Duilio Barnabé
(1914-1961)
Meditation
Oil on canvas, signed
40 x 32 inches canvas size
Barnabé was educated at the Bologna academy of fine arts, where he was awarded the Baruzzi Prize in 1941, the International Curlandese Prize in 1943 and the City of Milan Prize in 1948.
He exhibited variously in Venice, Trieste, Milan and Rome before participating in his first foreign exhibition at the Kunsthalle in Bern, Switzerland. Numerous other exhibitions followed - in Switzerland, England and the USA. He took part in the 1952 Venice Biennale and exhibited for (the first time in Paris (where he had settled) in 1956 and again at the 1960 May Salon.
Barnabé's style is anchored in reductive geometry and exhibits an extreme formal simplification and chiaroscuro light effects that are reminiscent of Morandi or de Chirico in their metaphysical period. In the 1950s, his style remained essentially post-Cubist, comparatively close to that of painters of the Paris School of the war years such as Pignon, Le Moal and others.