Collection

Nude with a Pink Jug

Mario Tozzi

Basic information

ID: Ж-4776
Author: Mario Tozzi
Name: Nude with a Pink Jug
Date of creation: 1928
Country: France
Technique: oil painting
Material: canvas oil
Dimensions (height x width, cm): 73 x 46

Additionally

Type: painting
Genre: nude art
Provenance: Received from Lviv Museum of Ukrainian Art (National Museum in Lviv), 1971
Exposition: Lozinski Palace

Information about author

Author: Mario Tozzi
Artist's lifetime: 1895–1979
Biography: Mario Tozzi was an Italian artist who studied at the Bologna Academy of Arts. In 1919, he married a French woman and settled in Paris. Between 1920 and 1936, he lived and worked in Paris, as well as belonged to the Paris school. In 1926, the artist founded the "Group of Seven" together with Italian avant-garde artists, namely de Chirico, Savino, Severini, and de Pisis. Tozzi liked to visit the cafe "Dome" in Montparnasse; he was also a friend of Ossip Zadkine and Alberto Giacometti. The late 1920s and early 1930s were the period of the master's greatest success. In 1937, a serious illness and complex operations made the artist almost completely immobile. It was only after 20 years that he could be partially engaged in creative work. Among the variety of artistic movements, Mario Tozzi chose Neoclassicism; he was interested in the search for harmony and well-delineated forms.

Object description

The work "Naked with a Pink Jug" belongs to the early and most interesting period of the artist's creative activity. The painting was brought from Paris to Lviv in 1931 by Sviatoslav Hordynskyi for the First Exhibition of the Association of Independent Ukrainian Artists. The work was exhibited alongside the paintings by Modigliani, Picasso, Derain, as well as Ukrainian "Parisians" Andriienko, Hryshchenko, Khmeliuk, and Lviv painters. The main object of the composition is supposedly a pink jar. The silhouette of a woman in the background serves as a paraphrase of its clear and rounded contours. But later it comes to mind that it was the female figure that filled the artist with inspiration for creating the shape of the pottery. The lack of dynamism and the "motionlessness" of the plot provoke the search for internal movement in the painting, in the smooth forms of objects and shadows that are depicted on it. The metaphysical nature of existence, which Italian artists of the early 20th century aimed to capture, is the main theme of this exquisite and at the same time simple work.

Inscriptions

At the bottom right there is an author's inscription M. Tozzi

Nude with a Pink Jug

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