Piero Leidi (brescia, 1892 - Bedizzole, 1976), Mountain View With Wooden Bridge

Piero Leidi (Brescia, 1892 - Bedizzole, 1976)

Mountain view with wooden bridge

Tempera on cardboard, cm 23 x 17

Signed bottom right "P.Leidi"; dated 1943 and inscribed on the back

Piero Leidi, an artist of Brescia origin, studied in Lugano with Luigi Rossi (1852-1923), a staunch supporter of open air painting until the 1880s; Rossi refocused in Leidi his dedication to mountain views, Never abandoned even when the artist studied at the Academy of Florence. At the same time as her Florentine lessons, Leidi enrolled in the Brescia school of painting Moretto, receiving in 1913 the first prizes for the true ability to restore the given landscape. His exhibition activity was limited to the first decades of the twentieth century, in particular the participation documented at exhibitions in Milan, Turin, Cremona, Genoa, Venice and Brescia within the Group of Independent Artists. The increase of prestige allowed the artist to participate also in foreign exhibitions, as in Paris, where Leidi distinguished himself for a new vision of the mountain view.

The present landscape splendidly brings together all the characteristics of Leidi’s painting: a crystalline colorism pervades the entire composition, punctuated by liquid brushstrokes that define solid volumes, in a silent restitution of a snapshot of life. The evanescent touches with which the artist patiently distinguishes the frames and the wood of the windows along with the brick tufts that build a distant wall well match the thin shade cut between the patches of houses and that seems to cool the grass. In the painting is identifiable a glimpse of Ponte di Legno, a municipality in Brescia that represents the artist’s production.