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Alberto Morrocco, R.S.A., R.S.W. (1917-1998)

Little Nude with Fruits

Details
Alberto Morrocco, R.S.A., R.S.W. (1917-1998)
Little Nude with Fruits
signed and dated 'Morrocco/96' (upper right), signed again and inscribed 'LITTLE NUDE WITH/FRUITS/ALBERTO MORROCCO R.S.A (on a label attached to the frame)
oil on board
23½ x 29¼ in. (59.7 x 74.3 cm.)
Provenance
with Thackeray Gallery, London, where purchased by Elaine Mather on 19th June 1997 and by descent to the present owner.
Special notice
No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

Morrocco was born in Aberdeen in 1917 of immigrant Italian parents. He studied at Gray's School of Art, Aberdeen where he was a pupil of James Cowie and Robert Sivell, and was himself to become head of painting at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee.

His Italian origins and regular trips to Italy since the 1950s have influenced his use of colour and subject matter. Morrocco comments on his choice of the female figure in his works: 'I naturally have evolved a type which is heavy built - a female form which is fulsome - and the reason for that is not simply because you see them all the time abroad, but because they fill the space: you get a fulsome coloured shape of a certain bulk on the canvas - it actually gives a lot to work with ... Picasso makes things heavy - he makes hands big and he makes legs thick. I started to see this in actual reality in peasant women in Italy. My mother was built like that a little bit. Every so often I have noticed in the figures that there is a kind of echo of my mother. So it's a mixture of two things - it is a mixture of an aesthetic use of a bulky shape as well as actually being a sympathetic female form' (V. Keller and C. Clark, Alberto Morrocco, Touring Exhibition Catalogue, Edinburgh, 1993, p. 50).

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