Nature and Life
Nature and Life
Aldo Pagliacci
Italian, 1913 - 1991
1952
Oil on Panel
24 x 30 in. (61.0 x 76.2 cm)
Signed and Dated Lower Right. A haunting and deeply original still life, Nature and Life sets a head of Romanesco — its fractal spirals rendered with almost scientific precision — against a darkened landscape flickering with distant fire. The contrast is arresting and deliberately unsettling: the luminous yellow-green vegetable, a marvel of natural geometry, lies amid broad wilting leaves in the foreground while structures burn in the shadowed distance behind it.
Born in San Benedetto del Tronto near Ascoli Piceno, Pagliacci demonstrated prodigious talent from childhood, exhibiting at the Venice Biennale at just sixteen or seventeen years of age. In 1936 he volunteered in the invasion of Ethiopia, where he ended up as a prisoner of war, not returning to Italy until 1946. The following two decades found him living and working across South America — Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Mexico, Bolivia, and Venezuela — before eventually settling in Rome and later on the Island of Ischia. It was a life of extraordinary restlessness and witness, and it shows in his work. AskARTAskART
Painted in 1952 — just one year after his related compositions depicting churches in flames entered the collection of the Southampton City Art Gallery — Nature and Life carries unmistakable postwar gravity. The burning structures in the background are not incidental; they are the world Pagliacci had lived through. Against that backdrop, the Romanesco — perfect, geometric, quietly miraculous — becomes an act of defiance and renewal.
At 24 x 30 inches on panel, this is an unusually large and ambitious example of Pagliacci's work; the vast majority of his paintings that appear at auction are significantly smaller. A rare opportunity to acquire a major early work by one of postwar Italy's most intriguing and underrecognized painters.
Born in San Benedetto del Tronto near Ascoli Piceno, Pagliacci demonstrated prodigious talent from childhood, exhibiting at the Venice Biennale at just sixteen or seventeen years of age. In 1936 he volunteered in the invasion of Ethiopia, where he ended up as a prisoner of war, not returning to Italy until 1946. The following two decades found him living and working across South America — Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Mexico, Bolivia, and Venezuela — before eventually settling in Rome and later on the Island of Ischia. It was a life of extraordinary restlessness and witness, and it shows in his work. AskARTAskART
Painted in 1952 — just one year after his related compositions depicting churches in flames entered the collection of the Southampton City Art Gallery — Nature and Life carries unmistakable postwar gravity. The burning structures in the background are not incidental; they are the world Pagliacci had lived through. Against that backdrop, the Romanesco — perfect, geometric, quietly miraculous — becomes an act of defiance and renewal.
At 24 x 30 inches on panel, this is an unusually large and ambitious example of Pagliacci's work; the vast majority of his paintings that appear at auction are significantly smaller. A rare opportunity to acquire a major early work by one of postwar Italy's most intriguing and underrecognized painters.
Categories
There are no works to discover for this record.