LEONARDO BAZZARO Lot n° 197

Milan, 1853 - Miazzina, 1937 Riva San Domenico in Chioggia Signed L Bazzaro at lower left Oil on panel, 69.5X120.5 cm Bears on the back card with dedication. Provenance: Milan, commendatore Pietro Gerolamo Moneta Milan, private collection Exposures: Leonardo Bazzaro Pittore Mostra Postuma, Società per le Belle Arti ed Esposizione Permanente Ente Morale, Room IV, Milan, 1939, cat. no. 61 Bibliography: AA. VV., Leonardo Bazzaro pittore, mostra postuma, exhibition catalog, Milan, 1939, p. 14, cat. no. 61 Leonardo Bazzaro: catalog raisonné of the works, edited by F.L. Maspes, E. Savoia, Treviso 2011, p. 130, cat. no. 297 Leonardo Bazzaro is one of the few masters of color who, despite his marked originality and having understood the importance of the renewing currents of his time, is more closely connected to the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century tradition of Italian painting, in particular to Venetian artists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He was born in Milan in 1853 and attended the Brera Academy with Bertini. He initially preferred to paint interiors, and then devoted himself with great passion to landscapes, which he populated with figures and animals. The valleys of the Aosta Valley, the forests of Mottarone and Lake Maggiore, along with Chioggia, are the favorite destinations of his pilgrimages and, consequently, the protagonists of his art. In 1878 he was in Venice, an event that marked a turning point in his artistic career. The enchantment of the Lagoon and the chromatic variety of the Venetian gulf will convince Bazzaro to settle in Chioggia; the period spent in Chioggia will be one of the most intense and happiest for his art. His painting is characterized by light, movement, aerial perspective and chromatic exuberance, manifested through vivid brushwork. His style is realistic and devoid of theoretical concepts, typical of an artist who prefers painting for its own sake. A tangible example of this art can be seen in the painting in the catalog depicting the shore of San Domenico in beautiful Chioggia.