Ugo Attardi (1923-2006) - Ciò che profondo dorme

Eight-color lithograph on paper - Work signed by hand at the bottom right and numbered at the bottom left - 56 x 76 cm - year 1990 - Limited edition - specimen that will be shipped with a certificate of guarantee VIII/XXX - unframed - excellent condition - private collection - purchase and provenance Italy - shipping via UPS - SDA - TNT - DHL - BRT.
Biography
Born in Sori near Genoa in 1923 to Sicilian parents, at the age of one he moved with them to Palermo, where the fascist regime forced them to return, due to his father's union activity. Fundamental in his artistic journey was the arrival in Rome in 1945, where he attended Guttuso's studio, and already in 1947 he entered the heart of the artistic debate by participating (together with Accardi, Consagra, Dorazio, Guerrini, Perilli, Sanfilippo and Turcato) in the foundation of “Forma 1,” the first Italian abstract group of the postwar period. Shortly after he perceived a renewed impulse toward figuration, albeit visionary and problematic, and he definitively moved away from the abstract experience, yet not forgetting some formal achievements: he created a personal poetics “classical-expressionist,” founded on a dramatic coexistence of opposites: beauty “classical” and deformity, tenderness and violence, physicality and dreaminess. Beginning in the 1950s he participated several times in the Venice Biennale and the Rome Quadriennale, and held major solo exhibitions in the most important Italian exhibition spaces. In 1961 he joined the group “Il Pro e il Contro,” alongside Calabria, Farulli, Gianquinto, Guccione and Vespignani. He wrote the novel L’erede selvaggio, published in 1970, and for which in 1971 he received the Viareggio Prize for fiction. In 1967 he launched a fervent activity as a sculptor and, after L’ Addio Che Guevara of 1968, several wooden groups emerged, including L’Arrivo di Pizarro of 1969–71, and bronzes imbued with strong sensuality. His monumental sculptures are placed in the main European and world capitals. Among them: Il Vascello della Rivoluzione (1988), in Rome, at the Palazzetto dello Sport; Nelle Americhe (1992), in Buenos Aires; the famous Ulisse (1996), in New York; Enea (2004), at the port of Valletta (Malta). The great Cristo of 2002 has become part of the Vatican Museums’ collections. In 2006 the artist received from President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi the title of Grand Officer of the Republic, for his artistic merits and for having been able to spread and enhance worldwide the genius and creativity of Italy. He died in Rome on July 21, 2006.