ART
SEVERAL Italian sculptors have achieved reputations since the war which have made them potent forces beyond their own fron- tiers. Post-war Italian painting is less well known here (with the possible exception of the artists who once formed the Fronte Nuovo group) in spite of several exhibitions in London and the provinces. Let us there- fore greet the nine painters from Rome, whom the Italian Institute have first put in their 'Show Window of Italian Contem- porary Art' at 39 Belgrave Square. If they are not to be disappointed, however, visitors should be warned that this is neither the whole nor the best of Italian art. You may glimpse something of that relaxed simplicity and distaste for anecdote which is common to so much Italian painting and sculpture, an art more sensuous than profound, and in the work of Roberto Melli (would it be wrong to describe it as Sargent through the eyes of polite post-cubism?) one of the influences which has helped to form this attitude. You may glimpse, too, oils by Mino Maccari, better known for his incisive graphic work; compact abstractions at the purple end of the colour-scale by Toti Scialoja; and tasteful things by Gentilini and Luigi Montanarini. The strongest personality of this first batch emerges as Fausto Pirandello, whose still-life of a tea-table is very well considered.
Interest attaches to the Leicester Galleries' exhibition of Dufresne for much the same reasons. in spite of his room at the Musee d'Art Moderne in Paris, he is seldom to be seen over here. Perhaps he has Iittle to teach us at this particular moment, but a number of these canvases have worn well. To some degree Dufresne was affected by cubism, but even more did the exotic splendours of North Africa deflect his art towards a muted, French expressionism, so that a still-life like No. 8, with its birdcage, links up with the aims of an artist like Frances Hodgkins. John Craxton may also be seen here, amending, refining, perhaps perfecting, the syntax of the language he has
now made his own. Byzantium, Picasso, Ghika have enriched that language; through it Craxton describes men dancing, fishing, sitting at cafe tables. His view of life is purely lyrical, but expressed in terms so hieratic that its poetry is sometimes obscured by the purely pictorial architecture imposed upon it. Also to be seen here are drawings and painting by Denton Welch.
At Gimpel's (vastly improved by a little judicious demolition), abstracts by Peter Kinley and Sandra Blow—the big crimson centre-piece by the latter being especially imposing. On the top floor of the Building Centre in Store Street, eleven artists—nine men and two women—who are loosely grouped around Victor Pasmore's forays into constructivism. Though art is useless, it does not follow that what is useless is art, and I myself find it hard to achieve the frame of mind in which the shapes, forms and textures indicated here seem superior to those evolved by the industrial artist, merely because they are intended for contemplation and serve no useful purpose. The most endearing exhibit, which has been seen before elsewhere, is Kenneth Martin's re- volving spiral mobile of brass.
M. H. MIDDLETON
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