Charles Lapicque (French, 1898-1988) Nuit romaine,... Lot 17

Charles Lapicque (French, 1898-1988) Nuit romaine, 1958 Canvas signed lower left, titled and dated on the back. Number on the frame U288/1. Provenance : - artist's studio - collection Elmina Auger, Anthony - collection Gabriel Salloum, Anthony - sale in Paris, Me Briest, June 16, 1998, n°129 - sale in Paris, Piasa, November 28, 2006, n°10 - sale in Versailles, Versailles Enchères, December 11, 2011, n°136 - private collection, Tours. Work to be compared : Bernard Balanci, "Charles Lapicque, catalog raisonné de l'oeuvre peint et de la sculpture", Paris, Mayer, 1973, n°385 for a work of the same dimensions under another angle. The "Roman Nights" series is part of the more general corpus of Italian works by Charles Lapicque. Traveling to Rome during Easter 1957, the artist discovered the Roman forum, the Appian Way and Mount Palatine. Like David nearly two centuries earlier, the "scales fell from his eyes". Lapicque restores in this figurative work "a tiny temporal and spatial fragment of the universe". In this mixture of cold and warm tones, he tries to call out to modern man, whom he considers to be flattered and spoiled by the current techniques of movement and information (Charles Lapicque in Bernard Balanci, "Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint", Paris, Mayer, n°377). Between luminous radiation and chromatic deflagrations, Lapicque thus proposes a second reading in the figuration of monuments of another time, to exceed the decorative aspect of the composition.