Antonio Serna (1936–2012) - Senza Titolo

PROVENIENCE

The work comes from the furnishings of the historic Venetian hotel Bonvecchiati, founded in the 1950s, whose paintings were part of the Deana collection. The hotel’s founder was the entrepreneur and Venetian collector Arturo Deana, a longtime cultural promoter of the city, who in 1929 purchased the then-famous restaurant "La Colomba," which is notable not for anything particular except that among the patrons were names such as Tosi, Morandi, De Pisis, Chagall, Kokoschka and Picasso.

These were wonderful years for art in Venice, thanks also to the presence of Peggy Guggenheim. Arturo Deana grew increasingly passionate about painting, also thanks to the great friendship with poet Diego Valeri and with the gallerist Carlo Cardazzo, founder and owner since 1942 of the Galleria del Cavallino, a historic Venetian gallery among the most renowned in Italy in the second half of the 20th century.

Deana’s passion for art led him to enrich the Bonvecchiati hotel with part of his private collection, and to found in 1946 the "Premio di Pittura La Colomba" (La Colomba Painting Prize), after the interruption due to wartime of the Venice Biennale. The event’s success was such that it was nicknamed the "Little Biennale." In 1953 the "International Contest for a La Colomba Menu" was born, in whose first edition as many as 300 artists participated.

The Spanish-Mexican painter Antonio Serna (1936–2012) was an artist known for his stylistic evolution from figurative to abstraction, marked by three decades of intense production in Mexico.
Artistic Phases
His career unfolds mainly in three distinct periods:
1960s (Dramatic Realism): His beginnings were influenced by the Spanish classical tradition, with dramatic tones visible in works such as Paso fúnebre and Éxodos.
Goyesque Themes: Subsequently, he approached the atmospheres of Francisco Goya with the series Aquelarres.
Evolution Toward Abstraction: In recent years, his painting underwent a radical change, arriving at a phase of perfect and refined abstraction. The period to which our work belongs.
During his life, Antonio Serna was placed within the milieu of Spanish artists expatriated in Latin America. In June 2019, his artistic legacy was celebrated with a retrospective that, for the first time, displayed to the public many of his unpublished works. His creations have been sold at major international auction houses.

Description

work attributable to the artist’s last period, the abstract one, in excellent condition; this mixed technique on canvas with refractory earths, dimensions 71x51 cm; work that is part of the Deana collection, with inventory number 37-s on the back.

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