Fausto Pirandello (1899-1975)
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Fausto Pirandello (1899-1975)

La lettera

Details
Fausto Pirandello (1899-1975)
La lettera
signed and dated 'Pirandello 29' (lower centre); incised with the signature and date twice 'Pirandello 29' (along the lower edge)
oil on board
27 1/8 x 21in. (68.8 x 53.2cm.)
Painted in 1929
Provenance
Galleria dello Zodiaco, Rome.
Domenico Maselli, Belluno, by 1956.
Anon. sale, Finarte Milan, 28 October 1987, lot 187.
Exhibited
Venice, XXVIII Biennale Internazionale d'Arte di Venezia, room XLLIX, 1956, no. 280, p. 246.
Jerusalem, The Israel Museum, Natura morta Italiana: Italian Still Life Painting from Four Centuries, June-October 1994, no. 54 (illustrated, p. 123).
Tokyo, Seiji Togo Memorial Yasuda Kasai Museum of Art, Italian Still Life Painting, April-May 2001, no. 61 (illustrated, p. 99). This exhibition later travelled to Niigata City, Art Museum, June-July 2001; Hokkaido, Hakodate Museum of Art, July-September 2001; Toyama, Toyama Shimin Plaza Art Gallery, October 2001; Ashikaga, Museum of Art, November-December 2001 and Yamagata, Museum of Art, April-May 2002.
Ravensburg, Schloss Achberg, Natura morta italiana: Italienische Stilleben aus vier Jahrhunderten, April-October 2003, no. 83.
Special notice
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Lot Essay

Painted in 1929, La lettera shows what appears to be an intimate, cluttered corner of Fausto Pirandello's own world. The artist has shown various items of correspondence - what seems to comprise of the eponymous letter, a parcel, a newspaper scattered on a table. The scene has been painted from a steep angle, looking down. This leads to a sense of confinement, while also introducing an intense subjectivity, as the corner of the room is shown from what we assume is the artist's own perspective. The picture is filled with a concentrated amount of detail. And the density of the material of the artist's own life is reflected in the density of the oils with which it has been rendered. In La lettera, Pirandello has given form to an aspect, perhaps even a moment, of his own life. The undulating, carefully and expressionistically worked surface hints at both the emotions of the artist and at his lending them painterly flesh.

Pirandello was associated with many of the artists of his time, not least during his years in Paris. He was on good terms with artists in the 'loose group' of Pittura Metafisica and also later with the Scuola Romana. However, his paintings were always uncompromisingly his own, striking their own unique, uniquely expressive path. The Metafisica atmosphere that sometimes is apparent in his paintings has a darker, more personal quality than in the works of his contemporaries, and this is emphasised by the sheer materiality of the oils. It is perhaps because of these qualities, as evidenced in pictures such as La lettera, that Pirandello had his first one-man exhibition in the same year that it was painted. This was held in Paris, and was the first of many exhibitions which would show his works to an ever-increasing and international audience. In this context, it is a testimony to the quality - and perhaps even to the personal content - of La lettera that it was exhibited at the XXVIII Venice Biennale, during the artist's own lifetime.

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