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Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 8,000
DOMENICO GNOLI Old Man and Serpent.
Watercolor and ink on ivory laid paper, 1962. 115x555 mm; 4 1/2x21 7/8 inches. Signed, dated, and dedicated in pencil, lower right recto, and annotated in ink, lower left recto. Ex-collection the artist Ben Shahn and his wife, Bernada Shahn, New York.
The present drawing recounts a "difficult day" in 1962. Though it remains unclear what Gnoli was referring to, the human-headed serpent, historically representing the Biblical fall of man, warns an elderly gentleman to beware of himself. The Shahn's collected Gnoli's work and counted him among their friends. In a 1983 interview with the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., Bernarda Shahn described Gnoli as a "marvelous surrealist painter."
