ROME.- Ottocento 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 an oil on canvas, made by Carlo La Barbera, Garibaldi's fight in Sicily, example of historical Italian painting dedicated to one of the heroes of Resurgence. The second important artwork offered by Ottocento Art Gallery is a remarkable oil by a Pugliese painter active in the second part of the 19th century, Enrico Castellaneta. In this painting, the main character is the landscape of Capri.
The selection of the proposal displayed by Ottocento Art Gallery continues with a wonderful still life by Giuseppe Ar depicting Plate of tomatoes, basket and jug on the table. Always among the Italian paintings there is also an Homage to Van Gogh by Andrea Figari and a female portrait by Francesco Longo Mancini. Others important paintings complete the exhibition, such as a view of Venice depicted by Emma Ciardi. Emma Ciardi was born in Venice and received her artistic training from her father Guglielmo Ciardi. Her brother Beppe was also an artist. All three specialised in Impressionistic views of Venice, in a style reminiscent of the Macchiaioli artists who pioneered plein air painting in Italy in the 19th Century.
The selection of 20th century artworks closes the exhibition, with artworks by Ferruccio Vecchi, Franco Angeli and Cesare Tacchi. In particular, Studio 44 still life is a wonderful example of artistic research conducted by Tacchi who with his performance entitled Cancellation of the Artist, presented at La Tartaruga in the course of the Teatro delle Mostre festival in May 1968, chose action as his form of expression: behind a transparent sheet of glass, he gradually "cancelled" out his own image by applying a layer of paint to the diaphragm separating him from his audience. On the other hand, Dollar (1968), multiple in black methacrylate diameter 70 cm, is an important proof of the interests which lead the art by Franco Angeli. After a beginning influenced by Burri’s art, Franco Angeli realizes works in which to the canvas alternate cotton gauze stained with paint, from which emerge images and symbols of the power and violence of ancient and modern, such as imperial eagles, swastikas, capitoline wolves (“Capitoline wolf head” of 1964), sickle and hammer, crosses and Dollars (“Half Dollar” 1966-67), which emphasize the theme of memory. Angels becomes one of the main exponents of the famous Piazza del Popolo school, constituted by the same author together with Mario Schifano and Tano Festa, with whom he shares a long and fruitful path that will lead them to become the leading exponents of Italian Pop Art.
