Subject: portraits of the children Anna and Leonardo
Support and technique: oil on panel
Author: Gaetano Pancaldi (Piumazzo di Castelfranco Emilia, 1922-2014). The representation of nature and daily life were among the artist's favorite subjects, who was very active and well-known in the Modena area due to his activity as a poster designer for the Communist Party of Modena and the numerous exhibitions he held. A tireless painter, Pancaldi worked with unchanged passion until recent years. Our company has purchased the entire Pancaldi archive, visit our website to see all the available paintings.
Period: mid 20th century Origin: Modena, Italy Condition: very good (look at the photographs, consider the age) Measurements: 49 x 26 cm (diameter of the paintings 23 cm)
Gaetano Pancaldi is a poet of microcosms, of distant and now forgotten worlds, of peasant and village atmospheres relived with naivety and sincere passion, with eyes full of wonder and curiosity of the children of the past. He brings to life the rites of the countryside, the patient work of the oxen, the timeless gestures of the farmers and housewives, the rustic and welcoming environments in which the foods had unrepeatable flavors and the stories were born to become proverbs and nursery rhymes to be passed on for centuries . Paintings in which the colors and lights rediscover the clarity of distant springs, the joy of the flights of the swallows and the songs of the reapers, atmospheres in which the falling of the snow at Christmas or the flowering of the roses in May were magical events desired as if they were happening for the first time. On the other hand, he tried to make the hysteria of the contemporary world, without joy and without wonder, where the rhythm of actions is programmed in places foreign to man and his nature, unnatural, therefore, and almost cruel. The contrast is dramatic, the effect impressive even if more technical and, so to speak, forced. Pancaldi's true inspiration is the lost world of processions and threshing, of the stables and threshing floors shining with golden chaff, of the chicks following the hens along the rows tilled by the toil of the spade and the hoe. There is a sense of the harshest fatigue in his paintings, and of the simplest and purest joy. (Valerio Massimo Manfredi)
