oil on canvas, 70×60 cm
Signed and dated lower right P. Conti 1920
Cousin Pia, portraying Pia Labriola, is a unique case in the author’s pictorial itinerary. Although the revision of the avant-garde starts from here, it will no longer be practiced in these terms by the artist. Conti himself talks about this in Blackbird’s throat, pointing out how in other works of the same period “there is a taste for dense, sunny pigment that bears no relation to the portrait of the Cousin Pia, expressed with ectoplasmic matter for which, now that Pia is dead, it resembles her more.”
The return to figuration is, on the other hand, achieved with respect to “geometric values” and “ornamental taste” that takes us back to “early experiences,” to the “pleasure of chiseling” inferred from Art Nouveau.
