Pictures in Stone at the Brooklyn Museum

After a busy time at the New York Gift Fair I was in need for some down time wondering New York galleries. These pictures caught my eye in the Brooklyn Museum. They are stone works that are modern takes on age old Italian artisan traditions. The ancient Romans were renowned for their coloured stoneworks in mosaics in which small stones are set in cement and pietra dura, the term for the inlay technique of using cut and fitted highly polished coloured stones to create images.

Post World War II, Gino Severini and Enrico Prompolini were two Italian painters who occasionally turned their hands to these ‘pictures’ in stone in using this ancient tradition.  The way in which the cut hard stones are cemented within the pictures make it seamlessly fit together.