Osvaldo Licini: Let Sheer Folly Sweep Me Away

The exhibition Let Sheer Folly Sweep Me Away commemorates the 60th anniversary of Italian artist Osvaldo Licini’s death (1894–1958). The solo show is an extensive retrospective which reconstructs its tormented and eclectic career, marked by multiple stylistic changes. The around 80 paintings displayed testify all the different phases of his career, from his first figurative period during the 1920s on.

The exhibition features several pieces from his most renown body of works too, namely the one dedicated to the subject of Amalasuntha, presented as a group at the art Biennale in 1950, which express both the lyrical and irreverent sides of Licini’s personality. Let Sheer Folly Sweep Me Away investigates Licini’s path, which lead him to become one of the great protagonist of Italian and international modernism and to be awarded with the Gran Prize for painting, a few months before his death, at the Venice Biennale in 1958.