(Görz 1909–2005 Venice)
‘Motivo dalmata’, signed and dated Music 1950, verso titled, signed and dated Music 1950, oil on canvas, 61 x 46 cm, framed, (PP)

Photo certificate:
Galleria d’Arte Contini, Venice, archive no. 50–100–0

Provenance:
The Contemporaries, New York (label on the reverse)
Private Collection, Italy

After an alienating experience as a war prisoner, Anton Zoran Muši returned to Italy in 1945 and resumed his work as a painter. Typical of these years are his views of Venice and Dalmatia, suggestive memories of his youth, and the recurrent motif of horses, all of which are subjects he variously interpreted during the 1950s and 1960s. These Cavalli (‘horses’), executed in 1950, are depicted in a natural environment that appears barren, remote and undefined, in which only two hills are visible behind the two animals executed with essential forms in the foreground. The landscape becomes even more vague as a result of the choice of colours, their pale hues and opaque shades, that infuse the scene with a meditative aura and are perfectly in keeping with the subjects of the painting, elements that are both realistic and captured in a suspended atmosphere. The poetic nature of this vision also includes a note of alienation, especially visible in the position of the retreating horses that seem to be moving away from the viewer and his reality.