A major auction of Modern and Contemporary Art will be held on Wednesday, July 2, 2025 at Finarte’s historic Milan headquarters. Starting at 4 p.m., about 150 lots, selected for their high historical and artistic value, will be auctioned in a single round. The exhibition will be open from Friday, June 27, to Tuesday, July 1, with continuous hours from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Among the most eagerly awaited lots is Texas (1945), the first painting executed by Alberto Burri, made during his internment in the prison camp in Hereford, Texas. A physician by training, it was in that environment that Burri embarked on his own pictorial journey. The work, offered at an estimate of between 600,000 and 800,000 euros, represents a founding document of his production. It is the first time that Texas has appeared on the market, marking an important moment for collectors and scholars of the Umbrian master.
“I used to paint all day long, it was a way of not thinking about everything around me and the war. I did nothing but paint until the liberation,” Alberto Burri recounted in a well-known 1994 interview. “And in these years I understood that I ’had’ to be a painter. (...) The paintings made then are for me today as valid as my latest works, neither more nor less in terms of pictorial intensity.”
Also of great interest are the three works from Monica Vitti’s personal collection. The most relevant is Giorgio de Chirico’s Mysterious Baths, oil on canvas from 1935 (69.7 x 49.7 cm), valued at 400,000-600,000 euros. The painting constitutes a pictorial transposition of TheMysterious Guest, one of ten lithographs made by de Chirico in 1934 for Jean Cocteau’s volume Mythologie. The subject entering the booth is a self-portrait of the artist himself, an element that adds further value to the work. By the same author is Niobe, tempera on canvas from 1921 (53 x 42 cm), made during the painter’s Florentine period, when he assiduously frequented the Uffizi Gallery. His interest in classical antiquity, in particular the Roman sculptural group of the Niobids, clearly emerges in the painting, which was exhibited in the same year at the artist’s solo show at the Galleria Arte in Milan. Completing the nucleus from the actress’ collection is the tempera on paper Iridescent Compenetration - study for Penetration + Space, dated 1912, signed by Giacomo Balla. The work, small in size (19 x 26.5 cm), bears a study of the same name in graphite on the verso and is estimated at between 65,000 and 80,000 euros.
Also of note is the presence of Lella and Fausto Bertinotti’s collection, which features two Andy Warhol silkscreens from the famous 1972 series dedicated to Mao Tse Tung. Both works are valued between 20,000 and 30,000 euros each.
The collection also includes numerous works by Piero Dorazio, personally donated by the artist to the couple at private events, as well as a large polychrome ceramic sculpture by Giosetta Fioroni and an oil on canvas by Titina Maselli, Truck (1976), further evidence of the breadth and coherence of the collection. The catalog also includes works by artists in high demand in today’s market. In particular, two oil compositions by Salvo: Una torre sassone (1992) and Ora di pranzo (2007), both characterized by the artist’s unmistakable use of color and a narrative sensibility that he has been able to maintain consistently over time. Also notable is the embroidery Le nuove autonomie(1979, 23 x 24 cm) by Alighiero Boetti, with an estimate between 60,000 and 80,000 euros.
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| Auctioning early Burri, a Warhol from the Bertinotti collection, and masterpieces that once belonged to Monica Vitti |
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