Estate seconda, 1959

(Rome, 1914 – 1998)

The three paintings by Toti Scialoja were acquired for the CRT Collection in order to fill a gap in the GAM holdings and are significant for reasons that go beyond their high quality. Scialoja was more than a painter, at a time when theoretical and critical ideas went hand in hand with artistic creation, to a greater degree than was ever possible before or after. “There seems to me to be no doubt that Toti Scialoja belongs to a rare species of peintres philosophes,” Giuliano Briganti wrote in 1979, “a very ancient and noble species, not always easy to approach, one of arduous and conflicted itineraries, armed with considerable erudition and profound discipline.” His works emerge from a deep understanding of earlier art and from an ability, which did not cease to amaze the New York art world, to thoroughly grasp the reasons behind the painting of the Abstract Expressionists. [...]