Michele Gregorio - The Horse

The depiction of animals in art has ancient origins, even appearing in primitive cave paintings. For religious reasons, various types of animals appear in the works of various ancient civilizations. It was especially in the Middle Ages, within the International Gothic style, that animal depictions became widespread as true life portraits, both within works of art and in notebooks of drawings and sketches. The presence of animals as subjects in art remained constant until the contemporary era. In this work, Michele Gregorio focuses his research on the figure of the horse. A noble animal, a symbol of beauty and harmony, the horse has repeatedly been a prominent subject in the history of art. Since the fourteenth century, its presence has always been obligatory in battle scenes or equestrian monuments, and for painters, representing it with anatomical precision and naturalistic rendering has always been a challenge.

This work exemplifies the work of Michele Gregorio, a painter who consistently adopts a surrealist aesthetic in a variety of pictorial languages, determined by his eclectic spirit. In this horse, for example, Michele Gregorio reduces his expressive means to a minimum. The artist relies exclusively on a line that, with a few rapid and effective strokes, constructs the subject. Despite this reduction in language, however, Michele Gregorio remains faithful to his research. The few marks drawn on the paper are intended to emphasize the volumes, seeking that gigantism and swelling of forms that underpin the aesthetic of the Bari-born painter. Here, moreover, it is interesting to note how the figure is further deformed to convey a sense of dynamism and speed. In this painting on paper, however, everything takes place in a two-dimensional space, characterized by an evidently expressionist and abstract conception in the use of color.

Michele Gregorio was born in Bari in 1939, where he lives and works. He has created numerous public and private works, primarily for his hometown. Among his many works are the twenty-meter bas-relief for the Bari-Nord station in Piazza Aldo Moro, dating from 1965; the painted doors for the chapel of Santa Maria at the homonymous clinic in Bari, dating from 1968; his bas-reliefs from 1971 are located in the headquarters of the Istituto Case Popolari in Bari; the astral spheres at the Polytechnic University of Bari are from 1974; two bas-reliefs were created for the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute in Bari in 2000; in 2005, he painted an oil on canvas depicting Saint Nicholas for the Young Industrialists of the Province of Bari, now in the Vatican, which was donated to the Holy Father Benedict XVI on the occasion of his visit to the city of Bari.

The transaction takes place with maximum security for both the seller and the buyer. We take care of the conformity (provenance, authenticity, state of conservation) of the work and handle the shipping.
Returns are possible no later than 14 days after receiving the order.