956 - Franco Gnocchi, Boschetto di betulle, winter landscape with a birch grove in shades of blue

Franco Gnocchi, Boschetto di betulle, winter landscape with a birch grove in shades of blue Oil/canvas, second half 20th c., signed 'Gnocchi Franco' lower right. On the reverse, on an artist's label with a portrait photograph, inscribed 'Boschetto di betulle' and with the archive number '77C4', inscribed 'Autentica' and signed on the canvas; inscribed 'GNOCCHI FRANCO' on a plaque on the frame. A wintry birch grove, kept throughout in tones of blue, violet and grey. Above a snow-covered plain stand slender, bare birches with finely drawn branches, to the right of centre a small building with a red-brown roof. The background opens into flat ranges of hills fading into haze, in the foreground lies a broken surface of water and snow with blue and red accents. The paint is applied in broad palette-knife strokes, the branches set over it in thin lines. Good condition. Image 50 x 60 cm (HxW). Framed, frame bumped, frame width 12 cm. The birch grove in snow is among the recurring motifs of Franco Gnocchi, who was born in 1945 in Gallarate in the province of Varese and works there in the third generation of a family of painters. His winter pictures dispense with local colour and bring snow, water and sky into accord in graduated cool tones; only a few warm accents hold the surface in balance. The artist uses the same design of work documentation with portrait photograph, title and archive number on all works offered in the Italian trade.