Alberto Sughi (Cesena 1928 - Bologna 2012). Oil painting on canvas, in excellent condition, examined with a Wood's lamp, shows no restorations. Canvas dimensions 140x140 cm, plus frame 165x165 cm On the back: signature SUGHI 1967 "wife and husband"; and labels from the Forni Gallery and the exhibition held in Palermo at Palazzo Sant'Elia. An exponent of Italian painters of "existential realism", Alberto Sughi dedicated his entire work to the themes of human solitude: incommunicability, the impossibility of dialogue, alienation, and ultimately, a difficulty in living. Themes that with him overflow from precise social, political, and civil conditions to constitute an inner ill of all times and seasons of man. His work proceeds in cycles within which he undertakes and concludes specific iconographic themes and stylistic mutations. In the work under examination, we are in the height of existential realism, a period in which the artist stages moments of everyday life with no heroes. Enrico Crispolti in 1956 framed his painting within the realm of existential realism. He dedicated himself to a personal figurative research dedicated to the inner malaise of man and society. The peripheries of large cities - which should be an element of socialization and instead turn out to be places of individual solitude - and solitary and aimless human figures are his favorite subjects. In 1956 he held his first solo exhibition in Rome. Social chronicle and existential melancholy are also the subjects of the works he exhibited in 1958 in Milan and again in Rome. His paintings become increasingly dark and the narrative takes on icy and harsh tones. In the early 1960s, Sughi's work records significant influences from Francis Bacon, both in the physical deformations of the subjects portrayed and in the spatial settings. His work proceeds in cycles within which he undertakes and concludes specific iconographic themes and stylistic mutations. From 1971-1973 are the so-called "green paintings" dedicated to the relationship between man and nature; from 1975-1976 is the cycle "The Dinner"; from the early 1980s is the series “Imagination and Memory of the Family”; from 1985 he worked on the theme called "The Evening": a bitter reflection of the artist on his role and on the value of existence itself in a society in which answers to the eternal fears and expectations of man are sought solely in money, politics, and science. His last works are dedicated to the theme of the marginality of art. Among Sughi's numerous solo exhibitions are: Reggia di Caserta (1984); anthological exhibition at the National Museum of Castel Sant'Angelo (Rome 1986) then transferred to Budapest and Prague; Ferrara (1989); Sao Paulo, Brazil (1994); Urbino (2000); Florence, Sansepolcro and Cesena (2003); Ravenna (2004); Parma (2005); Cesena (2007); Rome, Complesso del Vittoriano, (2007). The major historians and art critics, from Mario De Micheli and Enrico Crispolti to Maurizio Calvesi and Vittorio Sgarbi, have been interested in his work.