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Andrea Badami (American/Italian, 1913-2002) oil on fabric double sided primitive painting. One side depicts President Harry Truman at the gates of Heaven and Hell, being judged for his decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan during World War II. The other depicts a man riding a mule in a desert setting as they pass a man holding an ax, in the midst of felling a tree. Each side signed lower right. Tacked to a painted wood frame. Cloth: 45 in. H x 34 1/2 in. W. Frame: 48 in. H x 38 in. W. Biography: Although his talent was evident in childhood drawings, circumstances prevented Andrea Badami from pursuing his artistic inclinations until later in life. When he was a child, Badami and his parents returned to their native Corleone, Sicily; as a young man, he was unwillingly conscripted into Mussolini’s army despite his American citizenship and was taken prisoner by the British. Upon his release in 1947, Badami returned to the United States, and within two years was able to send for his wife and young daughter in Sicily. His need to support a growing family postponed an artistic career until the 1960s. By the early 1970s, Badami’s work had been recognized in shows at Creighton University in Omaha, and in an exhibition of contemporary primitive painters circulated by the American Federation of Arts. Source: Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, Made with Passion: The Hemphill Folk Art Collection in the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and London: National Museum of American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990).
PROVENANCE:
The collection of Ronnie Steine, Nashville, TN.
CONDITION:
Each side has minor light scattered grime; some minor fraying to fabric.
