Oil painting on canvas by Enzo Pregno. (Alexandria, Egypt, 1898 - Florence, 1972)

Magnificent work by the painter Enzo Pregno. (Alexandria, Egypt, 1898 - Florence, 1972) Oil on canvas, 1940s/1950s, depicting a vase of flowers. Canvas dimensions: 65 X 50 cm, frame dimensions: 80 X 65 cm. Enzo Pregno was born in Cairo to Italian parents in 1898. His family returned to Italy when he was a child, and shortly thereafter, he served as a soldier during the First World War. A self-taught artist, he made a name for himself in the art world in the 1920s. His adventurous spirit led him to travel throughout Europe, where he also worked in Germany, Switzerland, and France. He lived in Paris from 1929 to 1934 and there met Pablo Picasso and Victor Brauner, who became his friends. Back in Florence, he worked various jobs to support himself. He appears to have held his first exhibition in 1941 at the Galleria "Il Ponte." Opposed by the Florentine art world for his consistent refusal to belong to any movement, preferring to avoid the ever-increasing number of labels, his approach was nonetheless appreciated and esteemed by internationally renowned artists such as Filippo De Pisis and Oskar Kokoschka, who visited him in his studio in 1950. He received the Fiorino National Prize several times and participated in important exhibitions in Italy and abroad. He held solo exhibitions in Florence, Milan, Turin, Venice, Trieste, Rome, Palermo, Zurich, and Germany. His works are featured in the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Florence and in numerous collections in Italy and abroad. Enzo Pregno occupies a prominent place in 20th-century Tuscan art. His pictorial style, characterized by its great restraint and focus on the essential, is in the tradition of European Expressionism, of which he represents one of the few Italian expressions. A spiritual approach that does not merely reflect reality, but transforms it. A reality that is not simply a landscape, .