Flower pots

Massimo Campigli is an artist with a double life. Born in Berlin to a very young German mother, who long disguised her state even in the eyes of her son, his real name was Max Ihlenfeldt. Even from early childhood, however, he lived in Florence. Italy would always be his country of choice, despite the many and varied trips that would take him to Paris for a long time, in two distinct periods. Famous for his inventions of metaphysical character, in which appear series of stylized women and girls, with vague Etruscan or archaic Greek feelings, he aims to form a kind of pattern that lives on the variations of the individual elements. Campigli has in fact two fundamental qualities: an ability to stylize and a musicality in his composition. This gives him an important and strongly distinguished role in Italian painting between the wars and the post-war period. In the work that we admire here, the large carafe is resolved in a slightly cubist way, partly because it is mirrored by the smaller vase. The still life is expressed on the basis of essential lines, which break down the planes of vision and make it real. The author’s ability of synthesis is seen in every detail, but especially in the drafting of the same flowers, which are transformed into geometric groupings capable of offering a profound balance to the design.