From Giovanni De Martino - Neapolitan street urchin

Portraiture is one of the most widespread artistic expressions, especially in painting, but also in sculpture, throughout the ages. Portraiture is, first and foremost, a description of the subject depicted, an attempt to capture their physiognomy and individual characteristics truthfully and naturally. With the progressive evolution of artistic research, the physiognomic description of the subject has also been accompanied by a psychological one. Therefore, over the centuries, portraiture has also become a means of introspective investigation of the subject, their character, and their state of mind. The processes of abstraction brought about by contemporary art have contributed to this type of investigation.

The work impeccably showcases the style of Giovanni De Martino, a sculptor who fundamentally draws on a classical approach. In his works, he respects, above all, the natural truth of his subjects. He does so with remarkable sculptural technique, which allows him to precisely depict the subject's physiognomic details. This is a fundamental characteristic of De Martino's aesthetic, which can undoubtedly be defined as realist. The artist seeks the natural truth of his subject without any filter or idealization, even focusing on unattractive details or introducing elements indicative of their social status. It is a type of sculpture that is unafraid to represent the truth, even that of the less well-off segments of the population.

The sculpture was made from a model by Giovanni De Martino, a Neapolitan sculptor born in 1870 and died in 1935, but who was very active in Paris. He trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in his hometown, and his teachers were Stanislao Lista, Gioacchino Toma, and Achille D'Orsi, from whom he learned the veristic language. He later moved to Paris, where he won the Louvre Museum Prize. Upon returning to Naples, he devoted himself entirely to his socialist realism. Between 1900 and 1929, he took part in numerous exhibitions both in Italy and abroad (Paris, St. Petersburg, Munich), and participated in several editions of the Venice Biennale.

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