MIRKO BASALDELLAUdine, 1910 - Cambridge, 1969 Crucifixion - Final project for the work carried out in the Vatican in 1966 China ink on paper, 61 x 101 cm Signed lower right: Mirko Label on the back of the antiquarian gallery in Liborio MerolliPROVENANCE: Afro Basaldella Collection; Liborio Merolli Collection, 1950BIOGRAPHY: Brother of Afro and Dino Basaldella, he studied at the Art School of Venice, the Academy of Florence and the Art School of Monza. He worked in Arturo Martini's studio as a student until 1933, then he moved to Rome. Here he met the artists of the Roman school such as: Scipione, Corrado Cagli (whose sister Serena he married), Antonietta Raphaël, Fazzini, Mazzacurati, Leoncillo.He held his first exhibition in 1935 at the La Cometa Gallery, a gallery owned by Countess Mimì Pecci Blunt and in which Libero de Libero and a very young Corrado Cagli were artistic directors. A trip to Paris, made in 1937 together with his brother Afro, opened him to a more complete vision of art, going beyond the boundaries of Mediterranean culture, absorbing the European one.In 1935 he settled in Rome and joined the Milanese group of Corrente. In New York, at the Knoedler gallery in 1947 he held an exhibition that he will repeat in the next two years.Between 1949 and 1951 he created the three gates of the Fosse Ardeatine, an imposing bronze sculpture. This significant experience directed Basaldella towards the search for a new way of making sculpture, with structures and materials different from those traditionally used, including concrete, metal nets, iron wires, plastics.In the following years there were many visitations of oriental culture, mythical iconology, totems, Assyrian, Mesopotamian, Jewish and pre-Columbian finds. The period from 1953 to 1960 was characterized by the use of cut copper and brass sheets. From that period are the series of the Lions of Damascus and the Chimeras.In 1957 he was called to direct the Design work shop at the Carpenter Center fot the Visual Arts of Harvard University in Cambridge in Massachusetts, from here his sculpture is oriented towards technological, mechanistic directions and towards fantastic stimulations of the sacred Indian craftsmanship, some themes obligates of sculpture were reported in archaeological forms.In 1962 he participated, together with the most important international sculptors of the time, in the exhibition Sculptures in the city organized by Giovanni Carandente as part of the V Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto. He presented two bronze sculptures from 1961: Totem and Motivo dentato.In the second half of the sixties he devoted himself to a new series of painted woods, the last bronzes and bronzes were born from the sculptor's ability to shape every type of material, from waste materials to bricks, to the residues of industrial wrapping materials. Finally, the openly figurative themes inspired by the biblical theme of the thirties also reappear, full of refined cultural memories. Fair condition, lacks of the paper and light spots of humidityFrame, glass