Remo Brindisi (1918-1996) - Venezia, Ponte di Rialto

ARTIST Remo Brindisi (1918-1996) was an Italian painter. Born in Rome but tied to Abruzzo, he began his artistic training in Penne, in the province of Pescara, attending the Scuola d'arte "Mario dei Fiori" under the initial guidance of his father Fedele, a wood sculptor. He later continued his studies between L'Aquila and Rome, completing his path at the prestigious Scuola d'Arte of Urbino, where he refined a solid mastery of drawing and engraving. Driven by a lively intellectual curiosity, he undertook numerous study trips to Florence, Venice, and Paris before settling definitively in Milan, a city where he became a central figure in the cultural debate, eventually serving as President of the Triennale and receiving the Gold Medal for Public Instruction for cultural merits. His debut exhibition took place at a very young age in Florence in 1940, with a first solo show catalogued by Eugenio Montale, followed, especially between the 1940s and 1950s, by repeated participations in the Venice Biennale and the Rome Quadrennial, as well as international shows in Paris, Nice, Cairo, and São Paulo, confirming him among the best-known masters of Italian mid-to-late 20th century until his death in Lido di Spina on 25 July 1996. Stylistically, Brindisi's painting initially drew from the moral and dramatic lessons of El Greco and the tonal and expressionist echoes of the Roman School of Mario Mafai and Corrado Cagli, then opened up to the dislocations of Picasso's post-Cubism, abstract expressionism, Informal Art, and the experiments of the CoBrA group, while always maintaining a firm link to figuration. Technically, his production stands out for a nervous and incisive graphic line that builds the shapes, combined with an intense, material, coloristic application that transcends pure naturalistic mimesis to convey strong emotional tension; in addition to large oil paintings and tempera on board, he successfully ventured into art graphics, ceramics, bronze sculpture, Murano glass work, and large theatrical scenography, such as the 1974 production of Aida at the Arena di Verona. His poetics, moving away from Socialist Realism after the 1956 Hungarian events, was founded on a deep civil and existential commitment aimed at probing the drama of totalitarianisms, political violence, and humanity's longing for freedom: witness both the great historical cycles, such as the famous Storia del Fascismo (1957–1962) and the canvases dedicated to the assassination of Aldo Moro, as well as his more recurring lyrical themes, including the Opposers, Maternities, Pastorelli, and the luminous Venezie. Remo Brindisi's works are present in over forty public museum collections, both Italian and international, as well as in prestigious private collections. Among the most notable public nuclei are the four paintings (Tre profili, Profili and two Venezie) belonging to the Art Collections of the Fondazione Cariplo in Milan, the broad collections housed at the National Museum of Abruzzo in L'Aquila and the MAMeC (Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art) in Penne, the cycle of portraits of illustrious Ferrara natives exhibited at the Teatro Sociale della Concordia in Portomaggiore, the set of paintings for the Palio di Asti kept in the Collegiate Church of San Secondo, and the monumental twenty-meter painting commissioned by RAI for the Basilica Superiore of Assisi. The most emblematic link between his production and collecting, however, remains the "Museo Alternativo Remo Brindisi" in Lido di Spina, designed between 1971 and 1973 together with architect and designer Nanda Vigo and left as a heritage to the Municipality of Comacchio: an extraordinary house-museum where a vast corpus of Brindisi’s paintings and drawings dialogue with a private collection of over a thousand works by the greatest 20th-century masters — from Fontana, Giacometti and Medardo Rosso to De Chirico, Pollock, and Bacon — which he gathered during his lifetime to document the artistic currents of his time without barriers. DESCRIPTION "Venezia, Ponte di Rialto", oil on canvas, 70x50 cm the canvas only, 90x70 cm with frame, signed at the bottom right,datable to the 1970s, title on the back. Accompanied by an authentic photo from the Degan gallery in Mestre (Venice). In the work presented here, Remo Brindisi reinterprets one of the most iconic views of the lagoon through a vision that is at once monumental and suspended. The scene is dominated in the upper band by the great arch of the Rialto Bridge, captured frontally in its span from one edge of the canvas to the other and punctuated by the rhythmic theory of the side arcades converging toward the central pediment, behind which rise, to the right, a bell tower dome and the synthetic profiles of the Venetian palaces. Below the broad vault of the bridge opens the water surface of the Grand Canal: in the foreground, shifted to the right, stands a gondolier in a vertical posture, rowed on his boat, while in the distance, along a darker band of water marking the horizon under the arch, the tiny silhouettes of two other boats can be seen; on the lower sides of the canvas, dense interweavings of vertical and horizontal strokes evoke the booms, the docks, and the dark reflections of the banks, closing the scene signed by the artist at the bottom right. The compositional layout rests on the powerful axial architectural axis of the bridge, which acts as a theatrical backdrop capable of framing and amplifying the depth of the water space beneath, balancing the curved thrust of the arch with the verticality of the foreground gondolier and the horizontal edge of the horizon. The brushwork is rapid, dense, and vibrant, leaving visible the trace of the painting gesture — evident in the diagonal strokes of the sky and the vertical touches of the water — and combines with Brindisi's characteristic nervous and incisive graphic sign, which outlines with dark, essential strokes both the architectural scores and the sculptural figure of the rower. The color game is built on a luminous and expressive contrast: the vast expanse of cerulean and blue tones, which merge sky and canal into a single atmospheric space interrupted only by a blade of cobalt blue in the background, highlight the warm tones of ivory, ocher, and bright yellow used for the bridge’s wall and for highlights on the gondolier, themselves anchored by the deep blacks of the intrados, the hull, and the adjacent wooden structures. The work fully belongs to the artist’s mature production and is part of the famous cycle of the Venezie, one of the most beloved and recurring lyrical themes in his repertoire alongside Maternities, Pastorelli, and the Oppositors. Dismissed in this subject is the dramatic urgency of the civil commitment that animates the great historical cycles, Brindisi pours into the lagoon view all his stylistic and technical mastery: a figurative approach never abandoned, but nourished by the constructive synthesis of post-Cubist origin, by the tonal and expressionist sensibility inherited from the Roman School, and by the material freedom of the Informal. From this emerges a poetics of memory and inner vision, in which the real data of the Venetian landscape is transfigured, through the antinaturalistic intensity of color and the structuring force of drawing, into a timeless stage suspended between visual chronicle and existential lyricism. CONDITION REPORT Good overall condition. The work is intact in all its parts, with vivid and legible chromatics and brushwork. The frame is to be considered a courtesy. The photo of the painting placed in an environment is generated with artificial intelligence and should be regarded purely as an example. Only the remaining photos, which faithfully show the object and its general and detail features, are authentic. Tracked and insured shipping with proper packaging.

Schätzpreis:€800

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