(Venice 1907–1990)
Elementi campestri, 1952, signed and dated 52, oil on canvas, 75 x 130 cm, framed

The work is registered in the Archivio Santomaso, Galleria Blu, Milan and is accompanied by a letter of registration

Provenance:
Galleria L’Argentario, Trento (stamp on the reverse)
Galleria d’Arte Moderna Il Traghetto, Venice (label and stamp on the reverse)
European Private Collection

Exhibited:
Modena, Santomaso alla Saletta, Saletta degli Amici dell’Arte, 1955,
exh. cat. with ill.
Feltre, Personale di Santomaso, Piccola Galleria d’Arte Al Sole, 1955,
exh. cat. cover ill.

Literature:
Santomaso Catalogue raisonné 1931–1974, Alfieri, Venice 1975,
no. 198 with ill.
N. Stringa (ed.), Santomaso. Catalogo ragionato, Allemandi 2017,
p. 62, p. 256 with ill.

Many of Santomaso’s preoccupations, also regarding the European art scene, came to fruition in his art in the early 1950s. One of the most important was his appreciation for the oeuvre of Hans Hartung and Fritz Winter. He first saw Hartung’s works in Peggy Guggenheim’s collection in about 1946, when Hartung was almost entirely unknown in Italy and was appreciated exclusively in specialised publications. Santomaso admired the elegant power of Hartung’s well-paused gesture, the calibrated calligraphy of his lines. Whereas in Fritz Winter he valued the sense of composition, his enhanced spatiality, his structures full of surprises both gestural and spatial. After a fleeting “infatuation” for Léger […] he engaged with the works of Kandinsky, thanks to the retrospective organised at the Biennale in 1950 and a simultaneous reevaluation of Hartung’s gestural language of Informel.
N. Stringa, L’esperienza astratta, in “Giuseppe Santomaso e l’opzione astratta”, Venice 2008, pp. 84-85