ROME.- Ottocento Art Gallery is offering important masterpieces coming from several private collections gathered in the usual monthly exhibition aimed to the sale. The selection starts from an oil on canvas, made by Giovanni Paolo Castelli known as Lo Spadino, Still Life in a landscape. Castelli is considered one of the most important artists of the last part of the seventeenth century in the genre of still life, a genre of artistic representation that consists of portraying inanimate objects; he worked on the example of the Flemish painter Abraham Brueghel, however paying particular attention to the "volumetric thickness" of the objects represented and using bright and shiny chromatic effects in his paintings contrasted by the dark background.
The selection of the proposal displayed by Ottocento Art Gallery continues with a wonderful still life by Carlo Fornara. Born into a peasant family in Prestinone, in Val Vigezzo, in 1871, he enrolled in the local Rossetti Valentini School of Fine Arts in Santa Maria Maggiore, where he followed the teachings of Enrico Cavalli. In 1891 he participated in the First Triennale of Brera, where he saw the first Divisionist works, while after a trip to France (1894-95) he approached neo-impressionism. In 1897 the jury of the Terza Triennale di Brera rejected his painting En plein Air, which was instead judged positively by Segantini and Pellizza. He then became part of the Milanese cenacle of the art dealer Alberto Grubicy, who included him in a series of exhibitions and events, including international ones, now presented as an exponent of "ideal" Divisionism together with Previati. The link with the Grubicy gallery guarantees Fornara economic tranquility and the possibility of residing in the beloved Vigezzo Valley. So his painting evolves towards post-impressionist solutions, often wrapping itself around Divisionist persistences, held back by the use of thin and threadlike brushstrokes. From 1922 he retired to the house in Prestinone, where he died in 1968.
Others important paintings complete the exhibition, such as a beautiful Woman in the mirror depicted by Vittorio Gussoni and a Neapolitan urban landscape by Oscar Ricciardi.
The selection of 20th century artworks closes the exhibition, with artworks by Francesco Ciusa, Tancredi Parmeggiani, Mario Ceroli, Tano Festa. In particular, the artwork by Tancredi Parmeggiani stands out for the vibrant palette and a golden taste. Tancredi was given solo exhibitions at the Galleria del Cavallino in Venice in 1952, 1953, 1956, and 1959, and at the Galleria del Naviglio in Milan in 1953. In 1954 he participated in Tendances actuelles with Georges Mathieu, Jackson Pollock, Wols, and others at the Kunsthalle Bern. His work was included in a group show in 1955 at the Galerie Stadler in Paris, a city he visited that year. In 1958 Tancredi was given solo exhibitions at the Saidenberg Gallery in New York and the Hanover Gallery in London, and he took part in the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh. In 1959 he settled in Milan, where he showed several times at the Galleria dell’Ariete. That same year Tancredi traveled again to Paris and in 1960 he visited Norway. Also in 1960 the painter participated in the exhibition Anti-Procès at the Galleria del Canale in Venice; the gallery gave him solo shows this year and in 1962. He received the Marzotto Prize in Valdagno, Italy, in 1962 and exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1964. Tancredi committed suicide in Rome on September 27, 1964.
Among the etchings, Ottocento Art Gallery shows some masterpieces by Luigi Bartolini, Italian Master whos is most well known for his novel, Bicycle Thieves, upon which the Italian neorealist film directed by Vittorio De Sica and of the same title was based.
