Arturo Martini

The Philosopher by Vincenzo Gemito (1852-1929) Bust in bronze with a nuanced dark brown patina Signed "Gemito" Stamped with the foundry mark "Fonderia Gemito Napoli - Merca di Fabbr...

Lynd Ward, 'Madman's Drum, Plate 41', wood engraving, 1930, edition small. Signed in pencil. A fine, black impression, on off-white tissue-thin Japan paper; the full sheet with margins (1 5/8 to 2 1/2 inches); a small paper blemish in the upper right margin, away from the image, otherwise in excellent condition. Scarce. Matted to museum standards, unframed. Image size 5 1/2 x 3 3/4 inches (140 x 95 mm); sheet size 9 5/8 x 7 1/8 inches (244 x 181 mm). From Lynd Ward’s book of illustrations without words, 'Madman’s Drum', Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, New York, 1930. Illustrated in 'Storyteller Without Words: The Wood Engravings of Lynd Ward', Harry Abrams, New York, 1974. Reproduced in 'Storyteller Without Words, the Wood Engravings of Lynd Ward', Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1974. ABOUT THE ARTIST Lynd Ward is acknowledged as one of America’s foremost wood engravers and book illustrators of the first half of the twentieth century. His innovative use of narrative printmaking as a stand-alone storytelling vehicle was uniquely successful in reaching a broad audience. The powerful psychological intensity of his work, celebrated for its dynamic design, technical precision, and compelling dramatic content, finds resonance in the literature of Poe, Melville, and Hawthorne. Like these classic American writers, Ward was concerned with the themes of man’s inner struggles and the role of the subconscious in determining his destiny. An artist of social conscience during the Great Depression and World War II, he infused his graphic images with his unique brand of social realism, deftly portraying the problems that challenged the ideals of American society. The son of a Methodist preacher, Lynd Ward, moved from Chicago to Massachusetts at an early age. He graduated from the Teachers College of Columbia University, New York, in 1926, where he studied illustration and graphic arts. He married May Yonge McNeer in 1936 and left for Europe for their honeymoon in Eastern Europe. After four months, they settled in Leipzig, where Ward studied at the National Academy of Graphic Arts and Bookmaking. Inspired by Belgian expressionist artist Frans Masereel's graphic novel ‘The Sun,’ and another graphic novel by the German artist Otto Nückel, ‘Destiny,’ he determined to create his own "wordless" novel. Upon his return to America, Ward completed his first book, ‘God's Man: A Novel in Woodcuts,’ published in 1929. ‘Gods’ Man’ was a great success for its author and publisher and was reprinted four times in 1930, including a British edition. This book and several which followed it, ‘Madman’s Drum,’ 1930, ‘Wild Pilgrimage...

Tête de Faune, Picasso, Unique work, 1960's, Terracotta, Tiles, Design, Sculptur Tête de faune Unique work 14.03.1961 Painted and glazed terracotta tile...

This remarkably fluid terracotta bozetto was made in preparation for Pietro Pacilli’s most important public commission, a large-scale marble statue of San Camillo de Lellis for the nave of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Expressively modelled, this terracotta sculpture is a rare and significant work made by a major Roman sculptor at a transformative moment of European sculpture. Pacilli began his working life on the great Baroque decorative projects initiated in the seventeenth century, but he found success as a restorer of ancient sculpture working to finish antiquities for a tourist market, becoming an important figure in the emergence of an archaeologically minded Neoclassicism. Pacilli trained Vincenzo Pacetti and provided important decorative work for the Museo Pio-Clementino, at the same time he is recorded restoring some of the most celebrated antiquities excavated and exported during the period. Pacilli was born into a family of Roman craftsmen, his father Carlo was a wood carver, and Pacilli is recorded working with him on the Corsini Chapel in San Giovanni Laternao as early as 1735. In 1738 his terracotta model of Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife won the first prize in the second class of the sculpture concorso at the Accademia di San Luca, this is particularly notable as Bartolomeo Cavaceppi came third. He worked as a carver and stuccoist completing works for the churches of San Marco and SS. Trinita dei Domeniciani Spagnoli. Pacilli operated as a sculptor and restorer of antiquities from his studio at the top of the Spanish Steps, close to Santa Trinita dei Monti, where he is listed as a potential vendor to the Museo Pio-Clementino in 1770. In 1763 Pacilli completed a silver figure of San Venanzio for the treasury of San Venanzio. He is recorded as Pacetti’s first master and it was evidently through Pacilli that he began to acquire his facility as a restorer of ancient sculpture. Pacilli, at his studio ‘poco prima dell’Arco della Regina alla Trinita dei Monti,’ exercised, what the nineteenth-century scholar, Adolf Michaelis called ‘rejuvenating arts’ on several important pieces of classical sculpture, including in 1760 the group of a Satyr with a Flute for the natural brother of George III, General Wallmoden, Hanovarian minister at Vienna. In 1765, Dallaway and Michaelis record that Pacilli was responsible for the restorations, including the addition of a new head, to the Barberini Venus which he had acquired from Gavin Hamilton. The Venus was then sold to Thomas Jenkins, who in turn passed it on to William Weddell at Newby Hall. In 1767 Pacilli exported a series of ancient busts ‘al naturale’ including portraits of Antinous, Julius Ceaser and Marus Aurelius, also a statue of a Muse and a Venus. As early as 1756 Pacilli seems to have been operating as an antiquarian, helping to disperse the collection of the Villa Borrioni. Pacilli supplied sculpture to notable British collectors, including Charles Townley, who on his first trip to Italy purchased the Palazzo Giustiniani statue of Hecate from Pacilli. Pacilli was involved with the Museo Pio Clementino from its conception, supplying busts of Julius Ceaser and a Roman Woman as well as completing stucco putti surmounting the arms of Pope Bendedict XIV to signal the entrance to the new Museo Critiano. In 1750 Il Diario Ordinario del Chracas announced that Pacilli had begun work on a sculpture of San Camillo de Lellis for St Peter’s. Camillo de Lellis founded his congregation, the Camillians, with their distinctive red felt crosses stitched on black habits in 1591. Having served as a soldier in the Venetian army, Camillo de Lellis became a novitiate of the Capuchin friars, he moved to Rome and established a religious community for the purpose of caring for the sick. In 1586 Pope Sixtus V formerly recognised the Camillians and assigned them to the Church of Santa Maria Maddalena in Rome. Camillo de Lellis died in 1614 and was entombed at Santa Maria Maddalena, he was canonised by Benedict XIV on June 26, 1746. It was an occasion that prompted the Camillians to make a number of significant artistic commissions, including two canvases by Pierre Subleyras showing episodes from San Camillo’s life which they presented to Benedict XIV. In 1750 Pacilli was commissioned to fill one of the large niches on the north wall of the nave with a sculpture of San Camillo. The present terracotta bozetto presumably had two important functions, to enable Pacilli to work out his ideas for the finished sculpture and at the same time to show his design to the various commissioning bodies. In this case it would have been Cardinal Alessandro Albani and Monsignor Giovan Francesco Olivieri, the ‘economo’ or treasurer of the fabric of St Peter’s. Previously unrecorded, this terracotta relates to a smaller, less finished model which has recently been identified as being Pacilli’s first idea for his statue of San Camillo. Preserved in Palazzo Venezia, in Rome, the terracotta shows San Camillo with his left hand clutching his vestments to his breast; the pose and action more deliberate and contained than the finished sculpture. In producing the present terracotta Pacilli has expanded and energised the figure. San Camillo is shown with his left hand extended, his head turned to the right, apparently in an attempt to look east down the nave of St Peter’s. The model shows Pacilli experimenting with San Camillo’s costume; prominently on his breast is the red cross of his order, whilst a sense of animation is injected into the figure through the billowing cloak which is pulled across the saint’s projecting right leg. The power of the restrained, axial contrapposto of bent right leg and outstretched left arm, is diminished in the final sculpture where a baroque fussiness is introduced to the drapery. What Pacilli’s terracotta demonstrates, is that he conceived the figure of San Camillo very much in line with the immediate tradition of depicting single figures in St Peter’s; the rhetorical gesture of dynamic saint, arm outstretched, book in hand, head pointed upwards was perhaps borrowed from Camillo Rusconi’s 1733 sculpture of St. Ignatius...

19th Century Italian School Grand Tour Bronze Sculpture of Dionysus, 19th Century Bronze with black-green patination 24 x 10 x 10 inches Dionysus, in Greco-Roman religion, a nature ...

Early 19th Century Italian School The Borghese Gladiator, c. 1810 Bronze with green patination 27 x 18 x 26 inches Since its discovery in the early seventeenth century, the Borghes...

This artwork titled "Tahiti" 1941 Is a original woodcut by noted French/German artist Wolfgang Wolff, 1909-1994. It is hand signed in pencil by the artist at the lower right corner, ...

Original color woodcut, 1994. Edition of 15 signed and numbered impressions on Arches paper. Živko Marušić is a Slovenian artist, born in Italy. He is best-known for his figurative p...

A good antique Italian Grand Tour Bronze and marble bust of Dante Alighieri, circa 1880. The bronze is most likely Florentine and mod...

Genre: Brazilian Art Deco, African Diaspora Bahian Carnival Subject: Abstract Medium: Print Surface: Paper Country: Brazil Dimensions of overall paper are listed. This is from a series of work he did in the 1940's, we sold one called Ritmo Negro, they are about Afro-Brazilian jazz, dance and music. Odetto Guersoni was born in the city of Jaboticabal, State of São Paulo, in 1924. From 1936 to 1941 he attended the Liceu de Artes de Ofícios in São Paulo, beginning his artistic career in 1945, when he exhibited paintings in the Hall of the Plastic Artists Union . Two years later he was part of the collective group of 19, alongside Aldemir, Charoux, Otavio Araújo, Grassmann, Maria Leontina and several other artists that time would make famous. He then practiced a figurative painting of accentuated Expressionist lauds, characterized by deformation and coloring, raw and Satirical- as, moreover, so many of his fellow exhibitors at the time. As a French government scholar, Odette Guerzoni went to Paris in 1947 and the following year took part in the Peintres et Graveurs Etrangers and Art Libre exhibitions. Student of engraving by Renê Cottet, gradually transformed this expressive medium into his favorite, to the detriment of painting, which he practically abandoned soon after. In 1947, he participated in the 19 Painters exhibition at the Prestes Maia Gallery together with Lothar Charoux, Maria Leontina,Grassmann, Aldemir Martins, Luiz Sacilotto and hiró. Guersoni was awarded a scholarship by the French government, and traveled to Paris, where he began work in engraving. Back in Brazil, in 1951, he founded the Art Workshop, in São Paulo. In 1954, he returned to Europe for a year, financed by the International Labor Organization (ILO). In Geneva, he studied engraving with René Cottet (1902 - 1992) and worked in Stanley william Hayter's studio, Atelier 17, in Paris (1901 - 1988). From 1956 to 1957, he became director of the Union of Plastic Artists of São Paulo. From 1960, he attended, as a trainee, some art schools in the United States and Japan such as The New York School of Printing and Osaka University. In 1971, also in Japan, he attended the workshop of I. Jokuriti. Two years later, he was voted Best Recorder of the Year by the Paulista Association of Art Critics - APCA. He took part in a special room at the Ibero-American Biennial in Montevideo in 1983. The Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo - Pesp presents a retrospective of his work in 1994. Odetto Guersoni explores the wide spectrum of possibilities of the engraving. In addition to using techniques such as metal etching, lithograph, serigraph, linocut and, especially, woodcut he developed, in the 1950s, the philigraphy, in which the forms he developed gained points of embroidery made by Bonadei (1906 - 1974) . And, in the 1960s, the plastigraphy, in which he makes engravings on pasty surfaces, obtained from gypsum or other soft material. In the 1970s, technical investigations were associated with pictographic, ideographic, archaic symbol searches, Brazilian cave paintings and plant forms. The drawings are reduced to stylized, geometric shapes and transformed into abstract graphic elements. The artist works with few matrices, which, organized in rectangles, squares or circles, become modules to be combined. Guersoni juxtaposes them, adds, changes colors, and thereby composes colorful mandalas and structural geometries. Based on concise compositions, it produces color vibrations through optical illusions. In many of his woodcut works of the 1980s he uses smooth wood, knives, saws, gouges, punches, avoiding the natural textures of wood. In printing, it leaves the vibrant color and employs dosed inks with colorless masses, obtaining transparencies by superpositions. New journeys of study and specialization in engraving techniques took him in 1954 to Switzerland, 1960 to the United States, and in 1966 to Germany and Austria. Today, after having performed more than 40 individuals including 16 abroad and having participated in more than 50 collectives in several countries, Guersoni is considered one of the most notable Brazilian engravers. Conquered awards in several shows. CHRONOLOGY Individual exhibitions 1946 - Sao Paulo SP - 10th Salon of the Artists' Union, at the Prestes Maia Gallery 1947 - São Paulo SP - 19 Painters, at the Prestes Maia Gallery 1948 - Paris France - Peintres et Graveurs Etrangers at the École des Beaux-Arts 1949 - São Paulo SP - 13th Salon of the Artists' Union, at the Prestes Maia Gallery 1951 - São Paulo SP - 1st Paulista Salon of Modern Art, at Prestes Maia Gallery - silver medal 1953 - São Paulo SP - 2nd International Biennial of São Paulo, at MAM / SP 1954 - São Paulo SP - 3rd Paulista Salon of Modern Art, in the Prestes Maia Gallery 1955 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 4th National Salon of Modern Art 1955 - Salvador BA - 5th Baiano Salon of Fine Arts, in Belvedere da Sé - honorable mention 1962 - São Paulo SP - Leirner Prize for Contemporary Art at the Folha Art Gallery - 1st printing award 1963 - Curitiba PR - 20th Salão Paranaense de Belas Artes, at the Public Library of Paraná 1963 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Individual, no MAM / RJ 1968 - Bradford England - First International Print Biennale 1970 - São Paulo SP - Antonio Henrique Amaral, Odetto Guersoni, Tomie Ohtake, Pedro Tort and Gerda Brentani, in the Alberto Bonfiglioli Gallery 1971 - São Paulo SP - 11th International Biennial of São Paulo, at the Biennial Foundation - acquisition award 1973 - Punta del Este Uruguay - 1st Engraving Meeting of the Prata Basin Countries - International Prize 1977 - São Paulo SP - The Groups: the 40's, at the Lasar Segall Museum 1982 - São Paulo SP - Ismenia Coaracy, Odetto Guersoni and Alice Brill...

Very rare Art Deco three dimensional terracotta sculpture of Adam and Eve by the Austrian artist, Virgil Rainer. Hand painted by the artist. Signed bott...

Set of 12 woodblock prints in colors on handmade, laid mulberry paper, 6 3/4 x 10 1/4 inches (170 x 258 mm), printed in Ka-ei 4 (1851). Each print with minor handling wear, otherwise in excellent condition with bright and fresh color, and with details printed in silver ink. The images themselves contain several illusive characters indicating the publisher which are obfuscated by figures, as intended. Presented loose, as issued. A fine set. The astrological commentary print has a large and meandering blind stamp with a bird and palm frond motif. This print lists various phrases concerning the Twelve Zodiac Animals as historically counted in Japan, and appears to include erotic commentary on the traits of people born under each of the twelve signs. These Shunga images were issued in books that paralleled (in an erotic fashion...