Manlio Sarra was born in 1909 in Monte San Giovanni Campano and died in 1986 in Rome. His art is influenced by post - impressionism, and the images of his native land have a typical surrealist character. He loves to represent the liveliness of people that he noticed in folk festivals or in country market places.

"Market Place" is a moment of daily life. The different colours are the peculiarity of this picture: they are all pastel tonalities, that Sarra uses in order to give the sense of joyful movement of this place; there are coloured booths, women with filled hampers on their heads, wearing the typical coloured skirts. In "Country dance" Sarra celebrates the traditions of Ciociaria. This picture, inspired to Pollock and Picasso, represents a folk dance. The warm colours express the joyfulness of a popular festival. The colours, starting from the centre, describe a sort of spiral, and suggest the idea of a round dance with a lot of people. "Village", instead, reproduces a typical village in Ciociaria. The image is almost monochromatic, dominated by a vivid red. The central part of the scene is the most important one: the colour that becomes almost white wants to underline the position of the village, from which it seems to dominate all the valley. These pictures, all painted in the 50s, suggest the idea of a calm and happy land, where the vitality of the people represent a genuine and spontaneous life, probably lost for ever.