Renzo Vespignani (1924–2001) - L'Ecclesiaste

Renzo Vespignani (Rome, February 19, 1924 – Rome, April 26, 2001)

Ecclesiastes

Artist's Proof

The very beautiful etching and aquatint that are part of the portfolio Qohelet or Ecclesiastes: four etchings by Renzo Vespignani, published in October–December 1979 by the printer Gabriella Berni and issued in 50 copies, of which forty are numbered in Arabic numerals and ten in Roman numerals.

Published in the catalog of the work Incisoria (Franca May Editions) on page 153 (see images)

Also published in Bolaffi, Catalog of Italian Graphic Art, Volume 10, page 181 (see images)

In 1979 the folder cost 2,000,000 lire (about 1,000 euros)

Up for auction: the sole engraving, as described.

Great commercial value


It is part of the group of ten pieces in Roman numerals, and, precisely, it is the number VI in the Artist's Proof.

On watermarked paper with the Fabriano watermark at the bottom right and a dry stamp "Renzo Vespignani", also at the bottom right.

Dating: published in October–December 1979

Technique: etching and aquatint

Signed and dated in the bottom right corner in pencil: Vespignani '79

Number of the copy and edition, lower left: P.A. 6/10 (VI/X)

With cornice and glass

Dimensions of the engraved part: 320x493 millimeters

Sheet size: 70x50 cm

Frame dimensions: 77 × 57 cm

Perfect, in excellent condition: ready to be added to a collection (see the images)

Attention:
No shipments to the United States are made because in Italy, due to the introduction of tariffs, there is no courier that allows private individuals to send goods.





Renzo Vespignani, officially Lorenzo Vespignani (Rome, 19 February 1924 – Rome, 26 April 2001), was an Italian painter, illustrator, set designer, and engraver.

He was born in Rome on February 19, 1924, to Guido Vespignani and Ester Molinari, a great-grandson of Virginio Vespignani, a famous architect. After the death of his father, a respected surgeon and cardiologist, he, at a very young age, had to move with his mother to the proletarian area of Portonaccio, adjacent to the San Lorenzo district, where he grew up.

Here, during the Nazi occupation of the capital, on the run like many of his contemporaries, he began to draw, trying to portray the cruel, dirty, and pathetic reality around him: the squalor of the suburban urban landscape, the ruins and rubble caused by the bombings, the drama of the marginalized and the poverty of daily life.

His art did not limit itself to painting alone; he was the illustrator of many masterpieces. Also important was his work as a scenographer: he worked on Elio Petri's The Days Counted and The Killer, Hans Werner Henze's Dance Marathon and The Bassarids, Bertolt Brecht's The Seven Deadly Sins and The Mother, Jenfu by Leo1 Jane1cek. As an engraver he produced more than four hundred titles in etching, soft-ground etching, and lithography.

Career

Drawing from 1944 in a photograph by Paolo Monti from 1970. Paolo Monti Collection, BEIC
He began painting during the Nazi occupation, hidden with the engraver Lino Bianchi Barriviera, his first mentor. Other important milestones that influenced his artistic beginnings were Alberto Ziveri and Luigi Bartolini, while, especially in his early paintings, the influence of Expressionists like George Grosz and Otto Dix is evident. In 1945 he held his first solo exhibition and began collaborating with various political-literary magazines (Domenica, Folla, Mercurio, La Fiera Letteraria) with writings, illustrations and satirical drawings.

His work, between 1944 and 1948, describes the revival of an Italy destroyed by war. In 1956 he founded, with other intellectuals, the magazine Città aperta, focused on the issues of urban culture.

In 1961 he was among the winners of the Spoleto Prize; for the selected artists an essay was dedicated to them, accompanied by large-format reproductions (black and white and CMYK four-color) of the works exhibited. In 1963 one of his works was exhibited at the show Contemporary Italian Paintings, staged in several Australian cities. In 1963–64 he exhibited at the show Peintures italiennes d'aujourd'hui, organized in the Middle East and in North Africa.

Among the artists close to him are Giuseppe Zigaina (and the so-called Portonaccio School[4]) and, after 1963, those of the group called Il pro e il contro[5], which he founded together with Ugo Attardi, Fernando Farulli, Ennio Calabria, Piero Guccione, and Alberto Gianquinto.

Since 1969, Vespignani has worked on large pictorial cycles devoted to the crisis of the welfare society: Embarkation for Cythera (1969), concerning the intellectual class involved in the '68; Family Album (1971), a polemical look at his personal daily life; Between two wars (1973-1975), an inflexible analysis of the bourgeois virtue and petty-bourgeois authoritarianism in Italy; Like flies in honey (1984) dedicated to Pier Paolo Pasolini. In 1983 he was commissioned to paint the drappellone of August for the Palio di Siena, won by the Imperial Contrada della Giraffa. In 1991 he exhibited in Rome 124 works, among which the cycle Manatthan Transfert[6], a critique of the unsustainable existential delirium of the American way of life.

His relationship with literature is extremely close. Vespignani illustrates Boccaccio's Decameron, Leopardi's poetry and prose, Majakowskij's Complete Works, Eliot's Four Quartets, Kafka's Tales, Belli's Sonnets, Porta's Poems, Villon's Testament, and Alleg's La Question.

In 1999 he was elected President of the National Academy of San Luca and named Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.

Solo exhibitions
1945 Rome, Gallery "La Margherita".
1946 Rome, Gallery "L'Obelisco".
1947 Milan, Gallery "Il Naviglio".
1949 Turin, Gallery 'La Bussola'.
1953 London, headquarters of the British Council
1955 Boston, "Museum of Fine Arts".
1957 Munich, "Haus der Kunst".
1958 Los Angeles, Galleria "Landau Gallery".
1964 Rome, Gallery "The Jack of Spades".
1965 Rome, Gallery "Il Torcoliere". Exhibition of graphic works.
1966 Milan, Bergamini Gallery.
1967 Rome, Gallery "Il Fante di Spade".
1969 Ferrara, Palazzo dei Diamanti. Exhibits the cycle "Embarkation for Cythera"
1975 Bologna, Gallery of Modern Art. Exhibition of the cycle "Between Two Wars", curated by Franco Solmi.
1979 Toronto, Madison Gallery. Introduction by James Purdy.
1982 Rome, Castel Sant'Angelo, retrospective.
1984 Rome, French Academy at Villa Medici, "Like flies to honey" in homage to Pasolini. In the catalog, texts by Jean Marie Drot, Laura Betti, Lorenza Trucchi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Renzo Vespignani.
1986 Prague, National Gallery. Exhibits the cycle 'Between Two Wars'.
1990 Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni. Retrospective
1999 Cagliari, ExMa, Municipal Center for Art and Culture.
Show the post-mortem.
2011 Cagliari, Exhibition Space 2+1, Superimpositions Renzo Vespignani_Angelo Liberati (on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his death).
2011 Rome Edarcom Europa Gallery (on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the death).
2012 Villa Torlonia Casino dei Principi (on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the death).
Works in museums
Regional Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Aosta Valley at the Gamba Castle in Cret de Breil of Châtillon with the work: Madonnaro (1962)
Uffizi Gallery in Florence with the work on deposit: Self-Portrait, and with the drawing Self-Portrait (Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi).
Civic Gallery of the Suzzara Prize in Suzzara with the works: Terezin (1982) and West Broadway (1988).
MAGA, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Gallarate, with the work: Rottame (1966).
Il Correggio Civic Museum of Correggio
Carandente Museum, Palazzo Collicola - Visual Arts of Spoleto
Avellino Art Museum with the work: Marta (1982).
Art Museum of Palazzo de'Mayo in Chieti
Costantino Barbella Art Museum in Chieti
Museum of the Imperial Giraffe Contrada of Siena, with a drappellone or palio.
Tito Balestra Foundation Museum in Longiano
Museum of the Roman School in Villa Torlonia, Rome
Civic Museum of Sulmona
Palazzo Ricci Museum, Macerata
MIG. International Museum of Graphics, Castronuovo Sant'Andrea (PZ)