Waiting Room (dyptic) Old Hospital Guests

The production of Ettore Beraldini is oriented from the beginning towards a realistic narration of the daily life of the "last". It is in hospices and asylums that the artist studies the tormented subjects of his paintings. The themes addressed (illness, madness, social exclusion) bring him closer to German Expressionism, of which he also takes up a pictorial sign full of emotional intensity. In his works the nervous figures of the elderly, while taking up the symbolist figure of the secessions, are softened by the tonalism of the Venetian tradition and Savini’s influence. The diptych entitled "Waiting room", consisting of "Transporting a dead person through the courtyard" and "Old hospital guests", which the artist presents at the 11th International Art Exhibition of the City of Venice in 1914, is an extraordinary example of the first artistic phase of Beraldini.