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  Gianni L. Cilfone “After the Rain” Oil on canvas 1928

  GIANNI L. CILFONE (1908-1990) USA

  “After the Rain” 1928

  Oil on canvas, contemporary quarter sawn oak pegged frame with yellow gold filet.

  Signed: Cilfone, 1928 (lower left corner)

  Marks: Illinois Academy of Fine Arts, Second Annual Exhibition 1928, Gianni L. Clifone, 905 South Ashland Boulevard, “After the Rain,” $500 (paper label).

  Exhibited: Illinois Academy of Fine Arts, Second Annual Exhibition 1928, Art Institute of Chicago 1928

  For more information see: Who Was Who in American Art (Madison, Conn.: Sound View Press, 1985) p. 115.

  Canvas: H: 30” x W: 40”

  Framed: H: 38” x W: 48”

  Gianni Cilfone emigrated with his family from San Marco, Italy to Chicago at the age of five. After studying at the Art Institute of Chicago, Cilfone took lessons from Hugh Breckenridge and John F. Carlson. His consistently won many prizes from the Chicago Gallery Association throughout the 1930s and 40s. He exhibited at the Hoosier Salon between 1949 and 1958, at the North Shore Arts Association, at the Association of Chicago Painters and Sculptors, and at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1919 and 1928.

   

   

   

   

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  Salvatore Meli Important large scale Italian Sculpture / Ewer 1952

  SALVATORE MELI (b. 1929)  Italy

  Important Sculpture / Ewer   1952

  Glazed terra cotta, brown and dark green with white scraffito decoration, original stepped and angular wood base.

  Signed: Meli 1952 Roma

  For more info on Meli see: Design 1935-1965, What Modern was, ed. Martin Eidelberg (New York: Harry Abrams, 1991) p. 237.

  Salvatore Meli belongs to that initial group of artists, including Guido Gambone and Lucio Fontana among others, who elevated Italian ceramics to a fine art during the post-war period.  Meli conceived this vessel, first on paper, then by laboriously constructing the body in clay, coil by coil, to achieve the richly textured and dynamic form; the incised and painted decoration is in concert with the organic shape.  The massive scale of this work defies function as a ewer but was created as a sculptural object.  The original wooden base recalls Italian futurist sculpture forms of the early twentieth century.

  H (with base):  23 1/2” x W:  13” x D:  9.5”
  H (without base):  19 1/8”

  Price: $27,500

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  Fred Borcherdt Abstract sculpture c. 1970

  FRED BORCHERDT

  Abstract sculpture c. 1970

  Lacquered red wood on an orange plexiglass base

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  Zygmund Sazevich “Portrait of Victor Arnautoff” Oil on canvas 1925

  ZYGMUND SAZEVICH (1899-1968)

  Portrait of Victor Arnautoff 1925

  Oil on canvas

  Signed: Z. Sazevich 1925 (lower right)

  Framed: H: 34 5/16” x W: 29 9/16”

  Price: $65,000

  Zygmund Sazevich was born in Russia in 1899, and studied briefly at the University in Kazan in 1917, before traveling to Manchuria where he lived and worked as an actor and stage scenery painter. He emigrated to the U.S. via Japan in the early 1920s and entered the School of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, supporting himself by working as a house painter and helping stage plays for a local Russian theater company.
Sazevich met Russian artist Eugene Ivanoff, and together they shared living quarters and studied at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Sazevich was awarded two scholarships, one in painting and one in sculpture.
 During the 1920’s Sazevich exhibited with the San Francisco Art Association, and in 1929 won first prize at their annual exhibit, followed by several sculpture commissions. That same year Sazevich and Ivanoff traveled to live and work in Paris. 
Back in San Francisco in 1931, his work was included in a show of garden sculptures at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, along with works by Adaline Kent, Ruth Cravath, and others. By 1935 he was working as a W.P.A. muralist. Sazevich and his wife Zena, a decorator, purchased a home in the City, which they filled with Sazevich’s sculptures, woodcarvings, and hand-made furniture.
In 1939 Sazevich exhibited at San Francisco’s Golden Gate International Exposition. His cast terrazzo sculpture Mississippi won the 1940 purchase prize at the annual San Francisco Art Association exhibition, and he had a one-man show at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1941.
During World War II, Sazevich worked in a shipyard creating wood patterns, and in later years he designed and made hand-blocked Christmas cards that were in great demand. His clients included celebrities such as Greer Garson, Joan Fontaine, and Red Skelton.
From the late 1940s until the 1960s, Sazevich taught art classes, both at the California School of Fine Arts and at Mills College in Oakland. 
He continued to exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Art through the 1950s, and in 1953 was featured in the museum’s Four Sculptors of the West show. Sazevich also had two solo shows at Mills College in 1950 and 1954, and a show at Raymond & Raymond in San Francisco in 1951.
Zygmund Sazevich passed away in San Francisco in 1968. In 1982 his work was included in The Oakland Museum’s seminal exhibition 100 Years of California Sculpture.

   Though his works are rare today, Zygmund Sazevich was a prolific, versatile and highly-regarded San Francisco Bay Area artist and instructor whose passion for his medium was evident not only in his sculptures and carvings, but also in his drawings and paintings. Sazevich believed that the two-dimensional rendering of the subject was integral to the process of sculpture, along with the necessity for the artist to have a feeling for the material with which he worked. His convictions were reflected in the great variety of woods, metals, and stone he used to create his sculptures, as well as in his paintings.