Vincenzo Bianchini

Private Collection, United Kingdom (acquired directly from the artist in the 1990s)

Condition: This work is in good condition. Some paint loss on the upper right and lower left corner edge, this has been restorerd by a professional. Some minor pinhole sized paint chips across the painting, in line with the age of the work. The canvas is slightly slack. Some signs of minor restoration under the UV light. colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are accurate.
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Born in 1903, Vincenzo Bianchini received an education in Music and Classical Civilisation before studying medicine in Rome. He first began his practice as a doctor in Sardinia, subsequently travelling to other countries, even Ethiopia. In the 1950s, Bianchini moved to Iran to continue his practice in medicine with the aim of treating villagers in rural areas where people had no access to proper care like in Abadan, the south west province of Kuzhestan.

This new self-assignment would mark the beginning of one of his greatest adventures as not only a medical practitioner but also as an emerging artist, since art had always been his most enduring source of inspiration. During the 1960s up to the mid-1970s, he became embedded in the artistic and intellectual milieu of modernist Iran, and interacted closely with renowned figures such as Bahman Mohasses, Parviz Tanavoli and Ebrahim Golestan among many significant others.

He was particularly known for his sensitive, painterly exploration of local rural landscape and the communities that inhabited it, but also for his monumental sculptures, his poetry and his philosophical writings. His radical approach to painting and his bold juxtaposition of primitivism and expressionism established him as a truly groundbreaking artist during a period of extreme social and cultural change in the region. Bianchini’s work is distinguished by its primacy of feeling; one can perhaps even sense that the painter came from a medical background from the intimate examination of his subjects. The artist’s profound humanism coupled with his respect for the local cultures gave his work a sense of spirituality and otherworldly grace, which can be seen in the present work. This richly textured canvas offers a beautiful depiction of a favourite Middle-Eastern theme – the omnipresent camel – yet it finds a new expression under Bianchini’s reverent brush. His extensive travels across Iran and his interaction with the local communities and the landscape also provided the foundations for two of his most celebrated novels; Acqua del Diavolo (1964) and Deserti al Brado (1972).

Bianchini devoted his life to helping others, and it was in these encounters that he found the inspiration to fulfil his artistic passion. He exhibited widely between the 1950s and the 1970s at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome (1942),  the Montenapoleone Gallery in Milan (1958), the Gallery Borghese in Tehran (1958), the Italian Institute of Culture, Tehran (1960) and the Centre of European Art in Milan (1974) amongst many others. Many of his works are held in the permanent collection of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMOCA), confirming the strength of the artist’s devotion to Iran, where he eventually felt more at home than in his native Italy. Excluding a period he spent in the Congo with the World Health Organisation (W.H.O.), Bianchini stayed in Iran until 1978, which proved to be a difficult but also pivotal year in his life. Bianchini would then quickly be obliged to return to Europe, since he could no longer see. He died peacefully in Switzerland in 2000.