A Contemporary Mantuan Collection

The unreadable signature does not allow us to definitively identify this author of a Central European school, probably Hungarian. But the collector has certainly chosen this work not for the celebrity of the painter, but for his ability to portray a still life in an almost clinical way. In fact, on the table covered with a white tablecloth, appear semblances of foods that seem far away from any set table. The artist was able to delicately, accurately and almost decadently portray the features of the vegetables, the gleam of the knife, the things trapped in the two glass jars, almost belonging to a natural school museum. Defining the detail and the species of the depicted objects is not important here. Instead, what matters is the skilful alternation between shadow and light and the progressive undoing of matter, almost happening directly under the gaze of the spectator. Thus, the picture is also an emblematic reflection of the relationship between death and life, following an illustrious and traditional theme of still life, which draws its distant origins from the dishes and food of the apostles during the Last Supper.

Daphne Maugham, niece of the famous writer Somerset Maugham, began to study painting in France adhering to the post-impressionist movement. After moving to Italy in 1925, she became a pupil of the great Casorati, who she later married and from whom she had a son, also a painter. If Felice Casorati is a sublime and atypical figure of the Italian artistic world, his wife Daphne articulates her own vast sensitivity in following the strokes of her husband in a more gentle way. Both have the ability to offer a clear view of the world, starting from domestic life yet reaching a subtle metaphysical abyss. The work that we see here represents Daphne’s talent well. A cup of coffee, a box of colors, a plate decorated with gentle colors, and a breakfast bowl with a splendidly blue interior. A roll of large sheets of paper, perhaps archived drawings, perhaps plans of a new creation. The mutual dialogue between the elements of the painting puts every detail in a position both isolated yet capable of reflecting the whole. This is the virtue of the Casorati: to trace universal harmony from an infinitesimal particle, and to represent it as thus.

Tadini was a born writer, publishing essays, novels and poems at a very young age. Already in the 1960s, he created his first paintings, a curious union of playful elements that come in part from English Pop Art, in part from the Italian Metaphysical School. His contribution to design and advertising is also noteworthy. As can be clearly seen in the picture that appears here, his essential inspiration is the world of dreams. Emerging from the white is a box of fruit of various kinds, as colorful as the table on which it stands is neutral. Around it, incongruously, pieces of hanging mannequins whirl around, following the rhythm of a propeller plane, perhaps a child's plaything, which ascends from the bottom to the top. Another graphic element are the red arrows, also pointing upwards, which seem to indicate an imaginary development, accentuating the dynamism of the composition. Remarkable is the harmony of the whole work, a subtle balance between irony and desire to represent the world in a flagrant way, choosing the same methods used in the images conveyed by the media.

An artist with a strong personality and incisive pictorial technique, Guida often presents works, sometimes deriving from antiquity, which immerse figures made with expressionist lines in a bath of colors, preferably red. In reality, his investigation is continuous and insistent, recently coming to a reinterpretation of baroque sentiment, intended as an exhibition of amazement and wonder. In the work presented here, the dialectic between the dark background and the woman's body is made even more intense by the presence of tattoos that mark her body. In detail, the large head of an Indian chief traversing her feminine back alludes to a movement towards the exotic that, conversely, the static nature of the whole seems to deny. The choice of the contrast between red and black not only evokes passionate suggestions, but also has the power to suspend the image within a sort of theater of cruelty, in which the subject's recognizability disappears in the loss of every minimal reference to a particular physiognomy.

The artist defines himself as a scientist, rebelling against the idea of ​​suffering a work of art. This statement gives an account of his ability to invent a universe that has certain dreamlike characteristics, but which on the other hand contains in itself an aspect of total control, a fantastic underlying geometry. The interplay between shreds of the common landscape and signs of an other presence, which the painter intercepts and transposes, can also be found in the work here: probably it is a lake surrounded by mountains, made non-diaphanous yet essential by a persistent, yellow drying. It is interrupted by a lattice, however, evident in the reflection on the right, which seems to submit to nature, revealing itself almost sideways. This dialogue between the existential impoverishment of vision and the structural strength of detail is one of the most vivid aspects of Pusole's research, an artist who is simultaneously multifaceted and intent on absorbing every aspect of communication, transforming it without remedy into the Other.

The universe of the Andalusian artist is certainly based on the reinterpretation of the human figure, particularly the human face. The face appears in many cases disfigured in its essence or ironically disturbed, whether it is a reinterpretation of famous masters of the past, or a face that is distorted by an expressionist grimace. In reality, Ydàñez's ability lies in showing a perfect appearance, which is however betrayed and denied by a liquid brushstroke, capable of dissolving the superficial features he is depicting. Thus, in this vast canvas, the almost desperate accent of the young man who shows himself, immobile and perplexed, is confirmed by the large, dark under-eye circles that become almost a mask, and by his lips soiled by a kind of gray lipstick.