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Pietro Annigoni<break strength="x-strong"/> (Milan, 1910 - Florence, 1988)<break strength="x-strong"/> Female head<break strength="x-strong"/> Red chalk and watercolor on white paper, 300 x 200 mm<break strength="x-strong"/> Donation by Guglielmo Guidi, February 2002<break strength="x-strong"/> Painter and engraver, Pietro Annigoni exhibited for the first time in 1929, receiving positive comments from Elio Vittorini in the newspaper “L’Italia Letteraria”. At the beginning of the 1930s he created a series of drypoint engravings, “scathing and essential”, entitled Black Love. They called him “the painter of beggars” and Ugo Ojetti dedicated an excellent review to him in the “Corriere della Sera” (23 December 1932). He began his significant portrait production that would give him great international fame. In 1947 he signed the “Manifesto of the painters of reality” with Gregorio Sciltian and the Bueno brothers. In the 1960s and 1970s he created fresco cycles in Florence, the Convent of San Marco, Montecassino, the Chiesa Maggiore and Padua, the Basilica of Sant’Antonio. For the great art historian Bernard Berenson, “Pietro Annigoni is not only the greatest painter of this century, but he is also capable of competing on equal terms with the greatest painters of all centuries... he will remain in the history of art as the protester of a dark age”. Annigoni’s great interest in naturalism and his studies of expression and physiognomy are reflected in a large number of works carried out, in most cases, on commission and in a series of “Studies of heads” – as the artist himself used to call them – mostly female and made with mixed techniques, pastel, pencil or sanguine, sometimes highlighted with watercolors. Absolute technical mastery and acute observation are elements that emerge explicitly, even in his rapid informal studies, such as in this undated Female Head, which fascinates with its intense concentration and severe, almost surly character, in which distant echoes of Leonardo's influence can be heard.