Portait by Adriana Pincherle, signed and dated 1973. (1905,Roma- 1996, Firenze)

Adriana Pincherle, signed and dated 1973. (1905,Roma- 1996, Firenze)

Portrait of lady in a landscape.
Italian woman painter, active in Rome and since 1943 in Florence. 
Signed and dated lower right: Adriana Pincherle. 1973.

Oil on canvas.

Size: cm 73 x 57

The simple composition, which represents a woman from behind, bears the influence of Matisse's avant-garde style, with bold and refined color combinations. The shape is created with color, creating an almost surreal and highly expressive effect.

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Biography of artist:

Pincherle Adriana
Rome 1905 Dec. 25 - Florence 1996 Jan. 8

Adriana was born in Rome on 25 December 1905, into a family in which two cultures were intertwined: the Jewish one of her father, the engineer Carlo Pincherle, of Venetian origins and in love with painting, and the Catholic one of her mother, Isa De Marsanich, of noble but decayed Hungarian.

Adriana is the eldest child and two years older than her brother Alberto, known to the literary world under the pseudonym Alberto Moravia.

As Pincherle herself tells of her, as a child she spent hours admiring her father painting watercolours, and it was perhaps then that her interest in drawing and especially her particular sensitivity towards color was born. Thus, after completing her classical studies, she began to attend the atelier "for ladies" of the engraver Alfredo Petrucci and the free nude courses at the Academy, where she met Mimmo Spadini and Scipione, and came into contact with the Roman art. In 1931 he made his debut at the collective exhibition "First Roman exhibition of female art" at the "Galleria di Roma", while the following year, at the same gallery, he exhibited a solo exhibition together with Corrado Cagli, already attracting the attention of critics , Longhi's famous comment, mentioned several times by Pincherle herself, who prefers the "sissy" between the two artists. As evidence of the results achieved by Adriana since her first works, we remember that among her works presented in 1932 there was also the famous "Standing Self-Portrait", now in the Uffizi.

Pincherle's growth passes through places and periods common both to the Roman School and to the school of painters of the Via Cavour group (Mafai, Raphaël, Scipione), with tangents and interchanges, but her pictorial research arrives at original solutions independent of any label.

Fundamental to the maturation of her art was her stay in Paris in 1933, in which Pincherle admired and closely studied the Fauves, Renoir and in particular Matisse. The same year she exhibited for the first time in Florence at the Sala d'arte delle Nazioni with Milena Barilli and at the "Galerie de la Jeune Europe" in Paris.

She knows Paulucci and consequently Menzio, Levi and Chessa, i.e. the founders of the "I sei di Torino" group, who for Pincherle are a stimulus for the private re-elaboration of French art.

In 1934 she participated in the "Exhibition of Contemporary Italian Art", a traveling exhibition in the USA, while the following year she exhibited at the II Quadrennial in Rome and at the "La Cometa" gallery, presented by de Libero. In these years, on the occasion of her personal visit to Genoa, she met the painter Onofrio Martinelli, who she married in 1943, moving with him to Florence and creating a human and artistic partnership. Together they frequented the Caffè delle Giubbe Rosse, a meeting place for the intellectuals gravitating around the magazine «Solaria», a habit that in the 1960s would inspire him to create a gallery of portraits of these men of letters. Sixteen of these were donated to the Gabinetto G.P. Vieusseux in 1978 and now permanently exhibited in the reading room of the Contemporary Archive.

With the promulgation of the racial laws, Pincherle's Jewish origins forced the two artists to take refuge in safe places, including Bibbiena, Vallombrosa, Taranto.

Immediately after the liberation they made a trip to Paris, a stay that became an annual anniversary for the pair of artists, in constant evolution and comparison with contemporary French research.

In the following years Pincherle participated in numerous exhibitions in Rome, Florence, Milan, exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1948, at the XXV Biennale in 1950, at the Galleria del Vantaggio in Rome in 1955, a personal exhibition presented by Roberto Longhi, which testifies to the recognition of artistic maturity achieved through an original pictorial journey.
After Martinelli's death in 1966 the painter continued her activity by exhibiting annually and found inspiration for her works in her studio in via de' Bardi in Florence where she painted until the last days of her life; she passed away on January 8, 1996.