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CARLO PAOLO AGAZZI
(Milan 1870 - 1922)
SERA NEBBIOSA, ante 1915

Etching, Mezzetti 7. A fine impression in sepia ink, of an early state, unknown to Mezzetti, before the reduction of the plate and many adjuntive work on it. Printed working on the surface tone with monotypic effects. Inscribed in ball-point pen on the right of the bottom margin C P Agazzi. To the platemark 237 x 300 mm, the entire sheet measuring 290 x 403 mm. The impression of this print at the Bertarelli (Mod. m. 1-3), which is the one described by Amalia Mezzetti in her catalogue, measures to the platemark 257 x 240 mm. With margins, minor defects at the margins, generally in very good condition.
PROVENANCE:
The painter Carlo Bellesia (Milan 1899 - 1973). At age 17, Bellesia, host of the male Orphanage of Milan (Martinitt), was hired as lithographer by Federico Marioni (Claro 1866 - Milan 1938). Marioni, himself an etcher, opened in Milan, in the last decade of the nineteenth century, a chalcographic atelier attended by many prominent artists as Conconi, Feragutti-Visconti, Russolo, Boccioni, Wildt, Grubicy, Agazzi, Ernesto Bazzaro. The activity of Bellesia at the Marioni atelier, allowed him to gather a collection of etchings by those artists.

A pupil of Giuseppe Bertini at the Brera Academy, Agazzi learned, among other things, the technique of fresco painting. He competed with Virgilio Ripari in painting flowers, and he painted so many to be called Agazzi dei Fiori or il Nuovo Scrosati. Then he devoted himself to landscape. Agazzi actively participated in the exhibitions of the Permanente in Milan and at the Venice Biennale until two years before his death. He also painted the Meeting of Garibaldi with Countess Raimondi, now in the Museo del Risorgimento in Milan. He was an excellent painter fresco and left us a superb evidence in the villa of Carlo Alberto Pisani Dossi on Como lake. Agazzi was also a printmaker, influenced by Conconi in the etchings with monotypic effects; he also dealt with extreme ease the drypoint. A member of the Associazione Italiana Acquafortisti e Incisori, he exhibited his etchings and drypoints at the Esposizione d'incisione italiana in London, 1916.