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Lot Essay
This work is registered in the Archivio Storico dei Futuristi Siciliani, Palermo.
“In 1923, a very young Giulio d’Anna arrived in Messina from Palermo and was shaken by the sight of ruins left by the devastating earthquake and tidal wave of 1908, an event in which not even nature was spared. He saw destroyed houses, sloping walls, debris everywhere, dead trees. When he started his pictorial activity around 1928, he gave life to a small series of paintings inspired by the anguished vision of the destroyed town, and the optimism about his own future, gave him sense a rebirth. In this painting, from 1930, he includes an auspicious rainbow above the ruins, now less devastating than they used to be, with new buildings in the background, overlooked by bell towers.
The two airplanes that fly above the scarce clouds, squared and simplified, almost childlike, and lacking all the mechanical details that would show in later works, revealing the artist’s deep knowledge of machines, symbolize an anticipation for a brighter future.
- Anna Maria Ruta
“In 1923, a very young Giulio d’Anna arrived in Messina from Palermo and was shaken by the sight of ruins left by the devastating earthquake and tidal wave of 1908, an event in which not even nature was spared. He saw destroyed houses, sloping walls, debris everywhere, dead trees. When he started his pictorial activity around 1928, he gave life to a small series of paintings inspired by the anguished vision of the destroyed town, and the optimism about his own future, gave him sense a rebirth. In this painting, from 1930, he includes an auspicious rainbow above the ruins, now less devastating than they used to be, with new buildings in the background, overlooked by bell towers.
The two airplanes that fly above the scarce clouds, squared and simplified, almost childlike, and lacking all the mechanical details that would show in later works, revealing the artist’s deep knowledge of machines, symbolize an anticipation for a brighter future.
- Anna Maria Ruta