(Turin 1860–1945 Nizza Marittima)
The artist’s model, Tea, signed, inscribed and dated Angelo Garino Nice 1920, 72.5 x 140 cm, oil on canvas, framed, (GG) 

Catalogued and illustrated in:
Giuseppe Luigi Marini, Angelo Garino in 60 documenti pittorici del secondo Ottocento e del primo Novecento, Galleria il Prisma, Cuneo, 1993, p. 27–30 and p. 81; Marco Vallora, Dal Divisionismo all’Informale. Tradizione visionarietà e geometria nell’arte in Piemonte 1880–1960, Mazzotta ed., Milan, 2001, p. 55; Angelo Mistrangelo, Francesco Poli e Gianfranco Schiavino, Da Avondo a Zorio. Dall’unità d’Italia alla Grande Guerra, ALPGAMC ed., Turin, 2008, p. 108; Giuseppe Luigi Marini, dizionario dei pittori piemontesi dell’Ottocento, Angelo Garino, Turin, AdArte ed., 2013, pp. 298–299 and p. 346.

Exhibited:
Acqui Terme, Dal Divisionismo all’Informale. Tradizione visionarietà e geometria nell’arte in Piemonte 1880-1960, 15 July - 9 September 2001; Settimo Torinese, la Giardinera, Da Avondo a Zorio. Dall’unità d’Italia alle Grande Guerra. 19 November - 19 February 2009.

When Angelo Garino painted the present lot aged sixty, he had already made a name for himself as an artist, with his renown stretching from the sophisticated, chic circles in Nice and the Côte d’Azur all the way to exclusive Parisian salons. The “interno con modella nuda” from 1920 may well represent the leading work in the Turin-based painter’s late oeuvre. 
The present painting depicts the artist’s favourite muse, Tea. This was likely the stage name used by the model, who was greatly in demand among the most exclusive bourgeois circles. Tea is depicted as a refined and yet unsettling beauty in a crowded boudoir, with the room still radiating the zeitgeist of the fin de siècle. This world had already ceased to exist when Garino painted this work in 1920: the Belle Époque had been swept away by the First World War.