T H E
Volare
F I N A L
C O L L E C T I O N
ALFREDO
BOVIO DI GIOVANNI
A L F R E D O ( 1 9 0 7
-
B O V I O
D I
G I O V A N N I
1 9 9 5 )
"Di Giovanni is an artist endowed with an enviable technique and supported by an inexhaustible imagination."
- Gino Grassi
Alfredo Bovio Di Giovanni was born in Fontana Liri on June 11, 1907 and died in Naples on January 8, 1995. Di Giovanni’s father was a Civil Service employee and for this reason, he and his large family – originally from Sant’Afata dei Goti - had to move quite often. They lived in Piedmont, in the north of Italy for a long time and then came back to Campania, settling first in Avellino and finally, in 1920, in Herculaneum. The numerous moves undoubtedly influenced the inquisitive and lively personality of Alfredo.
As a youth he had a restless spirit and was eager to travel. His interest in figurative arts was already manifested during the years of his schooling. Only a little older than a teenager, he revealed an inclination to analyze in depth those facets of artistic language he perceived as being in great turmoil. Aware that innovations were occuring rapidly beyond the narrow horizons he was familiar with, he was motivated by the need to involve himself in the complex and vital world of the avant-garde on the other side of the Alps. And so, he began travelling around Europe.
His first stop was Paris in 1930, where he came in close touch with the tense atmosphere created by Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh. Subsequently, he was attracted by the representatives of Symbolism, who were challenging the traditions of art at the close of the nineteenth century.
it wasn’t until the twentieth century, this current invaded the field of aesthetics with its new, confused, profoundly anti-impressionist and more widely anti-naturalistic vision. It was painters like Edvard Munch (who died in 1944) and Ferdinand Hodler (1853-1918) who fascinated Alfredo the most. When it was his turn, Di Giovanni promptly reacted by radically modifying the style of his early paintings, still featuring a naturalistic descriptiveness, in order to acquire knowledge and pictorial means which were to prove crucial for his later work.
Between the real and unreal ... an explosion of the force of nature, wonderful, primitive, violent, purifying, often unexplainable: I feel the painting style of my grandfather Alfredo Bovio Di Giovanni, was precisely like this.
Barbara Nazzaro, Alfredo Bovio Di Giovanni, Lo Spazio Del Colore
SENZA TITOLO 27 | Oil on Canvas | 49 x 39 Inches | $65,000
SENZA TITOLO 28 | Oil on Canvas | 51 x 43 Inches | $60,000
The ensemble of the dark hues, the light hues, and the colours gives shape to drapes. A so to say inner wind blows gently on them, moving the spectator’s eyes along a kinetic path.
SENZA TITOLO 26 | Oil on Canvas | 49 x 39 Inches | $55,000
When autumn rises The grove is a sight of sober clarity. Along the red walls we loiter at ease And the round eyes follow the flight of birds… This is the hour when the seer’s eyes are filled With gold as he beholds the stars.”
- Georg Trakl, Helian
SENZA TITOLO 25 | Oil on Canvas | 49 x 39 Inches | $65,000
Cultured and inquisitive, Di Giovanni showed in his last works that he had elaborated a personal quest for modalities of his expression that would give to his artistic language a unique flair.
SENZA TITOLO 20 | Oil on Canvas | 55 x 39 Inches | $65,000
LIGHTNING | 1991 - 1994 Oil on Panel | 36 x 47 Inches $60,000
His vision is more of a dream, a seizure of the visionary moment of unconsciousness, a merciless digging among the fears and uncertainties the reason wards off in order to live.
UNTITLED 11 | 1991 - 1994 | Oil on Canvas | 77 x 73 Inches | $100,000
It is through the line – twisted and tapered, ascending or descending but never dividing – the colour is held back or expanded, creating an inexplicable addiction in the visual field of the user.
SENZA TITOLO 21 | Oil on Canvas | 39 x 55 Inches | $65,000
“Sun of autumn, thin and shy And fruit drops off the trees, Blue silence fills the peace Of a tardy afternoon's sky.”
– Georg Trakl, Whispered Into Afternoon
SENZA TITOLO 22 | Oil on Canvas | 39 x 55 Inches | $65,000
In more than one canvas stereotyped figures are depicted in pairs, dyed in red or shaded in grey as shadows, do they seem to be watching us inquisitively? Truthfully, the feeling I believe to be the most relevant is that they may be spying our life that still on, they who have long been gone to another landscape layered in parallel planes with no internal space, where everything is weightless.
FINGERPRINT | 1991- 1994 | Oil on Canvas | 51 x 32 Inches | $50,000
Color overwhelms the spectator and pulls him into the canvas, allowing a glimpse of some fragments that deceive the observer into believing he can comprehend the complexity of this man’s inner world. This was an artist who turned that intrinsic. powerful energy into his expression of life,
Barbara Nazzaro, Alfredo Bovio Di Giovanni, Lo Spazio Del Colore
SENZA TITOLO 24 | Oil on Canvas | 51 x 43 Inches | $75,000
UNTITLED 14 |1991 - 1994 | Oil on Canvas | 71 x 55 Inches | $85,000
MAGIC NIGHT | 1991- 1994 | Oil on Canvas | 71 x 55 Inches | $65,000
It is lovely to walk in the sun Along the yellow walls of summer. Quietly whisper the steps in the grass; yet always sleeps The son of Pan in the grey marble... Tender sonata, joyous laughter - Georg Trakl, Helian
THE MEMORIES | 1991 - 1994 | Oil on Canvas | 51 x 43 Inches | $50,000
“The arrangements of wings, the dotted feathers, if to assign a place for themselves on the canv it has no limits
Franco Giosso, Alfredo
and the small signs of nature here move freely as as, which becomes an unlimited space because of perspective.”
Bovio Di Giovanni, 2011
UNTITLED 19 | 1967 | Oil on Canvas | 20 x 28 Inches | $25,000
TWO OF US | 1991 - 1994 | Oil on Canvas | 45 x 28 Inches | $50,000
UNTITLED 18 | 1991 - 1994 | Oil on Canvas | 32 x 24 Inches | $38,000
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