Carlo Servolini: I funari, 1920 ca.
Tappa

Carlo Servolini: I funari, 1920 ca.

oil painting on canvas 

cm 53.2x56.5    

signed bottom left: Carlo Servolini    

Gifted to the Municipality of Collesalvetti by resolution dated 23 September 1965    Collesalvetti 

Exhibitions, Villa Carmignani, 27 November 2004 - 2 January 2005, Livorno 2004.     

Bibliography F. Cagianelli (by), Carlo and Luigi Servolini. L’arte, il pensiero, le    tecniche , exhibition catalogue (Collesalvetti, Villa Carmignani, 27 November 2004 - 2 January 2005), Livorno 2004, p. 67 (repr.); F. Cagianelli, Carlo Servolini 1876-1948. Dipinti, acquarelli, incisioni , Cinisello Balsamo, Milano 2006, p. 110 (repr.)     

The work is part of a landscape cycle dedicated by Carlo Servolini to scenarios set between Tombolo and Calambrone, often dotted with people doing their work and crafts in the countryside. Regarding the not solely naturalistic tone of these scenes, Gino Mazzanti, the most reliable witness of the artists excursions into the scrub in the “Livorno marsh” made some comments, remembering how, once he had returned to his studio, he would transpose his views onto canvas, or more often onto paper, not using dull representations of real life, but more lyrical “visions” (G. Mazzanti, Ricordo ventennale di un maestro. Carlo Servolini painter and etcher (1876-1948) , in “Le Venezie e L’Italia”, VII, 3, 1968, pp. 30-34).    

Defined as “solitary stains” - the ones by Tombolo and Coltano - almost entirely destroyed during the last war, the latter were actually magical behind the scenes for the artist's wanderings, aimed at portraying the effort of human work in an epic style, commented with a bright weaving only apparently reminiscent of the macchiaiola season, but which was actually projected towards the new pointillist technique.