Every Piece Comes With a Story...
PORTRAIT HEAD Italian circa 1550, Carved wood with original polychrome, height 25 cm Available from Joanna Booth, stand A5 Joanna Booth (
joannabooth.co.uk) is bringing a carved wooden head of a bearded man. Sculpted in Northern Italy (probably Tuscany) in the early 16th Century, it retains very realistic colouring and is beautifully preserved, with no signs of restoration. It is unusual, for the period, to find such acute realism in wood; normally this would be the preserve of terracotta, which was more habitually used to achieve the desired finish for a sculptural model. It could well have formed part of a larger bust, or even a complete figure – the forked beard of the sitter suggests that it may have been carved from life rather than being intended to portray a stereotyped image of a saint. Such is the enduring quality of the finish that it is easy to imagine meeting this man in the street in Tuscany and it creates a dialogue for 21st Century viewers with an Italian art patron from 500 years ago. It has been in the private collection of a contemporary painter and sculptor in New York (Joanna purchased it directly from him).
FAMILY GROUP Fernando Botero (b. 1932), Lithograph, 1983, Paper size: 40.2 x 30.1 cm Available from Gilden’s Fine Art, stand D7 The Medellin-born artist Fernando Botero tells stories through his paintings and print making, especially in terms of scenes from his native country. One of his first jobs was as a set designer and this is borne out in many of his compositions: they have a tangible sense of theatre and farce. Gilden’s Fine Art (
gildensarts.com) are bringing the lithograph ‘Family Group’ to the fair (1983, illustrated) wherein Botero reimagines a formal family group portrait but includes a distinct layer of chaos to the composition by way of strewn toys and anxious parents attempting to keep their little ones still. This lithograph was created from an original oil painting and both were completed in 1983. That was the year that Botero established a workshop in Tuscany where he could make large scale metal sculpture as well as paintings and perhaps reflects the happiness and freedom that he reportedly felt with the establishment of his new practice in Italy.
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