Arturo Di Stefano: Tuccia and Rome Drawings

23 November 2007—4 February 2008

In the Gallery Café

"This selection of drawings was made in 2004 during a residency at the British School of Rome. They develop the ideas of a previous sequence of brush and ink drawings which had as its catalyst the story of Tuccia. She was a Vestal Virgin who proved her impugned chastity by walking from the Tiber holding a sieve of water without spilling a drop. There are two paintings of her on display in the National Gallery; one is a grisaille by Mantegna, the other an allegory by Moroni. For me, her test presented itself as a metaphor for the act of drawing, where the integrity and coordination of hand, mind and eye and the controlled handling of a fluid medium conjoin.

"I drew on my experience of Rome to convey impressions and thoughts of the city and other evocations. In Tuccian mode the artist may be sure-footed and makes his marks as “first thoughts” without need of correction or revision; at other times a drawing may be the sum of its erasures, deletions and changes of mind, a resolution of pentimenti."

- Arturo Di Stefano

Sale details

All drawings are £500 each.
Tuccia (oil on linen) 2007, £12,500 (plus VAT)
Please contact the artist on 0790 521 3829

About the artist

Arturo Di Stefano was born in 1955 in Huddersfield, England of Italian parents. He studied Fine Art at Liverpool Polytechnic, Goldsmiths’ College University of London and the Royal College of Art, London. He won the Unilever Award for Best Degree Show judged by RB Kitaj in 1981. In 1985 he was awarded an Italian Government Scholarship to study at the Accademia Albertina, Turin. Since 1987 he has exhibited regularly in London at the Purdy Hicks Gallery and has held exhibitions in Italy, Germany and the USA. He was a prize winner at the John Moores 18 Exhibition in 1993-4 and had a retrospective exhibition of his work in 1993 at the Walker Art Gallery Liverpool. He had further museum shows at Preston, Leicester, Huddersfield and the Museum of London.

He was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery in 1996 and 2004 to paint the portraits of Sir Richard Doll and Jan Morris respectively. He has written articles and essays on Cezanne, Sickert, Picasso, and recently contributed two essays included in publications on the writer Jan Morris and the sculptor Carl Plackman. A monograph on his work was published in 2001 with essays by John Berger, the poet Michael Hofmann and former Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, Christopher Lloyd.

Collections:
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
National Portrait Gallery, London
Museum of London
Government Art Collection
Harris Museum, Preston
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
Contemporary Art Society
Leicester City Museums
Ferens Art Gallery, Hull
Huddersfield Art Gallery
Arts Council Collection
Fogg Art Museum, USA

• Royal Academy of Arts