Beschreibung:

PIERO FORNASETTI (1913-1988)"Gerusalemme e Grandi Carte da Gioco" A Unique Four-Panel Trompe L'Oeil Folding Screen 1953 lithographic transfer on wood, one side showing a cityscape of Jerusalem in black on a yellow ground, on the other side Kings, Queens and Knaves of the four playing card suits, signed Piero Fornasetti ITALY each panel height 80in (203cm); width 19 3/4in (50cm) FootnotesProvenance Piero Fornasetti Mr and Mrs Frank Sinatra at Rancho Mirage, California, sold Christie's New York, Fine Objects of Vertu, Fabergé, American Paintings, and Memorabilia from the Collection of Mr and Mrs Frank Sinatra, 25-30th November 1995, lot 243 Private Collection, UK Dreweatts 1759, UK Sinai & Sons Ltd, 2018 Private Collection, UK Literature Barnaba Fornasetti, ed. Fornasetti, 'The Complete Universe', New York, 2010, p. 439 fig. 55 Exhibited Sinai & Sons, Piero Fornasetti - A Volcanic Imagination - a hundred surprises from a private collection, Masterpiece Fair, London, 2018 "We have always loved beautiful things - It's as simple as that. It can be a fabulous painting or sculpture... a beautiful piece of jewelry, or the sound of a jumping city - beautiful things bring smiles. We admire people who paint and sculpt, just as we appreciate the talented composers, lyricists, musicians, and performer's we've known. There can be spectacular beauty in sounds, sights, everyday objects just as there are in great works of art". Frank & Barbara Sinatra, November 1995. Frank Sinatra was a lifelong supporter of Jewish causes, religious freedom and US-Israeli mutual collaboration. In 1962, as part of his multinational World Tour For Children, he performed seven concerts in six cities in Israel, and visited others, including Jerusalem. Sinatra's enthusiasm for Israel is thus reflected in his ownership of a screen featuring Fornasetti's beautiful design of the city of Jerusalem. Fornasetti first designed Gerusalemme in 1949 as a wallpaper for the stairways and halls of his own home. Its dreamlike repetition of various towers, spires, and domes within fortified walls, reminiscent of town views in late 15th century woodcuts, is beautifully and intricately graphic. An enormously popular design, it is featured on various screens, umbrellas and magazine racks. A nocturnal variant was also introduced. The opposite side of the screen, Grandi Carte da Gioco, features large playing cards - three Kings, two Jacks and a Queen in colors, together with others in outline on a gold ground representing the suits. The prominent display of the picture cards - suggestive of illusion, chance and fate, a typically surrealist motif, is quintessentially Fornasetti and draws from Lewis Carroll and the Kings, Queens and Playing Cards depicted in Alice in Wonderland. This unique screen was created in 1953, shortly after Piero Fornasetti collaborated with Gio Ponti on the Casino rooms in San Remo, Liguria, Italy, in 1950. Designed by Ponti, Fornasetti imprinted hundreds of small and large playing-cards on sofas, armchairs, curtains, ceilings and the walls of the casino. The cards are also a very fitting and obvious choice for Sinatra, member of the Rat Pack, star of Ocean's 11, so intimately associated with the classic era of Las Vegas casinos in the 1960s. The only example of this screen produced by Fornasetti, it is a unique embodiment of the interests and fashion of one of the twentieth century's most iconic personalities. The singer bought an interest in the Cal Neva Lodge and Casino on the California/Nevada state line in 1960, and by 1962 he owned half of it.