oil on canvas, 80×64 cm
signed and dated lower left Primo Conti 1919
A Spanish and picaresque component peeps through in the Jocular Steward , a work of paramount importance in Conti’s journey, who reinterprets both Cubist-style still life and Futurist-style simultaneity in the light of the great painting of the past.
Corrado Pavolini, who points out the painting in his 1919 monograph on Primo Conti, makes it the cornerstone of the “technical grotesque” at which his friend excels, who was inspired by Laforgue’s prose made of heterogeneous plastic materials.
