Ubaldo Cosimo VENEZIANI
(Bologna 1894 - Milan 1958)
In the Rain
Sold
Pen and black ink. over a pencil underdrawing.
Signed VENE / ZIANI at the lower left.
Inscribed testata / piccola at the lower left.
Further inscribed Novella 4, base cm. 7.= and 766 / Mondadori, on the verso.
324 x 251 mm. (12 3/4 x 9 7/8 in.)
Signed VENE / ZIANI at the lower left.
Inscribed testata / piccola at the lower left.
Further inscribed Novella 4, base cm. 7.= and 766 / Mondadori, on the verso.
324 x 251 mm. (12 3/4 x 9 7/8 in.)
Datable to around 1922-1925, this drawing seems to have been used as an illustration for the Italian monthly review Novella, Rivista letteraria. The content of the magazine - launched in 1919 by the publisher Italia but later taken over by the Mondadori publishing house - was made up largely of short stories by Italian writers.
After completing his studies at the Accademia di Brera in Milan, Ubaldo Veneziani became known as a fashion illustrator, and his drawings appeared in several women’s fashion magazines. Active as a gifted painter, book illustrator and poster designer in the 1930’s and 1940’s, Veneziani eventually gave up a career in the advertising business to devote himself solely to art and design. Among his designs for book covers are several for the publishing house Edizioni Alpes in the 1920’s, such as Alberto Moravia’s Gli Indiffirenti, published in 1929. Veneziani also designed the covers for the first Italian editions of Théophile Gautier’s Ménagerie intime, published in Rome in 1928, and G. K. Chesterton’s The Napoleon of Notting Hill, which appeared in Milan a year later.
