Amalassunta
Artist Osvaldo Licini
c. 1950
Accession year before 1993
Oil on canvas, 72.5 x 92.5 cm
Collection Fondazione Francesco Federico Cerruti per l’Arte
Long-term loan Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli-Turin
Inv. no. CC.13.P.LIC.1950.A126
Provenance: Private collection, Bergamo; Galleria Lorenzelli, Milan-Bergamo; Tornabuoni Arte, Florence.
Exhibitions: Milan 1961 (np., no. 27, np., fig. 27); Bergamo 1969 (np., fig. 24; np., no. 24); Milan 1982 (np., no. 34); Milan 1987 (cover, ill.).
Bibliography: Marchiori 1968, p. 231, fig. 234, np., no. 328 (234); The Cerruti Collection 2019, p. 70, ill.; Christov-Bakargiev 2021, vol. II, p. 864.
Out of the two Amalassuntas in the Cerruti Collection, the one against a green background belonged to the Galleria Lorenzelli right from the launch of the two sites in Bergamo and Milan in the late 1950s, before being purchased by the Galleria Tornabuoni in Florence after 1982.
In the work formerly owned by the Galleria Lorenzelli, the sky is saturated with green, as if to grasp and reverberate with the hues and depths of a plant universe. Hands are the protagonists here, with one rising up from the land in the act of suggesting a numerical indication, while the other one glides as it receives the imprint of a heart on its open palm. As Licini had emphasised in a programmatic text from 1937: “Painting is the art of colours and signs. The signs express strength, desires and ideas. The colours magic. We said signs (segni) and not dreams (sogni).”1
[Maria Teresa Roberto]
1 O. Licini, “Natura di un discorso” (1937), now in Licini 1974, pp. 101-102 (cit. p. 102).
The complete works of Osvaldo Licini
