Oil on canvas, 1944-45, Bianchedi Bettoli / Vallunga Collection, 30x42.5 cm with frame and passe-partout 55.5x67.5 cm, Inv. n. 1779

The season of Mario Sironi's urban landscapes did not end in the 1920s. Beginning in 1940-1941, and more frequently after 1942, Sironi returns to this theme that during the 1930s he had all but abandoned. The most obvious difference between the Outskirts of the 1940s (and '50s) and the previous ones consists precisely in a less "stiff" drawing that compromises the solidity of the contours, and in a more material brush stroke that insinuates a greater sense of physicality to the work, but also of vulnerability.
This last period was also when the Outskirts of Faenza was produced, characterised by a diagonal vector of the tram tracks similar to those of the Outskirts of Paoletti, and also by a density of the brush stroke that brings it closer to works like the two Urban Landscapes by Mattioli in 1944 or the Gasometro (Gasholder) that is now in the Boschi Di Stefano Museum-Home in Milan, painted around 1945. It should therefore be dated during those years. (from the notes of Elena Pontiggia for the catalogue of the Bianchedi-Bettoli/Vallunga Collection published in 2012 by the Bononia University Press).