Salvatore Fiume - Odalisques

The work can be defined as a genre scene, that is, the depiction of an episode of everyday life that, apparently, lacks any significant element. These types of domestic and intimate subjects were long considered minor and only began to spread in Western art starting in the 17th century. Only with the development of 19th-century realism did everyday subjects become considered as important as historical or religious ones. The subject of this work, in particular, demonstrates how, for the painter Salvatore Fiume, the composition of genre scenes coincided with the development of his taste for the exotic and his fascination with the distant. Indeed, this artist recurs with themes linked to distant geographical areas, used as a pretext for an ethno-folkloric representation of typical customs.

This work is part of a series of Oriental-inspired prints, where the female figure, dressed in characteristic attire, always takes center stage. The composition is suited to Salvatore Fiume's style: the exotic clothing and the subjects' tribal origins, steeped in primordial values, blend perfectly with the stylistic roughness of the Sicilian master's more Expressionist phase. The deliberately coarse linework sketches out the figures, relegating them to a raw state that is synonymous with synthesis and, therefore, expressiveness. Furthermore, both in the subjects and in this Expressionist-leaning language, there is certainly a reminiscence of Toulouse-Lautrec's female characters. The color palette also fits this concept, structured, in this case, in a coherent dialogue between warm tones and the neutral background.

Salvatore Fiume was born in 1915 in Comiso and died in Milan in 1997. In addition to being a painter and sculptor, he was also an architect. His career as a painter focused on a reinterpretation of classicism, particularly Renaissance painting and Piero della Francesca. Later, thanks to his success, he traveled extensively around the world, drawing inspiration from exotic folklore, which he rendered in an expressionist manner.

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