Work sheet
Technical data
| year | 2023 |
| purchase date | acquired in the portfolio |
| estimated current value in € | consult the updated Price Table |
| identification of the subject | abstract painting/reconstructivist work |
| materials and techniques | oil on canvas/mixed media/material work |
| measurements in centimeters cm | 70 x 50 x 1,8 |
| inscriptions | signature |
| inscription technique | oil |
| inscription position | on the back/bottom/right |
| transcription | Valvo |
| authenticity certificate | issued at the same time as the sale |
| art multiples | no print issued |
| state of conservation | intact work |
| location of the work | Rome · Italy |
| copyright | © all rights reserved · global · S.I.A.E. |
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Description of work
Calabrian Appetizer
A laid tablecloth. The first fruits of the Calabrian land. The sun. The scent. The taste.
The work presents the subject in a centered and unequivocal way, in contrast with a light yellowish-white and fairly homogeneous background. Above this “sunny table”, the light materially encrusts itself in bright white quadrangular elements scattered randomly. Graphic elements in yellow surround the subject, represented here by means of material quadratures of various colours, concomitant with each other and concentrated in the central area of the canvas. They are the colors of the fruits of the earth and of farming: the colors of olives, aubergines, tomatoes, chillies, cured meats and wines.
This work is a tribute to the Calabria Region.
The chromatic mixture is dense, irregular, and suggests the sense of the gastronomic mix that presents itself in front of our eyes. This density is counterbalanced by striations, linear and peripheral to the treated subject.
Unlike the seventeenth-century setting of the baroque still life, in which several or few elements represented are mostly spread uniformly throughout the body of the work, generally occupying almost the entire pictorial space, here the subject is isolated. It does not expand on the canvas, it remains circumscribed, so to speak, and finds its own visual diegesis within itself and its chromatic convolutions.
This still life, read in a reconstructivist key, recalls in some aspects some works by Luciano Ventrone, in which the subject is precisely “central” and isolated in an almost empty context.
In reality, in this case, it is not appropriate to speak of “empty” or “full”. The glow of light, expressed through warm yellowish tones all around the central element, tends to suggest the concept of solar heat. The luxuriance of the earth. The prosperity of the fields. The vitality of livestock farming.
Strictly speaking, such work is detached from the classification of “still life”, as these environmental factors seem more pertinent to an open and rural context, en plain air, usually foreign to a still life understood in the orthodox sense.
The heat causes the fruit to develop. The fruits are picked. The product of the harvest is presented within the work. There is a very close connection between the productive aspect and the fruition aspect, mainly foreign to the classic concept of still life. Here, we almost feel like we are picking the products of the earth directly from a cultivated field. You can almost feel the buzz of insects in the meadows, the warmth of the light on your skin. This immediacy, this “freshness”, distances the work from any theme connected to caducity and death, expressing, on the contrary, the intrinsic and very lively vigor of human actions. Of agricultural and pastoral work.
In this case, therefore, we are faced with a sui generis “still life”. A reconstructivist still life and, therefore, not abstract but specifically reconstructive in a figurative sense.
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