Valeria - Etching by Luigi Bartolini - 1948 1948

Image dimensions: 24.7 x 32.8 cm. Valeria is a beautiful etching realized by the artist Luigi Bartolini realized in 1948. Original etching on china paper applied. Plate dimensions: mm 247 x 328. Edition of 50 prints. Hand-signed, titled and numbered on the lower margin: Valeria 7/50 Bartolini. Signed and dated on plate on the lower left corner: “Bartolini 48”. Titled on plate on the upper side: Valeria. In good conditions, yet with slight foxing. One of the specimen is now preserved at the Civica Raccolta Bertarelli in Castello Sforzesco in Milan. Luigi Bartolini Cupramontana (Ancona), 1892 – Rome 1963 An accomplished Twentieth Century Italian engraver, painter, writer, art critic and engraver. He spent his early years living in Rome, Siena, and Florence and was professionally formed through university courses in art and medicine, museums, and the Academy Belle Arti. He begins to study art in 1912 with a special preference for Goya, Rembrandt, and Fattori. His success as an engraver arrives in 1924 with his exhibitions at Bragaglia’s House of Art and Casa Palazzi di Roma (70 etchings). In 1925 he participates in the II Roman Biennial and then in the Venice Biennial from 1928 to 1936. He is considered, along with Morandi, the greatest Italian engraver. His expositive work continues with intensity in the post-war period with one-man exhibitions in both Italy and abroad. His last one-man exhibition takes place at the XXXI Venice Biennial and at the National Chalcography in Rome in 1962. Bartolini lives through his era in complete liberty, dedicating himself to painting, to art criticism, to literature and teaching. This intellectual and artistic autonomy is well reflected in his engravings and it is exactly because of this characteristic of intellectual autonomy that he has never really belonged to the Scuola Romana although he was very attached to it because he frequented the Roman environment and it’s artists who he would often exhibit with. His literary production is gathered the volumes Polemiche (1940), Credo d’artista (1945), Il Fallimento della Pittura (1948) and Poesie 1911-1963(1964). As a critic, he collaborates with numerous magazines such as “Il Selvaggio”, “Quadrivio”, “La Tribuna”, “L’Ambrosiano” etc. After the war, “Bicycle Thieves” (1946) was used as an idea by De Sica for the homonymous film (1948), an Italian Neorealist masterpiece.