ARTIST: Aldo Brass (Italian, 1870 - 1943)
NAME: Poor Man
MEDIUM: oil on canvas
CONDITION: Some craquelure. Minor inpainting along lower edge.
SIGHT SIZE: 24 x 22 inches / 60 x 55 cm
FRAME SIZE: 29 x 27 inches / 73 x 68 cm
SIGNATURE: lower right
SKU#: 119911
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BIOGRAPHY:
Italico Brass was born in Gorizia in December 1870. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich under the landscape painter Karl Raupp (1837-1918).In 1888 he moved to Paris, which had become the world's contemporary art capital and a destination of choice for many Italian artists. There he married a Russian woman called Lina Rebecca Vidgoff. The couple settled permanently in Venice in 1895.Painting had become Brass's principle source of expression by the turn of the century, and he produced numerous portraits in these years, along with landscapes and views in the Venetian 18th century vedutista tradition.Shortly after the outbreak of World War I, Brass went to the front as a war painter and was commissioned to produce sketches and studies, which were published in a volume entitled Sulle Orme di San Marco in 1917.He painted them directly on the battlefield. Concrete Realism is a constant feature of Brass's art.This present lot depicts a view of the Venetian lagoon, probably painted during the Redentore Feast that was held in the lagoon every year on the third Sunday in July. Given the fluid brushwork it can be dated between 1912-1914; just before World War I. A second version was exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1914 and a third belongs to Brass's heirs, painted in a warmer range of colours.