Walter Lazzaro Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

(Rome, 5 December 1914 – Milan, 3 March 1989). He studied in Rome at the Art School where he held the chair from 1939. Read the full biography

(Rome, 5 December 1914 – Milan, 3 March 1989). He studied in Rome at the Art School where he held the chair from 1939. In 1942 he was awarded a prize at the XXIII Venice Art Biennale and was invited to the National Quadrennial in Rome During the war, a lieutenant in the grenadiers, he was deported to a concentration camp in Poland. There he drew portraits of officers and traded them for an extra ration of food. He never signed his drawings for fear of being discovered and because he didn't want his paintings to be sold once he was released from the concentration camp. Numerous of his paintings represented the suffering experienced in the concentration camps, in fact in many of the portraits the words "hunger...hunger" were written several times. Others represented a sort of hope for being able to leave the concentration camp. At the end of the conflict, Lazzaro returns to Italy, resumes teaching and begins his painting activity again. In 1958 he founded the "Poets-Painters Movement". His painting began in the context of the Roman School and then reached the poetics of his "Silences". It is no coincidence that Lionello Venturi defined him as "the metaphysical painter of silence". Its peculiar iconography is made of deserted beaches with solitary boats, umbrellas and deckchairs, blue and white striped cabins, immersed in a metaphysical expectation in which, as De Chirico said of his works "one feels the subtle presence of this life that is silent , of this silent life; which is silent, but which with its silence says many things that cannot commonly be heard".