MARCO CALDERINI Turin, 1850 - 1941 Antey Saint-Andrè, valley Signed M Calderini bottom left Oil on canvas, 121X168 cm Provenance: Milan, Pesaro Gallery Milan, private collection Exhibition: Galleria Pesaro, Milan 1933 no. 69 The splendid valley described in the large canvas depicts Antey-Saint-Andrè, a charming municipality in the Aosta Valley, located in the upper Valtournenche. The landscape, rendered with meticulous luministic sensitivity, testifies to Marco Calderini's profound attention to Alpine nature and its limpid and silent atmosphere. An appreciated painter and art critic, Calderini was a pupil of Antonio Fontanesi at the Accademia Albertina in Turin, in the landscape course. From the master from Reggio Emilia, he inherited a taste for the poetry of reality and for the emotional rendering of the atmosphere, but he soon distinguished himself with a personal language: more calm, naturalistic and rational, far from the lyrical allusions and sentimental restlessness typical of Fontanesi. His painting is based on a balance between careful observation of reality and compositional serenity, characteristics that make him one of the most important Piedmontese landscape painters between the 19th and 20th century. A precocious artist, Calderini began exhibiting at a very young age, when he was only 20 years old, and from then on, he participated in almost all the major national exhibitions in Turin, Milan, Venice and Rome, as well as in numerous international exhibitions in France, England and Germany, where he received wide acclaim. Parallel to his painting activity, he also played an intense role as critic and art promoter, contributing to the dissemination of Piedmontese figurative culture. .