Giosetta Fioroni "Dreaming Day for Odilon" Monumental Symbolist Painting, Exhibited Rome 1984

A rare and fully documented monumental painting by Giosetta Fioroni, titled Dreaming Day for Odilon, executed in 1984 and exhibited that same year at Galleria Giulia. This important canvas belongs to a poetic and conceptually rich moment in Fioroni's oeuvre, engaging directly with the legacy of Odilon Redon and the broader Symbolist tradition.

Rather than a naturalistic still life, Fioroni's floral composition emerges as an apparition-an image suspended between presence and memory. As articulated in the contemporaneous catalog essay by Anne-Marie Boetti, these flowers are "without innocence," unfolding from a liminal space, their beauty at once lush and fragile, already on the verge of dissolution. The composition evokes a dreamlike logic: forms hover, soften, and dissolve beneath a luminous veil, achieved through layered washes and subtle tonal modulation.

The intellectual framework extends to Stephane Mallarme, whose notion of the "absent flower" resonates strongly within Fioroni's anti-naturalistic approach. Here, the bouquet becomes a symbolic construct-an offering, a memory, and a meditation on painting itself-bridging Italian postwar sensibility with French Symbolist poetics.

Measuring 60 x 68 inches, this is a major exhibition-scale work. Its importance is underscored by exceptional documentation: the original 1984 gallery invoice confirms the title, medium (oil on canvas), and certifies the work as unique and entirely hand-painted by the artist. The painting was acquired directly from the exhibition by a New York collector, establishing an unbroken and transparent provenance.

Provenance:
Galleria Giulia, Rome; acquired from the above by a New York private collection, May 17, 1984; thence by descent.

Exhibited:
Rome, Galleria Giulia, Giosetta Fioroni, May-June 1984.

Literature:
Anne-Marie Boetti, "Dreaming day for Odilon," exhibition catalog, Galleria Giulia, Rome, 1984.

English Translation

Dreaming day for Odilon - a day for dreaming, dreamed flowers, Fioroni dreaming... Redon's poppies are not innocent (innocence remained with the roots in the meadow, in a healthy Impressionism). On their cut stems, they unfold their supreme, poignant beauty, already almost undone, and rise from limbo.
... what, then, does Fioroni dream? She dreams that "delicious unease," that scent of sacrifice, that perfume of Fleurs du mal, for her it becomes an invitation to magical nuptials. As a graceful priestess she retraces gestures, recomposes the bouquet with scrupulous and perverse fidelity-even squaring the paper itself.

... Fioroni dreams of art in general, which is always an exercise upon a repertoire and at the same time a practice of one's own freedom, and nevertheless a risk within the "vagueness of the unresolved" (as Redon said), which she perhaps expresses in the white veil spread over radiant colors.

... Fioroni dreams of Mallarme, Redon's friend, he too a devotee of the anti-naturalistic flower-"hosanna of the garden of our limbo," absolute flower, "the absent one from every bouquet."

Anne-Marie Boetti

A compelling opportunity to acquire a large-scale, exhibition-documented work by one of Italy's most poetic postwar voices, situated at the intersection of memory, symbolism, and painterly reverie.


Condition:
Alterations: Unknown
Imperfections: Some Imperfections
Condition Notes: Good Wear consistent with age and use.

Origin:
Italy

Materials & Techniques:
Canvas

Details:
Art Subjects: Botanic
Country of Origin: Italy
What type of item is it? Vintage / Antique / Used
Frame Type: Unframed

Unknown; Some Imperfections; Good Wear consistent with age and use.