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Photographs: ITALIAN ICONS

Wednesday 18 June 2025, 04:00 PM • Milan

89

Renzo Tortelli

(1926 - 2019)

Firenze - L'abbeverata, 1955

Artist's Resale Right

Estimate

€ 600 - 800

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Information

Gelatin silver print, printed in 1960s/1970s
cm 37 x 27,3 | 14.2 x 10.8 in.
Titled, signed and dated in pencil with photographer's credit stamp on the verso
Renzo Tortelli (Potenza Picena, Macerata 1926 – Civitanova Marche, Macerata 2019) when he opened an optical store in the Marche region in 1952 was influenced by suggestions from Luigi Crocenzi's Center for the Culture of Photography in Fermo and Giuseppe Cavalli's Gruppo Misa in Senigallia. Marriage to photographer Edela Pettinelli and frequentation with Paolo Monti, Ferruccio Ferroni and especially Mario Giacomelli (with whom he would make the famous 1957 and 1959 reportages in Scanno) introduced him to the authorial world. He made exhibitions in Italy and around the world with works that ranged from research on childhood to the documentation of the works of artists and sculptors that led him to join the Intrarealism group. 

Education as an optical expert allows Renzo Tortelli to make perfectly composed images, but in L'abbeverata also emerges the lesson of Crocenzi, who theorized about “speaking through images” when he referred to the narrative capacity of good photography. Here this is evident in the comparison between the horse's drinking and its owner's affectionate attitude as well as in the choice of a refined title with an almost musical rhythm. La portatrice di legno is affected, on the other hand, by the expressive strength dear to his friend Mario Giacomelli (the two families also spent vacations together) in its desire to move away both from mere representation and from the temptation of mannered folklore that even the women of Scanno when they wore traditional costumes could suggest. Instead, Tortelli, by perfectly focusing only on the hands firmly holding the fascina, tells us about work and a peasant society firmly tied to everyday reality.

Condition report

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