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 | 100 x 70 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
Central Africa, Diplomatic Corps
The chromatic mixture of this double canvas certainly catches the eye before any other type of consideration. The work has an autobiographical nature and relates to the artist’s stay in the residence of the Italian Embassy in the Republic of Guinea, Africa. Stay occurred in 1994.
This work is directly connected to two other works by the same artist: “Conakry, Market” and “Freetown, Dinner at the Open Restaurant”, performed in 2023.
Sandy and yellowish tones contextualise the inlay of large quadrangular shapes of different colours. Specifically, red: from carmine to burgundy, up to dark purple. Turquoise, contaminated by greenish shades. Light black. These shapes do not overlap any background layer. On the contrary, they find their contextualization in an organic whole, in which shapes and colors seem to appear, in flashes, from a generic material and dynamic magma, which pervades the entire pictorial space. The work appears like a snapshot of a moving flow. What the eye perceives has, therefore, an ideally temporal connotation and we are led to believe that what appears to our sight in such a fragment could be hidden a moment before, just as it could disappear completely the moment following that in which we observe. The quadratures almost never clash with each other, instead enjoying a generous mutual distancing. A breath that allows each shade in play to express itself fully, resulting in no excessive mixing of any kind. Graphic and material signs, typical of the author, appear occasionally in the body of the work but do not seem to be covered, in this specific painting, with the dramatic and frequent symbolism, very recurrent in the artist. This handwriting is therefore in tune with the basic polychromy and would seem to give the work a generic and fluid sense of pictorial serenity. Of chromatic relaxation. Of lively placidity, therefore. Of placid vitality at the same time. Subtle squarings, in tone with the rest of the work, fragment the yellowish areas and rhythmically intersect with the large dominant squarings. The diagonals, often present in the works of this author, are absent here. Almost. A slight distortion of the symmetries actually appears in the central area, in which a small turquoise area is outlined with the same color and tends to tilt towards the right. The almost total absence of such obliquities further confirms the predominantly prose and narrative tone of the composition. The bloody impact of the square at the top left is toned down by the central ones, in turquoise. The reddish squares in the right band remain open and partial.
Compared to other black and white works by this author, the color here is unmistakably pragmatic. It’s structural.
The reconstructivist process also acts here in an acoustic sense. In the arrangement of turquoises and greenish shades we find the oceanic roar of the waves crashing on the African coast. The smell of seaweed near the shore. The sand. The earth. The mud and blood of the meat displayed on suspended stalls in open markets. The sound of the voices of passers-by in the dry, dusty dirt streets of the capital’s suburbs.
The work is a tribute to Guinea and is clearly dedicated to it.
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