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carlo bonomi
carlo bonomi, grazing goats

About the Item

Carlo Bonomi (Turbigo, 1880-1961) Flock of sheep Oil on canvas, 32 x 63 Framed, 51 x 82 cm Born in Turbigo in the Ticino Valley, Carlo Bonomi attended the Brera Academy of Fine Arts at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and later took various courses at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts between 1905 and 1907, In the German sphere, the young artist, a native of the Milanese province, came into contact with the works of the masters Von Stuck, Lembach and Kollwitz. The artist's stay in Rome is also dated to the beginning of the twentieth century. Returning to Milan after his Roman trip, Bonomi opened a studio in the Lombard capital along with Carrà, Castiglioni, and Barilli that soon became a major cultural landmark. Having enlisted as a volunteer in World War I, he served in the front lines in Cadore and on Monte Grappa; the wartime experience strongly marked the artist's imagination, who, between the 1910s and 1930s, portrayed the tragedies and sufferings of soldiers and civilians at war: an example of this tendency coincides with The Prisoners of Mauthausen, a painting executed between 1922 and 1923 and first presented at the 1924 Exhibition of Ex-Combatants in Monza within which the artist perfectly expresses his rebellion and his total distance from the brutality of the conflict. Bonomi was inspired, especially in the early years of his long career, by the late nineteenth-century models of the most celebrated members of the Lombard Divisionist circle, first and foremost Gaetano Previati, Giovanni Segantini, and Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, reinterpreted in a sober and plastic key. Exemplary of this trend is a painting such as Sinfonia pastorale: the work, which takes its cue from Segantini's The Two Mothers at the GAM in Milan, picks up on the theme of the mother nursing her baby in her lap amid the warmth of the sheep at dawn. Beginning in the second half of the 1910s, Bonomi devoted himself mainly to sculpture, which became, from this time on, the most continuous form of his artistic expression. His sculptural works can be found in different public places and cemeteries or in private collections, including: the Monumental Cemetery in Milan or those in Busto Arsizio, Gallarate and Turbigo, as well as the public gardens in Novara. His most famous plastinated work, however, is certainly La Mater: this bronze, made in 1915 and later perfected between 1923 and 1948, depicts a woman in the act of clutching her infant to her in an intense emotional exchange. The work was first presented at the First Exhibition of the "Novecento Italiano," held at the Permanente in Milan in 1926 and supported and animated by Margherita Sarfatti: in the same year, the sculpture was exhibited at the Dresden exhibition and was purchased by the German government to be placed in the Palace of Ministries in Berlin. Such work makes Bonomi "an absolute sculptor, in whom essence and existence coincide, thus placing him among the great sculptors of the twentieth century whose formal integrity is almost unique and finds the perfect balance between painting and sculpture, with the same ideal continuity affirmed by Michelangelo" (V. Sgarbi, Il Novecento, vol. 1, 2018, pp. 158-165). Bonomi is also known for his work as an architect: well-known are the restoration operations implemented to his design at the Turbigo Castle and the Broletto in Novara. In the 1920s, Bonomi built in his image and likeness, in his native village, his hermitage, La Selvaggia, whose name was inspired by "Selvatico è chi si salva"-a famous saying by Leonardo Da Vinci-in which he carried out his painting and sculpture studies. The structure conforms as a true stone citadel, at which, even today, his works are collected and where, in the Gipsoteca, hinged on the one in Possagno by Canova, it is possible to admire the plaster casts of his sculptures. A recognized Italian and international artistic heritage, the residence, preserved and inhabited by Bonomi's successors, still conveys the message of an artist who never cared about fashions, currents, but whose inspiration was always the humanity of people, the strength of work, the freedom of his own expression. This painting, with its somber tones and fragmented, pointillist-inspired brushwork, features an elderly woman leading a flock of sheep to graze in a cold, misty dawn. The rustic atmospheres hark back to Giovanni Segantini's pictorial pieces, with particular reference to the 1887 Walking Flock. Instead, the female figure is reminiscent of those of German Käthe Kollwitz's early postwar peasant women. The item is in good condition
  • Creator:
    carlo bonomi (1880 - 1961)
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 12.6 in (32 cm)Width: 24.81 in (63 cm)
  • More Editions & Sizes:
    cm 32x63Price: $1,864
  • Medium:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Milan, IT
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU2639215520482

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