Corbellani's Collection

This work is not directly attributable to Bernardo Strozzi, but must be placed in his context. Strozzi, called Il Cappuccino or Il Prete Genovese, was an anomalous artist in the Ligurian country. Considered a master of pictorialism, he was actually a tormented character, often in conflict with the ecclesiastical hierarchies. The figure of Mary i beautiful, especially for the expression of the face, worried and attentive. The artist successfully portrays a young woman, perhaps modeled using the features of one humble neighbor. More conventional are the moods of the two children, who occupy the central and left part of the canvas with their large bodies.

Giovanni Francesco is the son of Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, known as Il Grechetto, a famous artist from the Genoese school who moved with his family in the fifties of the seventeenth century to the city of Gonzaga, and here remained until his death as a court painter. If Grechetto is a master in drawing and engraving, Giovanni Francesco follows him with less grace, using a more saturated palette of colors in fairly conventional ways. Here we see a very important biblical episode in which Abraham chooses the virgin Rebecca as the future wife of his son Isaac, offering gifts to honor her purity. The figures stand out against the landscape that surrounds them. Accensions of color identify the dress of the young, while in the background nature seems to crown the characters. The canvas is pleasant and shows in some details the well-known vivacity of the paternal touch, a common feature of the whole Genoese school.

Mutzner was a Romanian painter of Jewish ancestry, very famous in his time for having embarked on a path of study that led him to share two years of work in Giverny, alongside Claude Monet. After spending part of his life in South America, he dedicated himself to painting the work of the fields with his wife, also a painter. Sanctioned for his ideas during and after World War II, he spent his last years very secluded. His art is therefore of Impressionist origin, although he tends to overlap the brush stroke, passing from the original pointillism to finally expressionist results. The great technical skill of Mutzner is revealed in this work, which shows a church and a village in Vetheuil, a small french city in Val-d'Oise, often depicted in Monet's famous masterpieces. Here the stretch is vibrant, although more composed than the paintings of the great master. The light appears almost extinguished, and the way of treating the trees, from which the first leaves are germinating, denounces the mitteleuropean origin of the author.

In this splendid and great work, Vindizio, who has already entered in the most mature phase of his art, shows us two girls who try to raise the big pumpkins that stand out above their flowered dresses. Vindizio frequented Paris for a long time, and here he learned not only the lesson of impressionism but also that of post-impressionism, to which he was always linked. His art exalts the liveliness of the daily appearance, even if resigned and provincial. In this sense, painting always wins and shows how powerful it is to create an image that moves away from its subject to reach our eye in the happy freedom of an invention.

 

Del Bon was the leader of the Chiarismo. He had a long friendship with Lilloni, Spilimbergo and De Amicis, representing with them the Milan branch of the expressive tendency that, as the name says, enlightens the palette. In particular, in this context Del Bon denounces his progressive approach to a kind expression, almost Chagallian, which consumes the figures. The hand which touches the strings of the violin composes an almost musical construction that has its center in the face, schematic yet rich in happy intimacy. Around, things sail behind the character, counterpointing with different colors never banal the beauty of her green dress.

In the intense creative career of Sermidi this work of the Sixties is an example of abstract expressionism. Certainly, the fundamental reference of this phase is Jackson Pollock, but the Mantuan artist  constructs a dense draft of signs more methodical than the results of the great master. We can recognize a diagonal intention that runs through the canvas from the top right to the bottom left, thickening a cloud of traces that recalls also the sublime experience of Tancredi. Thus, in Sermidi exacteness is combined with energy, and the stubbornness of the research comes to an intermediate but definitive result, exposing a remarkable substance of expression.

 

Multiform artist, who sees his own training also develop in the theater, Bargoni is the founder in the sixties of the group Tempo 3. The intent was to propose, in the vast universe of abstract painting, a new declination of figures. As this work demonstrates, Bargoni's fundamental attitude is directed towards color, which bursts onto the canvas in an almost violent way, governed and frozen through sudden flashes and strong waves of dark matter. The picture portrays the emotion, which flies from the intellect to the chromatic matter without interruptions and without explanations. So, the conflict between the magnificent yellow and the white on which this brightness is deposited generates microcosms and islands crossed by a refined and vibrant sign.