copyright Osvaldo Licini - SIAE 2018 – courtesy Peggy Guggeneheim Collection
Peggy Guggenheim Collection
Osvaldo Licini - Let Sheer Folly Sweep Me Away
“He who seeks certainty rarely finds it.”
Osvaldo Licini
Osvaldo Licini
At the twenty-ninth Venice Biennale in 1958, an artist from the Italianregion of the Marches, Osvaldo Licini (1894–1958) was awarded the Grand Prize for painting, a homage to one of the most original and elusive personalities of the Italian art scene of the first half of the twentieth century. Sixty years after that important recognition and his death, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection commemorates the great master with the long-awaited retrospective Osvaldo Licini - Let Sheer Folly Sweep Me Away, until January 14, curated by Luca Massimo Barbero.
http://www.guggenheim-venice.it/inglese/exhibitions/licini/index.html
Osvaldo Licini - A Character and the Moon - 1949
Olio su tela / Oil on canvas - 27,5 × 36 cm
Private collection - Rome
copyright Osvaldo Licini - SIAE 2018 – courtesy Peggy Guggeneheim Collection
Osvaldo Licini - Self-portrait - 1913
Oil on cardboard - 37 x 29 cm
Collection Lorenzo Licini
Nude – 1925 - Nude – 1926 - Portrait of Nanny– 1925
Oil on canvas
copyright Osvaldo Licini - SIAE 2018 – courtesy Peggy Guggeneheim Collection
Osvaldo Licini - Landscape of the Marches (The Trough)
1928 - reworked1942 - oil on canvas - 64 x 80,5 cm
Collection Silvia Poli Licini
The exhibition retraces the disruptive and tormented artistic path of Licini, whose career was characterized by moments of crisis and seemingly sudden stylistic changes. It intends to convey the substantial coherence of this path. Apparent breaks are actually the stages of a singular experience that stand out in the history of twentieth-century art for their absolute lyricism and poetry.
Osvaldo Licini – Study for Imaginary Landscape (Billy Goat) 1927 - pencil on paper
The exhibition begins with his first figurative phase of the 1920s, inspired by the landscapes of the Marches, those hills to which Licini consistently returned in his painting. These views with their curved horizon line are the background in the subsequent transition from figuration to abstraction of the early 1930s, seen in Imaginary Landscape (Billy Goat) from 1927.
Composition: Twilight – 1932 – Nocturne -1932-33 - Composition No.1
oil on canvas
Lucio Fontana – Abstract Sculpture – 1934
iron – black paint on bronze base
Osvaldo Licini – Bird 2 – ca.1936
Enamel on board
In the 1930s Licini turned to nonfigurative work and partook in the cultural ferment of 1930s Milan, the driving force of Italian Abstraction and Rationalism. It was inevitable that he would become involved in the activities of the Galleria Il Milione. Licini’s abstract language is atypical, attentive to geometry. It is a geometry that is permeated with lyricism and turned into sentiment. Such a particular stance could only attract equally sophisticated collectors and the interest of many Italian intellectuals.
Archipainting – 1937
Oil on canvas
copyright Osvaldo Licini - SIAE 2018 – courtesy Peggy Guggeneheim Collection
Osvaldo Licini – Tasting - 1934-36
Oil on canvas - 22,8 X 27,6 cm
Collection Augusto and Francesca Giovanardi
A Large Character – 1945 – A Character – 1946
Flying Dutchman – Blue - ca.1944
Licini’s career and masterpieces dedicated to the Flying Dutchmen, Amalasunthas, and Rebel Angels hang in “unstable balance” (the title and subject of various works of the 1930s) between abstraction and representation. Licini’s most iconic works are those dedicated to the subject of Amalasuntha, presented as a group at the Venice Biennale in 1950.
Photo Alvise Aspesi - copyright Osvaldo Licini - SIAE 2018 – courtesy
Peggy Guggeneheim Collection
Osvaldo Licini – Amalasuntha No. 1 - 1949
Oil on canvas – 81 x 100 cm
Maramotti Collection – Reggio Emilia
The numerous Amalasuntha paintings on exhibit present the many facets of Licini’s personality, from the lyrical and contemplative side to the more ironic and irreverent one. In the works created since the late 1940s, themes, styles, and unresolved thoughts on painting all converge and make Licini emerge as a great protagonist of Italian and international modernism, as confirmed by the award conferred a few months before his death at the Venice Biennalein 1958.
“Amalasuntha is our beautiful moon, guaranteed silver for eternity, personified in few words,
friend to every weary heart”
Osvaldo Licini
Amalasuntha No.3 – 1950 – Great Friend No.2 – 1948-50
Amalasuntha on a Red Background – 1950
oil on canvas
copyright Osvaldo Licini - SIAE 2018 – courtesy Peggy Guggeneheim Collection
Osvaldo Licini - The Snowman - 1952
Oil on canvas - 25.5 x 32.5 cm – frame - 47 x 55 x 7,5 cm
Private collection
copyright Osvaldo Licini - SIAE 2018 – courtesy Peggy Guggeneheim Collection
Osvaldo Licini - Rebel Angel with a Red Heart -1953
oil on canvas - 88 x 116 cm
Private collection
copyright Osvaldo Licini - SIAE 2018 – courtesy Peggy Guggeneheim Collection
photograph courtesy Peggy Guggeneheim Collection
Osvaldo Licini - Castle in the Air - 1933-1936
mixed media on canvas - 66,7 x 90,2 cm
Collection Augusto and Francesca Giovanardi
Peggy Guggenheim at the twenty-ninth Venice Biennale- 1958 in front of a work by Osvaldo Licini
Curator Luca Massimo Barbero and Karole Vail director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection
The Canal Grande and the Accademia Bridge
from the terrace of Palazzo Venier dei Leoni
