ROME.- Ponti Art Gallery is offering important masterpieces coming from several private collections gathered in the usual monthly exhibition aimed to the sale. The selection starts from a wax sculpture, made by Medardo Rosso, a great master of the past, known for his cosmopolitan vocation (he stayed for a long time in Paris, working side by side with Degas and Rodin and exhibited in London, Vienna, and at the Universal Exhibition of 1889) and for his attention to the world of childhood. The work presented by Ponti Art Gallery is part of the corpus of children’s heads that Rosso was able to model during his career. In particular, this wax is dedicated to Tilde Favai, sister of the Venetian painter Gennaro Favai (1879-1958), friend of the sculptor. With Tilde Favai (twice this name is engraved on wax) Rosso tied a correspondence starting in 1913, so it is conceivable that the work dates back at least to this date or a few years later.

The further important artwork offered by Roman gallery is a little odd painting depicted by Arthur von Ferraris, He has his roots in his passion for oriental atmospheres on a training trip completed in 1884, perhaps the most important journey inside of his career: it is, in fact, in the winter of 1884-85 that von Ferraris went to Egypt with his friend Ludwig Deutsch, an Austrian painter residing in Paris. The two artists returned to the French capital with a rich repertoire of drawings, sketches and photographs. The enchantment resulting from the encounter with oriental customs and settings led Arthur to return to Egypt in 1892. Coming from this second trip to the land of the pharaohs, he created the opera ‘Le Caire 1892’, a painting he presented at the Salon des Artistes Français in Budapest with the title “The wise monkey”. It is a delightful anecdotal painting that represents a typical glimpse of Cairo with numerous characters gathered around the trained monkey that entertains children and adults. It is from this extraordinary painting that the protagonist of the work presented here comes: the monkey in the center of the aforementioned composition becomes, in this study probably preliminary to the definition of the large format painting, the optical and chromatic fulcrum of the small table that stands out his yellow and green diamond-patterned shirt, the rattle cap, the bell tied to the bonnet, the striped pants.

The selection of the proposal displayed by Ponti Art Gallery continues with a wonderful bronze sculpture sculptor Giovanni Prini. The group of children, entitled “The secret of the children”, marked by a feeling of tenderness and delicate humanity, very well guessed in the serious attitudes of those little men, all of them who mysteriously form a knot, confessing to each other grave fact, in the intimacy of an innocent complicity. No frills animate this small group – whose first version was exhibited by Prini at the LXXIII International Exhibition of Fine Arts of the Amatori e Cultori Society of Rome in 1903-, no romantic lie transpires from this celebration of childhood, of its innocence and its intimate sweetness, picked by the sculptor’s hand with precision and refinement.

Others important artwork dated to the first decades of the 20th century complete the exhibition: two works on paper by Giacomo Balla; an oil entitled “The third eye” by Mario Pucciarelli and a vinyl on canvas by Carla Accardi. In her work, coming from the serie of “Parentesi”, she pushes its compositions towards the edges of the canvas, almost as if to capture the phenomenological experience of the space that deviates and expands. Its forms fluctuate in space with vibrant energy, while color in its chromatic interactions is examined scientifically, in the exciting visual provocation of an intense luminosity, or tiny flashes.