Leonardo Cremonini

Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris

William Louis-Dreyfus, New York (acquired from the above in 1987)

Acquired as a gift from the above by the present owner in 2016

Paris, Galerie Claude Bernard, Cremonini, Peintures 1978-1982, 1983

Grenoble, Musée de Grenoble, Carcassonne, Tout Narbonnaises, Cremonini : douze ans de peinture, 1970-1982, 14 April - 6 June 1983

Spolete, Palazzo Racani-Arroni, XXVII Festival dei Due Mondi, Cremonini. Opere dal 1960 al 1984, 1984

Athens, Institut Culturel d'Athènes, Cremonini. Opere dal 1953 al 1985, 1986

Siena, Santa Maria della Scala, Rétrospective Leonardo Cremonini, 1986

Rome, Villa Medici, Le voyage du dialogue, Adami, Cremonini, Maselli, Peverelli, 1986

New York, Claude Bernard Gallery, Leonardo Cremonini. Paintings and Watercolors 1975-1986, 1987

Milan, Museo della Permanente, Cremonini Antologica 1953 - 2001, 2002, no.75

Bologne, Sale Belle Arti di Accademia e Pinacoteca Nazionale, Cremonini. Antologica retrospettiva 2003-1953, 15 February - 21 April 2003, no.119, p.119, illustrated in colour

Fairfield, University Art Museum, Walsh Gallery, Leonardo Cremonini (1925-2010) – Timeless Monumentality: Paintings from The William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation, 4 November 2016 - 3 March 2017, p.16, illustrated in colour

Vittorio Sgrabi, Sous le rêve du soleil, Bisonte-Monte dei Paschi, Siena, 1987

William Rubin, Alberto Moravia, Umberto Eco, and al., Cremonini peintures 1953-1987, Paris 1987, pl. 175, illustrated in colour

William Rubin, Alberto Moravia, Umberto Eco, and al., Cremonini peintures 1953-1987, Bologne 1988, pl. 175, illustrated in colour

William Rubin, Lorenzo Canova andLinda Wolk-Simon, Leonardo Cremonini: Paintings and Drawings from The William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation, New York 2016, p. 51

Exh. Cat, La Seyne-sur-Mer, Villa Tamaris, Cremonini. Une rétrospective 1953-2000, 2002

Executed between 1980 and 1982, La mise à nu du père belongs to the series of large-format works that Leonardo Cremonini devoted to the beach, a recurring space in his œuvre since his childhood on the Tyrrhenian coast. For the artist, the beach is as much a setting as a theatre of suspended human relations. The diptych, oil on canvas in two parts, is itself a formally significant device: the physical caesura between the two panels introduces a discontinuity into the represented space, a latent fracture that generates the psychological tension of the subject. The laying bare of the title is not that of the body but of the relationship between generations, between figures whose physical proximity does not preclude an irreducible inner distance.

Cremonini built his compositions from what he called "form and its meaning"; not a story to be told, but a structure to be inhabited. His figures seem to rest physically without ever resting mentally, and it is precisely this dissociation that La mise à nu du père embodies with particular acuity. Light, handled with the geometric precision that aligns Cremonini with Piero della Francesca as much as with Morandi, cuts the silhouettes without fully revealing them. The monumental scale amplifies this effect: the figures are close, physically imposing, and yet unreachable. La mise à nu du père belongs to a period of full critical recognition for Cremonini, and bears witness to an art of singular inward vision.