A 'lost' painting by Italian Futurist star Mario Sironi has turned up at an auction in Prato where its opening bid has been set at 200,000-250,000 euros.
The 1913 painting by the Sardinia-born artist, entitled 'Testa', had not been seen since the Second World War.
It was displayed in 1914 at Rome Futurist gallery Sprovieri before being bought by a Venetian Jew who took it to Argentina, where he went to escape anti-Semitic persecution under Fascism.
It is believed to have remained in the hands of the same family until it reappeared ahead of the auction at Farsetti Arte, where it will be on display May 23-30.
''This is a key work for understanding the Futurist phase of Mario Sironi, who officially only began to form part of the movement from 1915,'' said Claudia Gian Ferrari, one of Italy's greatest Futurist experts.
The work will be auctioned along with other paintings by Giorgio De Chirico, Marc Chagall, Carlo Carra' and Andy Warhol.
Sironi's art has enjoyed a major revival in recent years, fetching record prices at auctions and drawing massive crowds to exhibitions.
In 2001 his painting The Poor Fisherman was sold for 549,889 euros at auction in Zurich.
However, his reputation was weighed down for decades by the part he played as a propagandist of the Fascist state and its values.
Arguably the most renowned artist of that period, Sironi and other party line-toeing artists found their work was largely ignored with the fall of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
He received some 30 major commissions at the height of his fame during the Fascist era.
Those created for temporary purposes - the Fiat pavilion for a World Fair for example - no longer exist while others were destroyed.
Some, however, like frescoes in the Casa Madre dei Mutilati in Rome, managed to resist revisionist temptations and are still popular today.
After the war, Sironi's comet crashed and he lost all public commissions. He turned to small-scale pieces, but never reneged on his belief in the social function of art.
Futurism was officially launched with the publication of a manifesto by Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti in 1909, published in a local Italian paper on February 5 before appearing in French daily Le Figaro on February 20.
Marinetti's manifesto expressed the Futurists' key ideas - a love of machinery, industry and speed - which were later embodied in the rampant colours and violent energy of the artists, extolling the merits of a new, technologically advanced age.
Art historians have long recognised the part played by Futurism in shaking up the sleepy turn-of-the-century art world, according them an honoured place between the Impressionists and the Cubists.
