The poignant rediscovery of a long-lost folder of works that noted Italian painter Angelo Titonel (1938-2018) gifted his 21-year-old daughter in the mid-1990s has led to a new exhibition in Rome.

Titonel gave 21 oil-on-paper paintings as a precious birthday gift to his daughter, Daina Maja Titonel, who years later would open her own gallery on Via Monserrato.

"Only now do I realise that these works — which I believed I had lost during a move — together form a corpus. As such, their destiny can finally come to fruition in this exhibition, whose title deliberately tributes the past becoming a sort of dedication, a gift, a possibility," says Daina Maja Titonel.

The paintings' small, precious format is shared with the public for the first time now, 30 years after their creation, "so as to return the trust received through that special gift to the giver — my father. I do not think he imagined then that I would open my own art gallery..."

Titled To My Daughter, the exhibition will be staged at MAC Maja Arte Contemporanea from 15 June until 10 July. For visiting details see gallery website.

Angelo Titonel

Originally from Italy's northern Treviso province, Angelo Titonel moved to Rome where, during the 1970s, he gained recognition as a leading figure in Italian Magic Realism.

In addition to exhibiting in important art museums in Italy and abroad, Titonel undertook prestigious commissions including portraits of Italian presidents and key historical figures for the Quirinal Palace.

He was also commissioned by the Vatican to paint the official portrait of then Pope Benedict XVI and was invited by the Uffizi Gallery to create a self-portrait for the gallery's Artist Self-Portraits collection. He died in 2018, aged 80.