Art of Brussels and of the Berlin Academy of Arts, Max Bill showed he was capable of transposing ar-tistic content into the most diver-se spheres, combining the art of daily life like, for instance, creating watchers for Junghans and posters for the 1972 Olympic Games.

GEOMETRICAL COMPOSITION 1971

700mm x 500mm,

signed and numbered 57/150

GEOMETRICAL COMPOSITION 1971

Serigraph, 700mm x 500mm,

signed and numbered 88/200 Serigraph,

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AVANT-GARDE ART M

ARC CHAGALL

DIE BUCHT VON NIZZA, 1970

Colour lithograph, 768mm by 518mm, signed

Bibliography: Sorlier 133

Marc Chagall 1887 Vitebsk - Belarus, 1985 Saint Paul de Vence

Fauvism, Symbolism, Cubism, Or-phism and Surrealism are only some of the artistic currents connected to Marc Chagall’s artistic work, pione-er of Modernism, whose work is so exuberant that it cannot be placed into any kind of classification or medium. Illustrated books, cerami-cs, canvas, prints, theatre costumes and stained glass are just some of the mediums which capture the dre-amlike and poetic images that Cha-gall gave shape to, in the represen-

tations of constant themes such as country life in Russia, family, youth-ful dreams, folklore and the nostal-gia for one’s homeland. In his wor-ks, time and space collapse in favour of a parallel dreamlike reality that is often joyful, where everything beco-mes possible: the uncertainties and the extremisms of the 20th centu-ry, experienced in the first person, are beaten with symbols, colours, details and metaphors that are not always easy to read.

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Mario Comensoli1922 Lugano, 1993 Zurich Mario Comensoli, considered one of the most important figures of Realism Painting, was born in Lugano on the 15th April 1922. When his mother died, he was raised by his two sisters in extreme poverty and this sensitised the artist’s character and made him aware of the social problems of the poor from the very beginning.In 1944, the Civic Museum of Fine Arts of Lugano acquired an oil pain-ting after suggestion by Aldo Patoc-chi. On that same year, thanks to a scholarship, Comensoli went to Zu-rich where he started attending dra-wing and history of art lessons at the polytechnic institute.In Paris, in the early post-war period, he observed Picasso and Léger’s work and was quite influenced by their Cu-bist paintings. In 1948, on his second time in Paris, Mirò, the Giacometti

brothers and Poliakoff became his new artistic referrals.Establishing himself in Zurich with his wife Hélène Frei, he grew a passion for popular sports like cycling and football and created the series titled “Cyclists and footballers”.In 1953, the Helmhaus Museum of Zurich dedicated him the first impor-tant exhibition which represented the past period under the lights of the Lumiere Villas and which received the approval of the critics.This first creative phase, which was centred on formal construction, soon left space for a new kind of painting that was more aware of reality and human experiences.In 1958 he created the “Workers in Blue” in the Rousseaustrasse studio. He dedicated it to the migrants co-ming from Italy to whom he felt close.

In that same year, Carlo Levi invited him to exhibit his works at the Con-gress of Immigrants in Rome on who-se poster one of the artist’s drawings appeared.He subsequently tackled the themes of the Sessantotto (protest movement of 1968) with a painting manner which was provocative and influenced by Pop Art. He then took on the world of cinema in 1978. In the 80s, starting from alternative punk youths, he star-ted the series “Gioventù in fermento” (Youth in Turmoil). To remember “Di-scovirus” and “Tell” amongst the most important thematic moments. His last big exhibition took place in 1989 at the Kunsthaus of Zurich. Mario Comensoli died from a heart attack in his studio in Zurich on the 2nd of June, 1993.

AVANT-GARDE ART M

ARIO CO

MEN

SOLI

AVANT-GARDE ART M

ARIO CO

MEN

SOLI

BULL FIGHT SKETCH 1951

Pencil drawing, 325mm x 475mm, signed with stamp of the Mario and Hélène Comen-

soli Foundation of Zurich

FUSSBALL 1950

Pencil drawing, 225 x 310mm, signed with stamp of the Mario and Hélène Comensoli

Foundation of Zurich Bibliography: Mario Comensoli “EINE NEUE SICHT TESTIMONIES”

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ARIO CO

MEN

SOLI

FEMALE PROFILE PORTRAIT

EARLY 50s

Oil on paper, 850mm x 650mm,

signed on the lower part on the

right

FEMALE PROFILE PORTRAIT

EARLY 50s

Ink and oil on paper, 850mm x

630mm, signed on the lower

part on the right

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AVANT-GARDE ART M

ARIO CO

MEN

SOLI

GESCHAEFTSMANN 1962

Tempera on carton, 900mm x

700mm, signed and dated on the

lower part on the right

Bibliography: Johann P. Scherer,

“Begegnungen 62: Gemälde von

Mario Comensoli”,

OPERAIO CON SIGARETTA 1965

Oil on canvas, 1300 mm x 900 mm

Provenance: Mario e Hélène Comensoli,

Zurich

No longer availableNo longer available

AVANT-GARDE ART M

ARIO CO

MEN

SOLI

LA FAMIGLIA 1990

Mixed technique,

560 mm x 420 mm

Provenance: Mario e

Hélène Comensoli, Zurich

TONDO CON PUNK 1992

Oil Mixed technique on masonite,

530 mm x 440 mm

Provenance: Mario e Hélène

Comensoli, Zurich

No longer available

No longer available

Alberto Giacometti1901 Borgonovo di Stampa, 1966 Chur

Alberto Giacometti, was born in Val Bregaglia in Grisons from the union between Annetta Stampa and the Post-Impressionist painter, Giovanni Giacometti. Under his fa-ther’s wishes, Alberto went to Paris in 1922 where he studied sculptu-re at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière until 1925. Before he found his own direction, Alberto Giacometti was inspired by several cultural references in his life which ranged from Cicladic Art, to Cubism, Surrealism and to Primitivism.

His artistic expression thus oscillated between mnemonic reproduction and the purest expression of the unconscious, space and its demar-cation, geometric and linear struc-tures, cages and sexual organs.In an incessant dialectic between myth, the unconscious, dream and reality, Gia-cometti’s style found definition in the end in a sort of schematic naturism, in which objects, scenery and persons are immobile, isolated in an empty space which takes on all the existen-tial meanings of solitude, of which Sartre caught the inaccessibility.

AVANT-GARDE ART ALBERTO

GIACOM

ETTI

Space, therefore, and its existential meaning of emptiness, is transfor-med into artistic creation, in fun-damental element of Giacometti’s work which, in the inapproacha-bility of the object, corrodes and breaks the contours into clots of matter often devoid of colour. The first ample retrospective presented in Switzerland was organised by the Kunsthalle of Bern in 1956. In 1962 he was awarded at the Biennial of Venice and, in 1965, the Alberto Giacometti Foundation was set up.

HOMME DEBOUT (LUST 101), 1957

Lithograph, 410mm x 282mm, on

Arches paper, signed and numbered

15/100, published by Maeght, Paris

NU ASSIS (LUST 53), 1965

Lithograph, 673mm x 535mm, on

Rives paper, signed and numbered

17/100, published by Gemini Ltd.

AVANT-GARDE ART ALBERTO

GIACOM

ETTI

Renato Guttuso 1911 Bagheria, 1987 Rome

In 1957, Renato Guttuso stated:“Painting is my work. That is, it is my work and also the way I con-front the world. I want to be pas-sionate and simple, daring and not extreme. I want to arrive to total freedom in art, freedom which, like in life, consists of the truth”. This wish drove the artist to a posi-tion of decisive political belligeren-cy and for a search of the truth in which every academic standard was rejected.

He was opposed to the official cul-ture and was for the defence of freedom, denouncing the horrors brought by oppression and war.Guttuso expressed himself in va-rious ways, from book illustrations to painting of theatrical scenery, from landscapes to still-lifes, from portraits to erotic paintings.

AVANT-GARDE ART REN

ATO GUTTUSO

LOW RELIEF

Low relief of art hot-melted

and gold plated 330mm by

220mm, work 176/333

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Hans Hartung1904 Dresden, 1989 Antibes

The Informal is a visual writing which puts “doing” before “theo-ry”, “existing” before “thinking”. It experiments, in the astonished lack of thought which follows the cata-strophes of the Second World War, the negative fascination of an aim-less doing. The term informal does not indicate an art without form or formless, as much as a manner which repudiates the traditional formal and constructive principles of abstract, non figurative repre-sentation. It is a language which is not unitary at all, at whose roots are found individual instinct, the valo-risation of the unconscious drives,

AVANT-GARDE ART H

ANS H

ARTUNG

improvisation, the rejection of every formal construction and the appeal for the expressive properties of pic-torial and extra-pictorial materials.Informal art can be taken back to two main streams. The gestural-signic one which, on the trail of surrealist automatism, valorises the psychological, expressive and dyna-mic meanings of the plots created on canvas by the painter’s impulsi-ve or calculated gestures: painters following this stream were Wols, Vedova, Fontana and Hartung; and the material stream which, influen-ced by the Cubist, Futurist and Da-daist collage, investigates tactile,

chromatic and plastic qualities, not just of the colours laid down with the palette knife, hands or brush, but also with materials such as cloth, cement, tar, plastic or wood. Fautrier, Dubuffet, Burri and Fonta-na were amongst the most original interpreters.Hans Hartung stood out in particu-lar. He was the European artist who, more than anyone, could boast an activity which foretold of the infor-mal season already by the post-war.Moving to France in 1935, he was one of the most important voices of the Ecole de Paris of the post-war which reunited some of the highest

talents of European Informal art such as Soulages, Schneider, Bazai-ne.In his works Hartung gave outmost importance and autonomy to brush marks with an enormous variety of solutions: from the famous strong black lines testing the entire series of possible ranges of value of ge-stures, to graffiti lines directly in the colour, to impalpable aereographed surfaces which seem to suggest an impossible space.

AVANT-GARDE ART H

ANS H

ARTUNG

Untitled 1753-294 1958

Ink, 346mm by 265mm

T 1989-A 38 1989

Acrylic on canvas, 1620mm by 1300mm

His untitled paintings are marked by a T

(tableau) followed by the date and by a

serial number preceded sometimes by a

letter.

Provenance: Hartung-Bergman Founda-

tion of Antibes, France

Max Huber1919 Zug, 1992 Mendrisio

Max Huber was born in the Canton of Zug in 1991. He completed his studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule of Zurich and started his profitable activity as graphic designer between Zurich and Milan.An important anecdote tells about a very young Huber who visited Anto-nio Boggeri’s studio in Milan in 1940, leaving his visiting card. These were some intertwined spiral volutes. Bog-geri observed it for some minutes be-fore he realised that it was not printed but hand drawn. Some days later he hired Huber and the spiral became Studio Boggeri’s presentation panel. In 1947 Huber met Giulio Einaudi who hired him for the publishing house’s entire graphic art work. In the same year, he organised with his friend Max Bill the exhibition “Abstract and con-crete art”.

AVANT-GARDE ART M

AX HUBER

Three years later, in 1950, he partici-pated in Milan to the Movement of Concrete Art (MAC). In those years he started his collaboration with the architects of Lugano. He died in Men-drisio in 1992. On the 12th November 2005 the m.a.x Museum of Chiasso was established with the objective of spreading the culture of design and leave track of one of the most signifi-cant Swiss graphic artists’ work.

COMPOSITION WITH CURVED LINES 1959-1987

Coloured serigraph, 700mm x 500mm,

signed and numbered VIII/XXX works,

RC Como printers

PROGRESSION

Serigraph in eight colours printed in 50

signed copies on ivory Fabriano paper

(cards numbered from I to L) and 55

signed copies on white Fabriano paper

(cards numbered from 1 to 150)

Card nr. IV/L 1991

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Marino Marini1901 Pistoia, 1980 Viareggio

After having finished his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Floren-ce, Marino Marini, sculptor, painter and etcher, but also Dean of the fa-culty of sculpture at the Academy of Turin and Chair of sculpture at the Academy of Brera, arrived to Paris in 1929 and there he encountered the highest representatives of the artistic tendencies of the time, such as Kandinsky, Picasso and Braque.Horses and knights, Pomone and portraits were the subjects with which Marino Marini reinterpreted and described existence in every possible type of declension.

Heroism and fright, the currents which agitate the human soul, cou-rage and intellect, the rhythms of nature, the present and history, the human mystery, the fear of the fu-ture, love and the unmasculine find again, in an essential stylistic de-clension, the intensity of language which only a more ample alphabet is able to put forward through an erudite and accurate choice of sty-le, of materials, colours and of line. As he would have said after all: “It is not what is represented that is im-portant but how you represent it”.

AVANT-GARDE ART M

ARINO

MARIN

I

IDEA OF THE MIRACLE 1970

Acquaforte on Magnani paper, 700mm

x 500mm, signed and numbered 29/60,

editor and printer Luigi De Tullio, Milan

1972, from the portfolio “Marino Marini

Works” (Table XVI)

Bibliography: Giorgio and Guido Guastal-

la, “Marino Marini, catalogue raisonne

of his works 1919-1980”, Graphis Arte,

Livorno 1990 (n.A 117, Pg 82/R, card

index pg.212)

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AVANT-GARDE ART M

ARINO

MARIN

IMINIMAL DANCE (II) 1973

Acquaforte and acquatinta in colour on

Magnani paper 990mm x 700mm, signed

and named “20/25 works”, Alba publi-

shers, Turin 1974, Il Cigno Printers, Rome,

from the card “Characters”

Bibliography: Giorgio and Guido Guastal-

la, “Marino Marini, catalogue raisonne

of his works 1919-1980”, Graphis Arte,

Livorno 1990 (n.A 172, Pg 104/R, card

index pg.218)

THREE HORSES, 1977

Farbacquatint 720mm x 570mm, signed

and numbered 10/150, Signiert

Rückseitig handgedruckte, von Frau

Marini signierte Echtheitsbestätigung

Bibliography: Guastalla 344

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Henry Matisse1869 Le Cateau-Cambrésis, 1954 Nice

Henry Matisse, founder of Fauvism, is to be considered one of the most important innovators of the 20th century. He made choices which be-came fundamental and a reference point for many young painters of the 20th century, Picasso included: analytics, artificiality, primitivism and pure colour are the three bases of this innovation.Fauvism is a French contribution to Expressionism, but, compared to the related German movement which is connoted by dark atmos-pheres and dramatic content, Fau-vism represents a “Mediterranean” and sunny variant to Expressionism; it represented the first real break with Impressionism and the first modern experience which released the relationship between the true colour of things and the one used to represent them in painting.

Obsessed by wild nature, “the be-asts” searched for immediate ex-pression with the use of pure colours and the artist’s emotion in front of nature. In this linocut, whose two-dimensionality is sharp, the light-ness of brush marks and the purity of tones blend with exotic artistic shapes where colour becomes a re-presentative subject of a world in which one can find shelter, a world in which inner conflicts are absent, and alienation does not find shel-ter. Matisse’s artistic journey arrived to understand the most various ex-pressive techniques. In sixty years of work it constantly renewed itself: stained glass, etchings, prints, co-stumes and theatre scenery pain-tings, book illustrations and statues which follow a balanced flow, sere-ne and devoid of fractures between past and modernity.

AVANT-GARDE ART H

ENRY M

ATISSE

Linocut, 350 mm by 250 mm,

signed and numbered in pencil 4/20

Joan Miró1893 Montroig, 1983 Palma di Maiorca

Joan Miró enrolled at the School of Arts of Barcelona in 1912. His initial artistic work was influen-ced by the countryside environment of Montroig (where he lived) and by his contacts with Picasso and Tri-stan Tzara, an influence which con-ferred to his works an avant-garde aspect and one of poetic evocation in which he willingly lingered and accentuated descriptive details.Fantastic and dreamlike visions ani-mate his works. As the artist himself wrote: “Hallucinations take the pla-ce of exterior models. I paint like in a dream in the outmost freedom”.His research towards his own styli-stic language drove Miró to under-

take, from 1928, new experiments with mental association techniques and the process of disintegration and reconstruction: works on pa-per, “poetic paintings”, collages, li-thographs and “surrealistic objects” attest to this new interpretation which was nothing but the return to previous technique, applied to new themes. Trips to the United States and con-tacts with American artists influen-ce his work which, painted at first with a poetically simplified surreal language, becomes a triumph of colour, in the sign of the outmost freedom of form guided by fantasy.

AVANT-GARDE ART JO

AN M

IRÓ

POSTER FOR THE CARCASSONNE FESTIVAL 1980

Colour lithograph, 833mm by 592mm, on Arches paper, signed in pencil and numbe-

red 53/75, published by the Conseil communal de la culture de Carcassone, France

Pablo Picasso1881 Malaga, 1973 Mougins, France

Picasso’s life was full of original anecdotes like the one which claims that one day at a restaurant, having the habit of sketching and drawing on napkins, the owner told Picasso that, instead of paying the bill, he could just leave him the drawings he had made at dinner and Picasso agreed.The owner then turned back to his customer with a request: “Mon-sieur, could you sign the drawing?”Picasso shook his head and replied “No, I’m just paying the bill; I’m not buying the restaurant”.

AVANT-GARDE ART PABLO

PICASSO

Linocut printed in colour, 991mm x 654mm,

on Arches paper, signed in red pencil

Mario Radice1900 -1987 Como

From 1930 onwards, after having abandoned his veterinary studies, he dedicated himself to his grea-test passion, painting. He establi-shed relations with the architects A.Sartoris, C.Cattaneo, G.Terragni and with the painter M.Rho and, in 1933, took part to the creation of the magazine “Quadrante”, consi-dered as the privileged organ of the rationalist architectural culture and of the abstractionist environments in Italy, hosting international inter-ventions like those of Le Corbusier, Gropius and Léger.

AVANT-GARDE ART M

ARIO RADICE

Between 1933 and 1936 he pain-ted the abstract decorations for Casa del Fascio in Como, designed by Terragni. In this same period he joined a group of abstract pain-ters working in Milan, amongst whom Fontana and Melotti. In the post-war period he was one of the founders of the MAC, Movement for Concrete Art. His abstract re-search, founded upon a geometric design, responds to a precise idea of

SIGNED ARTIST PROOF

COMPOSITON WITH PURPLE

BACKGROUND, 1934-1986

coloured serigraph, 700mm x 500mm,

signed and named “artist proof”,

printers RC Como

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AVANT-GARDE ART M

ARIO RADICE

SERIGRAPHS IN COLOUR

in the 80s, 700mm x 500mm, signed and

numbered, printers RC Como

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Mimmo Rotella1918 Catanzaro, 2006 Milan

Mimmo Rotella, an international-ly renowned artist, was the only outstanding Italian painter of “Nou-veau Réalisme”, a movement deve-loped in 1960 around the figure of the critic Pierre Restany.He invented the technique of décol-lage which, in the opposite of col-lage in which an image is built up by paper fragments, it is created by cutting them away from a complete image: in the early 50s they were still informal, in the 60s they leave more space to popular images in the style of an illustrated magazine which the artist enjoyed tearing up.His works, which depict cult figu-res like Marilyn, Sofia Loren or Elvis, reveal the tastes, myths and whims of mass society, marking one of the earliest experiences of Pop art.

AVANT-GARDE ART M

IMM

O ROTELLA

THE BEAUTIFUL PREY

Serigraph, 900mm by 700mm,

signed and numbered 42/100

THE LAST MARILYN

Serigraph, 900mm by 700mm,

signed and numbered 44/100

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AVANT-GARDE ART M

IMM

O ROTELLA

CRAZY FOR WOMEN(ELVIS)

Photo serigraph with déchirage on cardbo-

ard, 990mm x 690mm, signed and titled

“artist proof”, with stamp Fondazione

Rotella of Milan

THE WAKE OF THE EAGLES (ROCK HUDSON)

Photo serigraphy with déchirage on car-

dboard, 990mm x 690mm, signed and tit-

led “artist proof”, with stamp Fondazione

Rotella of Milan

CHISUM (JOHN WAYNE)

Photo serigraph with déchirage on cardbo-

ard, 990mm x 690mm, signed and titled

“artist proof”, with stamp Fondazione

Rotella of Milan

CASABLANCA (HUMPHREY BOGART)

Photo serigraph with déchirage on cardbo-

ard, 990mm x 690mm, signed and titled

“artist proof”, with stamp Fondazione

Rotella of Milan

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AVANT-GARDE ART M

IMM

O ROTELLA

PEPSI COLA

Serigraph, 700mm by 900mm,

signed and numbered 44/100

PIAZZA BLUES 2004

Lithograph, 950mm x

650mm, signed two times,

accompanied by the ca-

talogue “Mimmo Rotella

1949-2004” signed by the

artist, numbered 2/99, rea-

lised thanks to the initiative

of Piazza Blues Association,

which, for the 2004 edi-

tion, wanted to highlight

the union of the blues mu-

sical expression with Mim-

mo Rotella’s extroverted

and lively visual message.

DIABOLIK

Serigraph with a two paper rip, inspired

by the 1968 film of the same name by

Mario Bava, considered one of the best

pop films of the 60s, a mixture of Pop

Art, Psycadelia and Futurism, 1000mm x

700mm, signed and numbered 118/125,

with stamp of Fondazone Rotella of Milan

Francis BaconEnrico BajJavacheff ChristoPiero DorazioCharles Fazzino Salvatore GarauKeith HaringKeizo MorishitaSelim AbdullahAndy WarholStephen Wiltshire

Contemporary Art

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Francis Bacon1909 Dublin, 1992 Madrid

Francis Bacon is considered one of the greatest painters of contempo-rary painting. After various painting experiences with influences by Max Ernst and Picasso, he started, in the years between 1944-46, the series of studies in which the human figu-re, often symbolically enclosed in a room, is taken to an agonising for-mal transfiguration through the use of blurriness, fading and perspecti-ve dilation. The face is contorted, almost disfigured, not in the Cubist manner, but in a sort of personal expressionism, the figure is general-ly seated like in the most traditional portrait painting; the almost mono-chromatic background accentuates the evident isolation in which it is placed.

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N

It would be reductive to thing of Bacon only in the point of view of the content because, besides the existential “scream”, one can find in him a great love for painting, for the ability that it has to express and construct with elegance.

MAN WRITING REFLECTED IN A MIRROR 1977

Lithograph printed in colour after the

1976 painting, 1020mm x 850mm, signed

in felt-tip pen 66/180 in pencil,

printed by Mourlot published by Henry

Deschamps, Paris

Enrico Baj1924 Milan, 2003 Varese

A versatile spirit, capable of great passions, Enrico Baj lawyer, essayist, anarchist, sculptor, painter, Satrap and emperor of Milanese Pataphy-sics, poured in his own works that curiosity for life which characterised his human journey. His innate curio-sity took him to first study medicine and then transfer to law and study, at the same time, at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera; this placed him in crossroads and at a mee-ting point between Surrealism and Dadaism. This same curiosity drove him to establish two painting mo-vements, that of Nuclear painting and that for an imaginist Bauhaus. It also drove him to collaborate with writers such as Raymond Queneau and Umberto Eco as well as for ma-gazines like “Il Gesto”, “Direzioni”, “Phases” and newspapers, before

CON

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BAJ

becoming an essayist with works like “Impariamo la pittura” (Let’s learn painting) (Rizzoli, 1985), “Fantasia e realtà” (Fantasy and Re-ality) with Renato Guttuso (Rizzoli, 1987), and “Scritti sull’arte: dal Fu-turismo statico alla merda d’artista” (Text on Art: from static Futurism to artist’s shit) (A.A.A, 1996). The desire to experiment which characterised him is found in his failed solution of stylistic continuity, in the explosion of colours and the lively shapes of his works in which different materials fuse and mix in a knowledgeable collage between painting, knick-knacks and fabric. Playful, ironic works which are, ho-wever, aware of social problems and which communicate a message that often ridicules power.

No longer available

Javacheff Christo1935 Gabronovo, Bulgaria

Before moving to live in Paris in 1958, Javacheff Christo studied in Sofia, Prague and Vienna. In Paris, where he married Jeanne-Claude de Guillebon in 1962 and with whom he shared all his great projects from 1961, his first works consisted of covering with canvas and rope objects of everyday use, such as bottles, chairs and boxes, an idea which brought him to the group of the Nouveaux Réalistes.Quite soon, however, his projects took on a monumental scale: from the barrier of bins wrapped up along a street in Paris, he passed to wrapping up buildings and parts of landscapes. “Valley Curtain” was a project which took place in 1970-72 in a valley in Colorado, USA and which basically consisted of a large canvas stretched from one side to the other of the valley sides (111 x 381 metres) and even caused some

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RISTO

changes in the micro climate of the place.Christo and his wife self-produce their projects on the area, commer-cialising drawings and studies of the installation to finance the projects to be done.Their grand works of land art be-come spectacular ephemeral sce-neries for just a few days, but their memory also forms part of the envi-ronmental piece of art.

AEGENA TEMPLE PROJECT FOR “DIE GLYPOTEK”,

München, 1988

Photo - Collage and Serigraphy on paper

895mm by 685mm

Copy number 256/300. Signed.

Bibliography: Schellmann/Benecke 135

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Piero Dorazio1927 Rome, 2005 Todi

With his painting, the painter and architect, Piero Dorazio contributed to the affirmation of Abstract art in Italy.He was one of the signatories of the Manifesto del Formalismo (1947) which, inspired by the vocation for painting research and by the re-eva-luation of Futurism, put itself against the official tendency of “socialist realism” and for the defence of Ab-stract art. Several artistic stays in va-rious capital cities, amongst which Paris and Prague, made him well-known abroad. He was the Director of the Department of Fine Arts at the School of Fine Arts of Pennsylva-nia during the 60s and he was often invited to the Biennial of Venice.In 1974 he retired to Todi where he kept on working and where he died in 2005. All his painting was direc-ted to spatial research with compo-sitions of geometrising bands.

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RAZIO

5 COMPOSITIONS OF

THE “WIG-WAM” PORTFOLIO 1991

Collage of serigraphs on painted

background, 1100mm x 830mm, signed and

numbered 26/99, Severgnini Editions, Milan

Charles Fazzino 1955

A Pop Art member for over 30 years, Charless Fazzino followed the path initially taken by Andy Warhol, Kei-th Haring, Red Grooms and Robert Rauschenberg, inserting his unique vibrant, three-dimensional and de-tailed style. The ample breath of his work captured the best parts of the contemporary life of the group of private collectors for which he wor-ked on commission and of festivals and events in which he was the of-ficial artist. His works are exhibited in twenty countries and over 600 galleries of modern art.

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O

THE GLAMOUR OF MONACO

Serigraph of 2006 140 pieces (100#, 25

DX, 15 TP)

290mm by 240mm

Works:

49/100 and 52/100

Salvatore Garau1953 Sangiusta - Sardinia With extreme rigour, Salvatore Ga-rau was, and continues to be, the painter of a completely interior lan-dscape which takes from the un-conscious and concretises on an apparent unreality which confuses but returns “natural phenomenon” across a dark, turbulent fluid which can even be menacing, never fulfil-led and motionless.With a palette limited to black, the surface is animated with dense masses, in an inexhaustible move-ment without confines, landscapes, apparently similar in their repetition and yet so different, strengthen the inner world of this Neo-Romantic painter.

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TEMPO

RARY ART SALVATORE GARAU

UNTITLED

Work produced with acrylic materials and resin on framed paper,

1800mm by 2500mm 1989.

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TEMPO

RARY ART SALVATORE GARAU

UNTITLED 1988

Work produced with acrylic materials and resin on framed paper, 1290mm by 2000mm,

published on catalogue, “Salvatore Garau” for Deambrogi Lugano Editions 1989.

UNTITLED 1988

Work produced with acrylic materials and resin on framed paper, 1290mm by 2000mm,

published on catalogue, “Salvatore Garau” for Deambrogi Lugano Editions 1989.

Keith Haring1958 Reading-Pennsylvania, 1990 New York

Keith Haring arrived to New York in 1978 and enrolled at the School of Visual Arts, but his true painting studio were the streets and the sub-way. These were the years where the phenomenon of graffiti art, of which the artist was the absolute protagonist, exploded. His vision is always two-dimensio-nal; his “radiant” characters move as if on a screen, simple brush mar-ks, sharp outlines and bright colours give a veritable graffiti effect.He died of Aids at just 31 years of age.

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TEMPO

RARY ART KEITH H

ARING

MONTREUX- 17TH FESTIVAL DE JAZZ, 1983

Complete series of three serigraphs on paper created for the Montreux Jazz Festival of 1983, 1000mm x 700mm, Pgs 1/3; Pgs -2/3; Pgs

1/3,signed and dated. Bibliography: Littmann page 24-27 Anmerkung: Vollständige Serie der Montreux-Plakate

Keizo Morishita1944 Kitayushu-shi, 2003 Milan

Keizo Morishita was born in Kitayu-shu-Shi (Japan) in 1944. He moved to Italy when he was 19 years old and he graduated in sculpture at the Academy of Brera with Marino Marini in 1968.His works are permeated with se-renity, immerging us into a delicate world, where even the prisms and crystals lose their roughness immer-sed in a dreamlike nature where it is difficult to meet man and of a me-taphysical flavour.He held his first personal exhibition in 1967 and it was followed by se-veral reviews in Italy and abroad. Amongst his latest exhibitions is the one held at the Galleria del Naviglio of Milan, where he exhibited an an-thology of thirty years of work. He died in Milan on the 7th of April in 2003.

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TEMPO

RARY ART KEIZO M

ORISH

ITA

Oil on canvas, 980mm x 1300mm, signed and dated 1983 on the canvas’s rear

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TEMPO

RARY ART KEIZO M

ORISH

ITA

Watercolour, 750mm x 550mm, signed and dated 6.3.1978 Watercolour, 750mm x 550mm, signed and dated 28.10.1979

Selim Abdullah1950 Bagdad

Selim Abdullah was born in Bagh-dad in 1950, city where he atten-ded the Institute of Fine Arts, gra-duating in 1975. He moved to Italy on the same year and he attended the Academy of Fine Arts of Floren-ce and graduated in sculpture in 1979.As from 1981 he lives and works in the Canton Ticino. He participated to various collective and personal exhibitions in Switzerland as well as in various European cities.

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TEMPO

RARY ART SELIM ABDULLAH

No longer available

Andy Warhol1930 Philadelfia, 1987 New York

Andy Warhol started his career in advertising graphics. He didn’t want to be considered an artist in the tra-ditional sense, and so he adopted industrial reproduction techniques. He invented “Factory” which, from the mid 60s onwards, promoted ac-tions, produced films and became a veritable crossroad of the global jet set. Enfant prodige of the New York artistic scene, Warhol became the absolute reference for at least two decades.Mass produced products like Cam-pbell’s soup can, the Coca Cola bot-tle, and also celebrities treated in the same way of common objects, all become art.

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TEMPO

RARY ART ANDY W

AHRO

L

“In the future everyone will beco-me famous for fifteen minutes” and “I want to be a machine” are the statements which identified an arti-st who was able to become, in the field of visual arts, a mass market legend.

SPEED SKATER, 1983

Serigraph on paper, 840mm x 615mm, XXXIII/

CL, signed in pencil, copyright stamp in red on

the back “Andy Warhol 1983”

Bibliography: Schellmann/Feldman 303

Stephen Wiltshire1974 London

Stephen Wiltshire was born in Lon-don in 1974. When he was 13 he was introduced by Sir Hugh Casson, Chairman of the Royal Academy of Arts, as “the best child artist of Great Britain”, inside the BBC’s QED programme on autistic figures who were endowed with special talents in art, music and mathematics.He studied at the City & Guilds Lon-don Art College as the first young autistic person accepted in an art school. As a form of recognition from the media of the importance of his work, from psychologists of his ability and his genius, numerous studies that marked a precocious success were dedicated to him.Having an extraordinary photogra-phic memory, the artist is able to reproduce on very large canvases urban landscapes respecting the de-tails, the positions and the propor-tions of buildings, parks and streets;

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TEMPO

RARY ART STEPHEN

WILTSH

IRE

often reversing perspectives which, viewed from a helicopter, return to be three-dimensional.The views of Tokyo, Frankfurt, Hong Kong and Rome are just an exam-ple. In 2006, Queen Elizabeth II no-minated him Member of the British Empire Order, as recognition for the services rendered for art. Stephen Wiltshire works with pen and ink and, more rarely, with oil colours on canvas. He paints glimpses of the landscapes of cities he visited or, alternatively, his great passion which are cars. Colour is rare in his works, mostly just a splash of pastel to outline the contours of a specific object.

FRITH STREET, Soho 2008

297mm x 210mm (A4), signed

with authenticity Wiltshire

Gallery London

LONDON TRANSPORT BUS (ROUTEMASTER), 2005

150mm x 210mm (A5), signed

with authenticity Wiltshire

Gallery London

Aldo PatocchiNag ArnoldiGianni MetalliSergio EmeryIvo SoldiniAoi Huber-KonoMassimo CavalliCarlo GulminelliEmilio RissoneJean Marc Buehler

Local Artists

LOCAL ARTISTS

LOCAL ARTISTS ALDO

PATOCCH

I

THE BENCH YELLOW DAISIES 1933

The teacher and writer Giuseppe Zoppi started him on artistic studies and introduced him to Ettore Cozza-ni, director of the prestigious Mila-nese magazine “L’Eroica” for which he worked from 1925. Self-taught, he won four Federal scholarships between 1925 and 1931; in 1932 he received the gold medal at the Triennial of Decorative Arts of Mon-za, the first of numerous awards. He formed part of numerous juri-es and commissions in Switzerland, amongst which the Commission of Acquisition for the Graphic Collec-tion of the Polytechnic of Zurich. From 1950 to 1962 he was mem-ber of the Pro Helvetia foundation; he was Chairman of the Ticinese Society of Fine Arts, Vice-Chairman of the Swiss Painters, Sculptures and Architects Society.Patocchi’s works are always carried out with gouge etching on the very

Aldo Patocchi1907 Basel, 1986 Lugano

hard wood engraving in boxwood, in which he shows a remarkable technical ability.Starting out mainly as a figurative illustrator, he soon obtained the cer-tain and personal stylistic style which characterised his work up to his ma-turity, such as to place him, in a very short time, amongst the highest na-tional and, more generically, Italian levels in this genre.

Works: Lugano, Civic Museum of Fine Arts; Winterthur, Kunstmu-seum; Le Locle, Musée des beaux-arts; Geneva, Ateneo; Bern, Na-tional Library; Zurich, Graphische Sammlung der ETH; Mendrisio, Art Museum; Venice, Gallery of Modern Art; Trieste, Revoltella Museum; Car-pi, Civic Museum; Warsaw, State Museum.Carpi, Museo Civico; Var-savia, Museo statale.

SUMMER

Varies xylographs,

various sizes, signed

Nag Arnoldi1928 Locarno

Gianni Metalli1930 Lugano

Nag Arnoldi, sculptor and painter, lived and worked in Comano near Lugano. His works features in im-portant public and private collec-

LOCAL ARTISTS N

AG ARNO

LDI - GIANN

I METALLI

tions in Switzerland, Italy, France, German, and England as well as in some cities of the United States and in Mexico.

HARLEQUIN

Serigraph, 700mm x 500mm, signed and

numbered 15/30

APOLOGY OF A HARLEQUIN 1987

Serigraph realised in 150 copies (numbe-

red from 1 to 150) and 50 copies with co-

lour variant (numbered from I to L) signed

and numbered by the artist 1987

Copy IV/L

MULTIDIRECTIONAL COMPOSITION

Serigraph realised in 150 copies on Fabria-

no paper (numbered from 1 to 150) and

50 copies on Arches paper

(numbered from I to L) signed and num-

bered by the artist. 1988 Copy IV/L

Gianni Metalli was born in Lugano in 1930. He is a member of the Swiss Painters, Sculptors and Architects Society (SPSAS) and of the Ticinese Society of Fine Arts (STBA). From the 1960s onwards he has held personal exhibitions and taken part in collec-tive ones in Lugano, Zurich, Madrid, Milan and Frankfurt.

Sergio Emery1928 Chiasso, 2003 Gentilino

Ivo Soldini1951 Lugano

Sergio Emery undertook his first artistic studies at the Kunstgewer-beschule of Zurich. Between 1946 and1948 he moved to Milan and at-tended the Cimabue Academy and continued his education with study visits to Venice and Paris where he frequented Eduard Pignon’s studio, who was Pablo Picasso’s protégé.

Ivo Soldini was born in Lugano in 1951; he lives and also has his art stu-dio at Ligornetto (Mendrisiotto). After obtaining his high school diploma at the Liceo Cantonale of Lugano, he enrolled at the Academy of Brera and, subsequently, at the State University

LOCAL ARTISTS SERGIO

EMERY - IVO

SOLDIN

I

COMPOSITION WITH SOIL

Of this serigraph in five colours, 150 co-

pies (Arabic numbers) have been printed

by Willy Nussbaum of S. Nazzaro,

35 copies with variant in colour and ma-

nual intervention (Roman numbers),

and lastly, 15 copies with manual inter-

vention (titled from A to Q) all signed and

numbered by the artist.

Copy G 1992

TWO FIGURES

140 copies have been printed of this etching,

all signed by the artist, 1986. Copy IV/VIII

of Milan. He abandoned his studies in 1973 in order to exclusively dedicate himself to his artistic career. He rea-lised sculptures for public and priva-te societies and organised numerous personal and collective exhibitions in Switzerland and abroad.

SoldNo longer available

LOCAL ARTISTS CARLO

GULMIN

ELLI - MASSIM

O

Massimo Cavalli was born in Locarno in 1930 and grew up in Bellinzona. He gra-duated at the Academy of Brera in Mi-lan in 1954. He obtained several Federal scholarships which allowed him to go to several visits in Europe to study. Betwe-en 1960 and 1961 in particular, he was invited by the Swiss Institute in Rome. As from 1970 onwards he went to live

Serigraph, 500mm by

700mm, signed and

numbered 6/50

IMAGE

200 copies have been

printed of this etching,

from the Art studio of

Colla, on CHINE APPLI-

QUE’ SUR “MUGUET”

paper of the Moulin de

Larroque di Duchene,

signed and dated by the

artist. Copy nr. IV/L 1983

Massimo Cavalli1930 Locarno

in Lugano where he taught etching at the Artistic Industries Scholastic Centre (CSIA) from 1974 to 1992. In 1990 he was elected member of the cantonal Commission of fine arts.Amongst his most memorable personal exhibitions was the one held at the fa-mous (or well known) Galleria del Milio-ne of Milan, in 1967 and in 1974.

AME (RAIN)

Serigraph in 5 colours printed in 150

copies (Arabic numbers) + 50 copies with

manual intervention by the artist (Roman

numbers) signed, dated and numbered by

the artist.Copy nr. VII/L

Aoi Huber-Kono was born in Tokyo in 1936. After obtaining the Diplo-ma of Graphic Designer at the Uni-versity of Tokyo she arrived in Euro-pe in the 60s. In 1961 she settled in Milan, and has resided in Ticino since 1962.

Aoi Huber-Kono1936 Tokio

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LOCAL ARTISTS AO

I HUBER-KO

NO

- EMILIO

RISSON

E

Born in Lugano in 1933, graphic designer, illustrator, draughtsman and painter, Emilio Rissone was an Art professor for over 40 years and is founder of the CSIA of Lugano. He first studied in the Kunstgewer-beschule of Lucerna between 1952 and 1957 and, subsequently, at the Academy of Brera in Milan.

110 mm by 110 mm

Emilio Rissone1933 Lugano

He has been working as a painter and graphic designer for over 40 ye-ars, experimenting with the most va-rious techniques. He is also the cre-ator of stained glass found in Swiss churches and also abroad. In 1996 he expanded his activity as adverti-sing graphic artist and created the poster for the Cycling World cham-pionships of Lugano.He won numerous awards and com-petitions during his long career.

IPRONTE

Serigraph by Carlo Gulminelli

in five colours printed in 130

copies (Arabic numbers) and

70 copies (Roman numbers)

on Fabriano paper signed and

numbered by the artist.

Copy IV/LXX 1990.

Carlo Gulminelli1911 Bagnacavallo, 1998 Mendrisio

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LOCAL ARTISTS JEAN

MARC BUEH

LER

In 1972, Jean Marc Buehler obtai-ned the Federal Graphic Design Diploma under Emilio Rissone’s guidance. On that same year he started living and painting in Pa-ris. Once back to Switzerland he attended the CSIA of Lugano, a three-year course of applied studies in drawing ,and became a teacher, a career which he undertook with great satisfactions for over 35 years.

Jean Marc Buehler1949 Lugano

He often takes his subjects from every day life which he willingly re-proposes with spices of satyr and irony through an immediate, simple and existential language which has found in the course of time an un-mistakable and very personal mark which is all his.He lives and works in his artistic stu-dio in Breganzona near Lugano.

STRESS 1986

Mixed technique, 700mm x 500mm

RED BLUES 2004

Mixed technique, 700mm x 500mm

THE CIRCUS IS COMING 1994

Mixed technique, 700mm x 500mm

WALL STREET DANCE 2009

Mixed technique, 400mm x 350mm