Renato Guttuso - Vase of Flowers

Flowers as an independent subject began to appear in still lifes, a genre that emerged in the early 17th century. Subsequently, painters, especially the Impressionists, increasingly focused on the floral world, as an extraordinary opportunity to capture vibrant colors and light. Thus, flowers were depicted not only in vases, but also immersed in their natural landscape. While initially a pretext for painters to attempt a photographic reproduction of reality, with contemporary art, the subject of flowers also became a way of interpreting reality.

Renato Guttuso delights us with this still life with flowers. Lithography is a graphic technique, like woodcut, aquatint, etching, silkscreen, and many others. These techniques are not simple prints, but graphic art, created through the direct intervention of the artist's hand. The word lithography derives from the Greek and literally means "writing on stone." The technique exploits the mutual repulsion between aqueous and greasy materials. The artist, on a specially prepared, thick stone, begins to trace a design with a greasy pen. This design must mirror the desired final image. When ink is applied to the stone, the aqueous areas repel the ink, which settles only on the drawn areas. When passed through the press, the paper absorbs only the ink present on the drawing, allowing for multiple copies of the same work. In this work, too, Guttuso exploits the formal peculiarities of his style to imbue objects with profound lyrical and existential meaning. The composition is constructed entirely through drawing, which transcends contingent data and transfigures reality into a symbolic system characteristic of his painting, with a realistic and expressive style.

Renato Guttuso was born in Bagheria in 1911. From a very young age, he was exposed to the world of art, thanks in part to his father, who painted watercolors for pleasure. He also began frequenting artist studios early on. The master's earliest pictorial works include copies of Sicilian landscape painters; the signed and dated works demonstrate the skill he demonstrated even at the age of thirteen. In 1931, he participated in the Quadriennale, where he met important artists. Impressed, he decided to move to the Eternal City. To afford this, he undertook restorations at both the Pinacoteca di Perugia and the Galleria Borghese in Rome. In 1937, he managed to move permanently, and his studio soon became a vibrant and vibrant intellectual hub within the Roman cultural scene. The master was a man of strong political and social commitment, joining the Communist Party and striving for justice. The Crucifixion, created between 1940 and 1941, is a symbolic work of his, and he himself described it with the following words: "This is a time of war. I want to paint this torture of Christ as a scene of today. ... as a symbol of all those who suffer outrage, imprisonment, and torture for their ideas." He died in 1987 in Rome, leaving important works both to the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Rome and to his hometown.

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.