Yellow gold and diamond bracelet and earring set - 1960s, signed FRANCO CANNILLA (1911- 1984)

18K cast yellow gold and brilliant-cut diamonds totalling 4.90 ct.
Signed "CANNILLA" and hallmarked "750" and "22 Roma".
The artist's jewellery production can be placed within the research strand of artist's jewellery developed in Italy especially after the Second World War, thanks to a number of jewellers including Mario Masenza (Rome, 1913-1985) and the brothers Danilo (Rome, 1934-1995) and Massimo Fumanti (Rome, 1936) in Rome and Giancarlo Montebello (Milan, 1941) in Milan.
In post-World War II Rome, Masenza opened the doors of his jewellery shop in Via del Corso to the artists of the time, who could translate their poetics into formal declinations of rare executive prestige. Mazenza conceived the idea, completely unprecedented for the Italian panorama, of bringing the world of jewellery together with the world of art, thus involving contemporary artists. In particular, he used Dederico Gherardi's goldsmith's workshop to make the jewellery of sculptors such as Franco Cannilla.
An artist born in Caltagirone on 13 February 1911, he died in Rome at the end of 1984, he attended the local ceramics school; his language approached a progressive abstraction of the plastic form, concretised in the 1950s in a search for proportional harmony through the use of the module, for the creation of concrete art objects in relation also to new industrial materials.
Cannilla's goldsmith production began in the late 1940s and saw both abstract motifs and more concrete and symbolic themes represented, such as figurative jewellery with biblical repertoire and female figures. In the 1960s, he experimented with an abstract yet tension-rich language, which in the jewellery is translated into developments and interweaving of filaments sprinkled with gems and diamonds.
In the set consisting of a semi-rigid bracelet and a pair of earrings, the artist transfers the purity and geometric rigour of his artistic productions of the late 1960s, at that time an exponent of the Neo-Concretism trend, into gold.
The bracelet features a repeated modular geometric design, harmonised by the play of solids and voids and the brilliance of the material and the diamonds set in it. A portion of the module is extrapolated and revisited for the clip fastening earrings: here the play of solids prevails, the module element is superimposed several times to create a new movement with triangular tendencies.
Length x width of bracelet: 19 x 3.2 cm. Weight 125.7 g.
Height x width earrings: 2.3 x 2.3 cm. Weight 13 g.
Item condition grading: ***** excellent.
Accompanied by Giorgio Tempesti's expertise.