Mixed Technique Painting by Enzo Pregno (Alexandria, Egypt, 1898 - Florence, 19)

Magnificent work by the painter Enzo Pregno. (Alexandria, Egypt, 1898 - Florence, 1972) Mixed media on paper, 1940s/1950s, depicting a vase of flowers. Dimensions: 60 X 50 cm. Enzo Pregno was born in Cairo to Italian parents in 1898. His family returned to Italy when he was a child, and shortly after, he served as a soldier during the First World War. Self-taught, he made a name for himself in the art world in the 1920s. His adventurous spirit led him to travel across Europe, where he also worked in Germany, Switzerland, and France. He stayed in Paris from 1929 to 1934, where he met Pablo Picasso and Victor Brauner, who became his friends. Upon returning to Florence, he took on various jobs to make ends meet. He seems to have held his first exhibition in 1941 at the Galleria "Il Ponte." Opposed by the Florentine art scene for always refusing to belong to a movement, preferring to evade the ever-increasing labels, his approach was nonetheless appreciated and respected by internationally renowned artists such as Filippo De Pisis and Oskar Kokoschka, who visited him in his studio in 1950. He received the National Fiorino Prize several times and participated in significant exhibitions in Italy and abroad. He organised solo exhibitions in Florence, Milan, Turin, Venice, Trieste, Rome, Palermo, Zurich, and Germany. His works are part of the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Florence and numerous collections in Italy and abroad. Enzo Pregno holds a prominent place in 20th-century Tuscan art. His painting style, marked by great sobriety and focused on the essential, is in line with 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, a character, a flower, or a nat.