La Mediterranea

Prolific throughout the 1960s and 1970s, artist Leo Guida was an influential Italian painter and printmaker. 

Beginning in 1969, Guida served as a teacher for nearly two decades at the Liceo Artistico in Latina. While he worked with watercolor paints to create much of his known art, he produced a wide range of graphic prints that is representative of his talents.

Guida worked with Chinese ink and was fluent in a variety of printmaking techniques, which included chalcography, engraving and aquatint. The latter is a technique named for its resemblance to watercolor or ink wash, while engraving is a method of making prints by incising lines into a metal plate with a sharp tool called a burin. Chalcography sees an artist engraving on copper or brass plates.

Guida made art in all kinds of styles over the course of his career. The bulk of his drawings and etchings are richly detailed and fantastical — they feature nudes, imagery from nature and depictions of mythological creatures. Guida’s works on paper show the influence of Spanish printmaker and painter Francisco Goya and are also inclusive of Surrealist flourishes and themes. 

Find original Leo Guida drawings and watercolors, prints and paintings on 1stDibs.

Used to refer to a time rather than an aesthetic, Contemporary art generally describes pieces created after 1970 or being made by living artists anywhere in the world. This immediacy means it encompasses art responding to the present moment through diverse subjects, media and themes. Contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, performance, digital art, video and more frequently includes work that is attempting to reshape current ideas about what art can be, from Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s use of candy to memorialize a lover he lost to AIDS-related complications to Jenny Holzer’s ongoing “Truisms,” a Conceptual series that sees provocative messages printed on billboards, T-shirts, benches and other public places that exist outside of formal exhibitions and the conventional “white cube” of galleries.

Contemporary art has been pushing the boundaries of creative expression for years. Its disruption of the traditional concepts of art are often aiming to engage viewers in complex questions about identity, society and culture. In the latter part of the 20th century, contemporary movements included Land art, in which artists like Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer create large-scale, site-specific sculptures, installations and other works in soil and bodies of water; Sound art, with artists such as Christian Marclay and Susan Philipsz centering art on sonic experiences; and New Media art, in which mass media and digital culture inform the work of artists such as Nam June Paik and Rafaël Rozendaal.

The first decades of the 21st century have seen the growth of Contemporary African art, the revival of figurative painting, the emergence of street art and the rise of NFTs, unique digital artworks that are powered by blockchain technology.

Major Contemporary artists practicing now include Ai Weiwei, Cecily Brown, David Hockney, Yayoi Kusama, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Kara Walker.

Find a collection of Contemporary prints, photography, paintings, sculptures and other art on 1stDibs.