ANTONIO DE VITY - PARIS 1800

The urban landscape was already a popular subject in the Middle Ages and the Modern Age, but predominantly in an idealized manner. Scenes of city life became typical themes with a more realistic interpretation only starting in the 19th century. This type of subject, and specifically the city of Paris, consistently reflects the inclinations of the painter Antonio De Vity, whose artistic career is closely linked to Impressionism. Urban landscapes and scenes of city life are, in fact, typical themes of that pictorial movement, which originated and developed in the French capital. It is worth remembering that immediately following the realist movements of the 19th century, the Impressionists placed great emphasis on the everyday, on everyday life, with a certain predilection, however, for the modern aspects represented by the urban landscape: the frenzy of the city, the crowds, the traffic, and the typically bourgeois settings. The artist Antonio De Vity, throughout his career, has drawn on this aesthetic, even in the stylistic register he adopted.

The painting is a typical example of Antonio De Vity's oeuvre and was created with a remarkable Impressionist technique. The artist uses rapid, hatched brushstrokes to quickly delineate shapes and volumes. This allows him to capture, with every single brushstroke, the effects of light and atmosphere on objects, and to instantly convey a city scene with precise weather and environmental conditions. The entire color palette, from the street to the sky, is designed to reflect the precise atmospheric conditions being depicted. As with the Impressionists, the perspective grid is not eliminated; spatial depth is determined exclusively through color gradations. Delving into a more specifically formal analysis, we can appreciate the contemporary reworking of the Impressionist tradition: the advancing crowd, in an orderly fashion, introduces a subtle metaphysical undertone, typical of De Vity's urban views. This suggestion is corroborated by the artist's touch, who creates the subjects as trembling visions, reverberated by the reflections of the wet road surface.

Antonio De Vity is the pseudonym of Umberto Marone, born in Naples in 1901 and died in 1993. He began studying painting in his hometown, but his stay in Paris, where he attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts, was crucial to his development. Upon returning to Italy, he founded his own school, which became an important reference point for artists from the South.

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