ARTIST: Marco Sassone (Italian, California, Canadian, born 1942)
TITLE: Ford 1976
MEDIUM: oil on canvas
CONDITION: Very good. No visible inpaint under UV light.
ART SIZE: 20 x 22 inches / 50 x 55 cm
FRAME SIZE: 25 x 27 inches / 63 x 68 cm
SIGNATURE: lower right and on verso
CATEGORY: old antique vintage painting for auction sale online
AD: ART WANTED: Consign, Trade In, Cash Offer
SKU#: 130991
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BIOGRAPHY:
Marco Sassone was born in Campi Bisenzio, a Tuscan village, in 1942. His family moved to Florence in 1954, and there he met painters Ottone Rosai and Ugo Maturo, who encouraged him to follow his interest in art. He enrolled at the Istituto Galileo Galilei, where he studied architectural drafting for several years. During this period he supported himself by selling watercolour sketches of Florence to tourists, many of whom were Americans, which increased his fluency in English.Later, he studied with painter Silvio Loffredo, professor of art at the Accademia in Florence, a pupil himself of the Austrian master Oskar Kokoschka. Loffredo encouraged him to develop his own style and vision. For inspiration, Sassone studied the works of the 19th-century Italian impressionists, the Macchiaioli - Giovanni Fattori, Vito D’Ancona and Silvestro Lega. He began exhibiting his first works at this time. At the age of 25, he was selected to exhibit at Lo Sprone Cultural Center in Florence.In November 1967, soon after the painful experience of the Florentine flood, Sassone traveled to the United States and settled in California. He later moved to Laguna Beach, a small seaside community, Mediterranean in geography and climate, with its own commitment to the arts. He became a regular exhibitor at the annual Festival of the Arts. Throughout the seventies, he participated in a variety of exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad. Of his work then, the art critic for the Los Angeles Times, William Wilson, wrote: Sassone is impressively gifted as a colorist and skilled in rendering reflections and color in light. (Wilson was reviewing a one-person show of his work at the Haggenmaker Galleries in Los Angeles, 11/14/75.)In 1982 Marco Sassone was knighted by president of Italy, Sandro Pertini, into the Order to the Merit of the Italian Republic and received a gold medal award from the Italian Academy of Arts, Literature and Science. In the early 1980s Sassone moved his studio to San Francisco. In March 1988, the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery hosted the American Preview for his one-person exhibition to be held at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in Paris that April.Art historian Donelson Hoopes published Sassone, a monograph, in concurrence with the artist's exhibition at the Laguna Art Museum (November - December 1979). With prescience, Hoopes had observed: Sassone’s art has evolved from within, and such an organic, psychological and spiritual process may take his work along new and unforeseen paths. By the late eighties, Sassone had become increasingly concerned with social themes. He started working with the InterAid organization, donating paintings to raise money for the group's work with children in crisis. He also donated works to a non-profit group called Another Planet, based in Los Angeles, supporting that group's work with the homeless.He began extensive - and personal - research on the homeless and painted a series of large canvasses and charcoal drawings portraying the life he observed on the streets. A number of these works have been exhibited at the Chicago International Art Exposition, the Basel Art Fair in Switzerland and the Jan Baum Gallery in Los Angeles, as well as in the exhibition Body Politic at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery and Issue of Choice at the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibition (LACE). In March 1994, his exhibition Home on the Streets opened at the Museo ItaloAmericano in San Francisco later traveling to Los Angeles and Florence, Italy. Kenneth Baker, art critic for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote about his work: There is true technical brilliance here…In the drawings, his technique seems to discover fresh descriptive possibilities each time out. Home on the Streets traveled to Los Angeles in 1996 and Florence, Italy in 1997, where the exhibition was mounted in the Cloisters of the Santa Croce Church. Paola Bortolotti, art critic for La Nazione, writes: The persistent theme does not carry a denunciation of a social problem, but it is rather the pretext to pour forth onto canvas the urgency of the brush strokes. In recent years, Marco Sassone’s exhibitions have included David Findlay Jr. Fine Art, New York (2010): Shrine of Saint Francis, San Francisco (2010): Santuario at Palazzo dell’Informazione, Rome (2010); Architecture and Nature at Price Tower Art Center, Oklahoma (2012); Oil and Water at San Angelo Museum, Texas (2014); Orange Coast College, Costa Mesa, California (2016); His Boots and Other Worksat Bata Museum, Toronto (2016); and Viaticus at Berenson Fine Art, Toronto (2017).