By Marco Sassone
Located in Soquel, CA
A beautiful and rare double-sided watercolor by the prolific contemporary Italian painter Marco Sassone (Italian, b.1942). In this early work, created in 1969, Sassone depicts two different sunset harbor scenes on each side of the paper. On the front, the artist uses a warm color palette of orange and yellow hues to depict a glowing sunset illuminating boats in a harbor. A second view of the harbor with small boats in the foreground on verso. Sassone's signature painterly impressionistic brushstrokes can be seen in the way the artist depicts the water in both watercolors.
Signed and dated on verso, "M. Sassone 69".
Displayed in a dark wood frame with mat.
Image size: 10.5"H x 17"W.
“One of the foremost colorists working in America today, Sassone is an artist who developed his own personal, expressive vision early in his career, and who has steadfastly remained faithful to it while refining and developing it to the full power and maturity that is seen in his works today.”Janet Dominik, Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, 1988.
Marco Sassone was born in Campi Bisenzio, a Tuscan village, in 1942. The family moved to Florence in 1954, and there he met painters Ottone Rosai and Ugo Maturo, who encouraged him to follow his interest in art. In 1959 he enrolled at the Istituto Galileo Galilei, where he studied architectural drafting for several years. In 1963 he studied with painter Silvio Loffredo, a professor of art at the Accademia in Florence, himself a pupil of the Austrian master Oskar Kokoschka.
Loffredo encouraged him to develop his own style and vision. For inspiration, Sassone studied the works of the 19th century Italian impressionists, the Macchiaioli – Giovanni Fattori, Vito D’Ancona and Silvestro Lega. He began exhibiting his first works at Lo Sprone Cultural Center in Florence.
In November 1967, soon after the flood had devastated his city, Sassone moved to California. He exhibited for the first time in the United States at the Dalzell-Hatfield Galleries in Los Angeles and became a regular exhibitor at the annual Festival of the Arts in Laguna Beach.
Throughout the seventies, he exhibited extensively in the U.S. and abroad. In 1976 he collaborated with director John Wilson to produce an autobiographical documentary. The following year his work was exhibited at the National Academy of Design in New York. Marco Sassone received a gold medal in 1978 from the Italian Academy of Arts, Literature and Science. In 1979 the monograph Sassone by art historian Donelson Hoopes was published in concurrence with the artist’s exhibition at the Laguna Art Museum. With prescience, Hoopes had observed: “Sassone’s art has evolved from within, and such an organic, psychological and spiritual process may take his work along new and unforeseen paths.”
In 1981 Sassone moved his studio to San Francisco. During the 80’s his exhibition schedule continued along with his numerous lectures. In 1982 Marco Sassone was knighted by the president of Italy, Sandro Pertini, into the “Order of the Merit of the Italian Republic”. In 1987 Sassone received a commendation from Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley for his “contribution to the community through his art.” In March 1988, the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery mounted his solo exhibition titled Sassone with the publication of a catalogue authored by Janet Dominik. The show travelled to Paris and was installed at the historic Bernheim-Jeune Gallery for the month of April.
By the late eighties, the artist had become increasingly concerned with social themes. He began extensive and personal research on the homeless and painted a series of large canvasses and charcoal drawings portraying the life he observed on the streets of San Francisco. A number of these works were exhibited at the Chicago International Art Exposition, the Basel Art Fair in Switzerland, Body Politic at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery and Issue of Choice at the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibition (LACE).
In March of 1994, his exhibition “Home on the Streets” opened at the Museo ItaloAmericano in San Francisco. Kenneth Baker, art critic for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote about his work: “There is true technical brilliance here…In the drawings, his technique seems to discover fresh descriptive possibilities each time out.” The exhibition traveled to Los Angeles in 1996 and Florence, Italy in 1997, where it was installed in the Cloisters of the Santa Croce Church. Paola Bortolotti, art critic for La Nazione, wrote: “The persistent theme however does not carry a denunciation of a social problem, but it is rather the pretext to pour forth onto canvas the urgency of the brush strokes loaded with pigment and light.”
In 1997 Marco Sassone received a commission to create a 200 square foot mural in downtown San Francisco. The finished work comprised five canvasses dedicated to the theme of Il Palio...
Category
1960s Impressionist Marco Sassone Art
MaterialsPaper, Watercolor
