Painting on Canvas by Guerreschi, Giuseppe: Uomini, Framed

Two men, shirtless, sitting at a wall of chicken wire. Neither seems to expect much.

Uomini, or Men, is a framed oil on canvas by Giuseppe Guerreschi (1929-1985), from Italy, about 1955. Guerreschi is generally associated with the postwar Italian painters who turned to a hard, existential realism. Here two gaunt figures sit in rust-brown trousers against a pale ground crossed with hexagonal mesh. Their skin is built up in a crusted, chalky surface. The large hands and bare feet are drawn with near-anatomical plainness. The lower band is dark and scumbled. It measures 49.25 inches wide and 41.5 high.

The wire is thin. It does not appear to matter.