Edoardo Gordigiani (1891 – 1965), Portrait of Lina Bietoletti, 1949

Edoardo Gordigiani (Florence, 1891 – Florence, 1965)

Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated “1949” upper left.

Portrait of Lina Bietoletti, painted in Florence when she was just over twenty years old. Daughter of an important collector of Tuscan art, she belonged to a cultivated Florentine milieu deeply interested in Italian painting of the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

The figure is shown frontally, with a direct gaze and composed presence. The face is built through touches of colour — greens, pinks, yellows — defining the volumes with a remarkably free synthesis.

Behind the sitter appears a decorative textile or panel rendered in a deliberately bidimensional manner, while the figure retains greater density and structure. This contrast between decorative surface and plastic presence recalls certain late explorations by Henri Matisse.

The vivid palette — the blue dress, the red collar, the intentionally non-naturalistic flesh tones — remains rooted in post-impressionist experimentation still present in some Tuscan artistic circles after the war.

The painterly surface remains visible and active in the construction of the face, while the high hairstyle introduces a precise reference to late-1940s fashion.

Edoardo Gordigiani belonged to a family closely tied to the Florentine artistic world. Son of the painter Michele Gordigiani, he developed a freer and more synthetic manner of painting, attentive to the structural role of colour. His presence within the artistic circle of Via degli Artisti in Florence reflects an active and cultivated environment open to artistic exchange.

Dimensions with frame: 79 × 69 cm
Without frame: 58 × 48 cm