Showing posts with label Carlo Carrà. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carlo Carrà. Show all posts

7 April 2023

Gino Severini - painter and mosaicist

Tuscan was leading figure in Futurist movement

Gino Severini, typically sporting a monacle, was an influential figure
Gino Severini, typically sporting a monacle, was
an influential figure in 20th century Italian art 
The painter and mosaicist Gino Severini, who was an important figure in the Italian Futurist movement in the early 20th century and is regarded as  one of the most progressive of all 20th century Italian artists, was born on this day in 1883 in the hilltop town of Cortona in Tuscany.

He divided his time largely between Rome and Paris, where he died in 1966. Although he was a signatory - along with Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo and Giacomo Balla - of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s Manifesto of Futurist Painters in 1910, his work was not altogether typical of the movement.  

Indeed, ultimately he rejected Futurism, moving on to Cubism, having become friends with Cubist painters Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso in Paris, before ultimately turning his interest to Neo-Classicism and the Return to Order movement that followed the First World War. 

He attracted criticism among his peers by his associations with the Fascist-supporting Novecento Italiano movement, whose work became closely linked with state propaganda. Severini was involved with Benito Mussolini's "Third Rome" project, supplying murals and mosaics for Fascist architectural structures inspired by imperial Rome. 

Working in mosaics became an increasing focus for Severini in his later years, particularly after he rediscovered his Catholic faith. His religious mosaics displayed such refined technique he was dubbed the “father of modern mosaics". 

Severini was also the author of many essays and several books on painting, including Du cubism au classicisme (From Cubism to Classicism) in 1921 and The Life of a Painter, a vivid account of his early career. 

Severini's Le Boulevard (1913), his Futurist  interpretation of Parisian street life
Severini's Le Boulevard (1913), his Futurist 
interpretation of Parisian street life
Born into a family of modest means in Cortona, where his father a junior court official and his mother a dressmaker, Severini studied at the Scuola Tecnica in Cortona until the age of 15, at which point his formal education ceased when he and other classmates were caught trying to steal exam papers. They were expelled and probably lucky to escape prison. 

In 1899, his mother took him to Rome, thinking his prospects would be better there. He gained employment as a shipping clerk. He painted in his spare time and, thanks to the patronage of a fellow Cortonese with whom he had become friends, was able to attend art classes at the Rome Fine Arts Institute, studying nudes. He was not a disciplined student, however, and found himself cut adrift when his frustrated patron cancelled his allowance. 

Left to fend for himself when his mother returned to Cortona, Severini was so poor he lived in a room that was essentially a store cupboard in a kitchen in Via Sardegna in Ostiense. In 1900 he met Umberto Boccioni and Giacomo Balla for the first time. Balla took him on as a student, introducing him to the technique of pointillism, a painting method where effects were created by dotting the canvas or other surface with contrasting colours according to the principles of optical science.  The technique would have a major influence on Severini's early work and on Futurist painting in general.

Severini (right) with Luigi Russolo, Carlo Carrà, Filippo
Tommaso Marinetti and Umberto Boccioni in Paris in 1912
He moved to Paris in 1906 with Balla’s encouragement. Declaring the French capital to be his spiritual home, he settled in Montmartre, befriending another Italian, Amedeo Modigliani, and getting to know most of the city’s upcoming artists, including the Cubists Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Juan Gris and Picasso.

It was through Severini that some of the leading Italian Futurists visited Paris in 1911, absorbing some of Severini’s influence by adopting some of the humanist features of Cubism, namely the human figure in motion, as further means of expressing pictorial dynamism.  

Severini’s own Futurist work had been based on human figures, nightclub dancers or simply people in the street, rather than the cars or machines that had been central to the attempts of many of his fellow Futurist artists to depict speed and dynamism in painting.  In his nightclub scenes, he would evoke the sensations of movement and sound through rhythmic forms and flickering colours. His Dynamic Hieroglyph of the Bal Tabarin (1912) and The Boulevard (1913) were examples of his best work in Paris. 

However, Severini did produce some of the finest Futurist war art, notably his Red Cross Train Passing a Village (1914), Italian Lancers at a Gallop (1915) and Armoured Train (1915). 

His work over the next few years could be categorised as an idiosyncratic form of Cubism with elements of pointillism and Futurism before he began to experiment with a Neoclassical figurative style in portraits such as Maternity (1916). 

Severini's Mosaic of San Marco in his hometown of Cortona
Severini's Mosaic of San Marco
in his hometown of Cortona
Severini had married in 1913, his bride Jeanne Paul Fort, the 16-year-old daughter of the French poet Paul Fort. The couple were desperately poor and when Severini succumbed to pleurisy soon after the wedding, they moved to live with his parents, by then living in Montepulciano, where Jeanne became pregnant. They moved back to Paris, where their daughter, Gina, was born. A second child, Tonio, died from pneumonia, which was a factor in reigniting Severini’s Catholicism, which he had earlier renounced.

Only between the wars did Severini begin to find financial stability, realised mainly through his commissions to create frescoes and mosaics. 

He produced mosaics for the Palazzo di Giustizia in Milan (1936), the Palazzo delle Poste in Alessandria (1936) and mosaics and frescoes at the University of Padua (1937).  He worked for the Mussolini regime at the Foro Italico, a multi-venue sports complex, and the Palazzo degli Uffici, the inaugural building of the EUR project. Severini’s association with the Fascists was roundly condemned within the international artistic community, although none of Severini’s work was overtly pro-Fascist. 

After the fall of Mussolini and the end of the Second World War, Severini received lucrative commissions to decorate the offices of the Italian airline companies KLM and Alitalia among other organisations. 

His Cubist-inspired Mosaic of San Marco (1961), which adorns the facade of the Church of San Marco in Cortona, is seen as a signature work. He died in Paris in 1966 at the age of 82 but was buried in Cortona.

Cortona's elevated position gives it commanding views over the surrounding countryside
Cortona's elevated position gives it commanding
views over the surrounding countryside
Travel tip:

Cortona, founded by the Etruscans, is one of the oldest cities in Tuscany. Its Etruscan Academy Museum displays a vast collection of bronze, ceramic and funerary items reflecting the town’s past. The museum also includes an archaeological park that includes city fortifications and stretches of Roman roads. Outside the museum, the houses in Via Janelli are some of the oldest houses still surviving in Italy. Powerful during the mediaeval period, Cortona was defeated by Naples in 1409 and then sold to Florence.  Characterised by its steep narrow streets, Cortona’s hilltop location - it has an elevation of 600 metres (2,000 ft) - offers sweeping views of the Valdichiana, including Lago Trasimeno, where Hannibal ambushed the Roman army in 217 BC during the Second Punic War.

The Piramide Cestia and Porta San Paolo are two highlights of the Ostiense neighbourhood
The Piramide Cestia and Porta San Paolo are
two highlights of the Ostiense neighbourhood
Travel tip:

Severini’s earliest home in Rome was in the Ostiense neighbourhood, which can be found to the south of the Trastevere district. Bordered by the working class areas of Garbatella and Testaccio, Ostiense itself has shed its own down-at-heel reputation to become an increasingly trendy part of the city, populated by young professionals and boasting a thriving nightlife. The home of the majestic Basilica San Paolo Fuori le Mura - the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls - with its gold-plated ceilings, of the Roman  Piramide Cestia and the 3rd century Porta San Paolo, the district was built around the Via Ostiense, the ancient road linking the city with the Roman harbour at Ostia. 


Also on this day:

1763: The birth of musician Domenico Dragonetti

1794: The birth of opera singer Giovanni Battista Rubini

1906: Vesuvius erupts, killing more than 200 people

1973: The birth of footballer Marco Delvecchio


Home


18 July 2019

Giacomo Balla - painter

Work captured light, movement and speed


Giacomo Balla's work Le mani del violinista - The Hands of  the Violinist - stemmed from his fascination with movement
Giacomo Balla's work Le mani del violinista - The Hands of
 the Violinist - stemmed from his fascination with movement
The painter Giacomo Balla, who was a key proponent of Futurism and was much admired for his depictions of light, movement and speed in his most famous works, was born on this day in 1871 in Turin.

An art teacher who influenced a number of Italy’s most important 20th century painters, Balla became interested in the Futurist movement after becoming a follower of the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who is regarded as the ideological founder of Futurism.

Futurism was an avant-garde artistic, social and political movement. Its ethos was to embrace modernity and free Italy from what was perceived as a stifling obsession with the past.

Balla was one of the signatories of Il manifesto dei pittori futuristi - the Manifesto of Futurist Painters - in 1910.

Giacomo Balla was one of the signatories of the Manifesto of Futurist Painters
Giacomo Balla was one of the signatories
of the Manifesto of Futurist Painters 
He differed from some of the other artists who signed the Manifesto, painters such as Carlo Carrà and Umberto Boccioni, whose work tried to capture the power and energy of modern industrial machinery and the passion and violence of social change, in that his focus was primarily on exploring the dynamics of light and movement.

Giacomo Balla was the son of a seamstress and a waiter who was an amateur photographer. He lost his father at the age of nine, at which point he gave up an early interest in music and began working in a lithograph print shop. As he grew up, he decided to study painting and several of his early works were shown at exhibitions.

In 1895, after completing his academic studies at the University of Turin, Balla moved to Rome, where he married Elisa Marcucci and found work as an illustrator, caricaturist and portrait painter.  He also passed on his painting skills as a teacher.

After a period in Paris in 1900, where he spent seven months assisting the illustrator Serafino Macchiati, he became fascinated with French neo-impressionism and, on returning to Rome, he adopted the neo-impressionist style in his work.  Among his young students were Boccioni and Gino Severini, to whom he passed on his enthusiasm for contemporary French trends.

Balla's Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash  identified him as a Futurist painter
Balla's Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash
identified him as a Futurist painter
Influenced by Marinetti’s philosophy, Balla, Boccioni and Severini adopted the Futurism style. Balla was driven by the idea of creating a pictorial depiction of light, movement and speed.  Typical for his new style was his 1912 painting Dinamismo di un cane al guinzaglio - Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash - which is in the care of the Albright–Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York.

Another notable work painted at around the same time is Le mani del violinista - The Hands of the Violinist - which depicts a musician's hand and the neck of a violin, blurred and duplicated to suggest the motion of frenetic playing.  The Hands of the Violinist is currently kept at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art in Islington, north London.

If the theme of those two paintings was movement, Balla’s interest in breaking down the elements of light is exemplified in two other famous works.

Balla's extraordinary 1909 painting Street Light (Lampada ad arco)
Balla's extraordinary 1909 painting
Street Light (Lampada ad arco)
Street Light (Lampada ad arco), painted in 1909, which vividly depicts the glow of modern street lighting, can be seen in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, while his 1914 work Mercury Passing Before the Sun (Mercurio transita davanti al sole), an almost kaleidoscopic representation of the planet and the sun seen through a telescope, is on long-term loan to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.

In 1914, Balla branched out into designing Futurist furniture and even the so-called Futurist antineutral clothing. He also received some commissions as a sculptor.  His studio became a meeting place for young artists.

In 1935, he was made a member of Rome's Accademia di San Luca.  He died in Rome in March 1958, at the age of 86, and was buried at the Campo Verano cemetery.

The Basilica of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura adjoins the Cemetary of Campo Verano
The Basilica of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura adjoins the
Cemetary of Campo Verano
Travel tip:

The Cimitero Comunale Monumentale Campo Verano, where Balla is interred, is situated beside the Basilica of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura, in the Tiburtino area of Rome. It is the city's largest cemetery, with some five million internments. The name 'Verano' is thought to date back to the Roman era, when the area was known as Campo dei Verani.

The Via Po in Turin, pictured here in 1930 is at
the heart of the city's café culture
Travel tip:

The city of Turin, once the capital of Italy and traditionally seat of the Savoy dynasty, is best known for its royal palaces but tends to be overlooked by visitors to Italy, especially new ones, who flock first to Rome, Florence, Venice and Milan. Yet as an elegant, stylish and sophisticated city, Turin has much to commend it, from its many historic cafés to 12 miles of arcaded streets and some of the finest restaurants in Piedmont. To enjoy Turin’s café culture, head for Via Po, Turin’s famous promenade linking Piazza Vittorio Veneto with Piazza Castello, or nearby Piazza San Carlo, one of the city’s main squares. In the 19th century, these cafès were popular with writers, artists, philosophers, musicians and politicians among others, who would meet to discuss the affairs of the day.

More reading:

Umberto Boccioni, the brilliant talent who died tragically young

How the funeral of an anarchist inspired Carlo Carrà

The 'noise music' of Futurist Luigi Russolo

Also on this day:

1610: The mysterious death of Caravaggio

1884: The birth of Alberto di Jorio, shrewd head of the Vatican Bank

1914: The birth of Gino Bartali, cycling champion and secret war hero


Home












11 May 2019

Filippo De Pisis - painter and poet

Artist known for extravagant lifestyle


A 1923 painting by Filippo De Pisis entitled Still Life with a Bottle
A 1923 painting by Filippo De Pisis
entitled Still Life with a Bottle
The painter and poet Filippo De Pisis, whose works grace the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and the Palazzo Ruspoli in Rome among other galleries, was born Luigi Filippo Tibertelli De Pisis in Ferrara on this day in 1896.

A close associate for a while of Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà, De Pisis is best known for his cityscapes, metaphysically-inspired maritime scenes, and still life pictures, especially depicting flowers.  De Pisis, who was homosexual, also made many homoerotic sketches of the male nude. Later in life, he lived in Venice and became somewhat eccentric, travelling everywhere in his personal gondola.

Born into a noble family, as a boy he was known as Gigi. He was educated at home and was strongly influenced by his sister, Ernesta Tibertelli, who was a distinguished illustrator with libertarian views, and who probably introduced De Pisis to mystical writings.

De Pisis spent his childhood reading, drawing, collecting butterflies and wildflowers and writing poetry. He studied literature and philosophy at the University of Bologna, and published a volume of poems, Canti della Croara, in 1916. That same year, he met Carrà, De Chirico and his brother Alberto Savinio and and was attracted to metaphysical painting.

De Pisis spent 14 of his most productive years as a painter living in Paris
De Pisis spent 14 of his most productive years as
a painter living in Paris
In 1919, he moved to Rome, living in Via di Monserrato, near the Palazzo Farnese. He met more artists, including Armando Spadini, and began to paint in earnest. He still wrote, publishing a collection of essays, La città dalle 100 meraviglie - The City of 100 Wonders - in 1920.

He had been criticised for the overly-sentimentality of some of his poetry, yet his emotional nature worked in his favour in his painting, which received early acclaim.

Seeking new adventures and subjects, in 1925 he moved to Paris, which would be his base for the next 14 years, with only brief interruptions. He met and became friends with Édouard Manet, Camille Corot, Henri Matisse and members of the avant-garde fauve movement.

After holding a personal exhibition, presented by Carrà, in the Lidel room in Milan, he returned to Paris and began an intense relationship with the painter Onofrio Martinelli, who he had met in Rome. They shared a house-studio in the Rue Bonaparte in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés quarter.

He became part of a group of artists known as the Italians in Paris, which included De Chirico, Savinio, Massimo Campigli, Mario Tozzi, Renato Paresce and Severo Pozzati.  During his Parisian period he also visited London several times, forming friendships with the British painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant.

De Pisis was probably best known for his cityscapes. This one, painted in Venice in 1942, is Rio della Torricella
De Pisis was probably best known for his cityscapes. This
one, painted in Venice in 1942, is Rio della Torricella 
De Pisis returned to Italy in 1939, anticipating the outbreak of the Second World War.  He settled in Vicenza for a few weeks before moving to Milan, taking up residence at the Hotel Vittoria in Via Durini.  He might have remained in Milan, but in 1943 his studio in Via Rugabella was destroyed in a bombing raid.

He moved again to Venice, where he was inspired by the paintings of Francesco Guardi and other Venetian masters of the 18th century, and began to live a rather extravagant lifestyle, travelling to and from his house on the Rio de San Sebastian canal in the Dorsoduro district by gondola. He maintained two gondoliers on 24-hour duty, who wore black-and-gold livery.

His health began to decline after the war and in 1948 he was treated in a clinic for neurological disorders in Bologna. From 1949 until his death in 1956 he lived mainly in a nursing home for sufferers from nervous diseases in Brugherio, a town north of Milan.  As well as the collections in New York, Venice and Rome, there are a large number of his paintings at the Museo Filippo De Pisis in his home city of Ferrara.

After moving to Venice permanently in 1943, De Pisis lived in a house on Rio de San Sebastian in Dorsoduro
After moving to Venice permanently in 1943, De Pisis lived
in a house on Rio de San Sebastian in Dorsoduro
Travel tip:

Dorsoduro, where De Pisis lived after leaving Milan in 1943, is one of the six sestieri - municipal areas - of Venice, and sits between the Grand Canal and the Giudecca Canal.  It is regarded as a good place to get a feel for the more traditional Venice, without the huge crowds and tourist trappings associated with the areas around St Mark's and the Rialto.  There are many traditional bacari, the small bars that sell inexpensive small snacks - cicchetti - along with glasses of wine - known locally as ombre, as well as squares where local people meet during the day and students gather at night.  It is also home to some fine churches, such as San Sebastiano, close to Casa De Pisis, which is full of works by Veronese. Nearby are two of the city's most prestigious galleries, the Accademia and the Peggy Guggenheim.


The Villa Fiorita in Brugherio used to house the nursing home where De Pisis was cared for in his later years
The Villa Fiorita in Brugherio used to house the nursing
home where De Pisis was cared for in his later years
Travel tip:

The nursing home in which De Pisis spent the last few years of his life was housed in the Villa Fiorita, an historic aristocratic urban mansion in Brugherio that was built in 1721 for the Scotti family. After being bought and sold a number of times, it was given over for use as a nursing home in 1938. De Pisis spent much of his time in the mansion’s vast greenhouse, which is situated in its large landscape gardens, which he chose because of its optimal exposure to sunlight and relaxing parkland setting. The mansion now houses Brugherio’s municipal offices. The greenhouse has been renamed Serra De Pisis.



More reading:

Giorgio de Chirico, founder of the scuola metafisica movement

How Carlo Carrà captured violence and speed on canvas

Vittorio Miele, the artist of the metaphysical school who lost his family in World War II battle

Also on this day:

1715: The birth of opera composer Ignazio Fiorillo

1817: The birth of ballet star Fanny Cerrito

1932: The birth of fashion icon Valentino





Home






19 October 2018

Umberto Boccioni - painter

Artist who died tragically young was key figure in Futurism


Boccioni's 1905 self-portrait, which can be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City
Boccioni's 1905 self-portrait, which can be found in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City
The painter Umberto Boccioni, who became arguably the leading artist of Italian Futurism before the First World War, was born on this day in 1882 in Reggio Calabria.

Futurism was an avant-garde artistic, social and political movement that was launched by the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909.  Its ethos was to embrace modernity and free Italy from what was perceived as a stifling obsession with the past.

The Futurists admired the speed and technological advancement of cars and aeroplanes and the new industrial cities, all of which they saw as demonstrating the triumph of humanity over nature through invention. Their work attempted to capture the dynamism of life in a modern city, creating images that convey a sense of the power and energy of industrial machinery and the passion and violence of social change.

Boccioni became part of the movement after meeting Marinetti in Milan early in 1910, after which he joined Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini, Carlo Carrà and Luigi Russolo in signing Il manifesto dei pittori futuristi - the Manifesto of Futurist Painters.

Boccioni's The City Rises is considered by many art historians to be the first true Futurist painting
Boccioni's The City Rises is considered by many art
historians to be the first true Futurist painting
In the same year, Boccioni completed one of his finest works, entitled La città che sale, which is translated as The City Rises. The painting, which many consider to be the first truly Futurist painting, combines static images of building construction as the background to the scene, but in which the dominant image is of men and horses melded together, the men desperately trying to harness control of the beasts, suggesting a primeval conflict between humanity and beasts in a changing, mechanised world.

Boccioni became the main theorist of the artistic movement but only after he and Severini and other Futurists traveled to Paris in around 1911 and witnessed the Cubism of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso did the movement begin to take real shape.

The influence of this was visible in Boccioni’s La strada entra nella casa - The Street Enters the House - later in 1911, which had geometric elements and the perspectival distortion familiar in Cubism, as the artist sought to create the sensation of the noises and images of the street filling the house on the opening of a window.

The Farewells - part of Boccione's State of Mind series - can be viewed at the Museum of Modern Art, also in New York
The Farewells - part of Boccione's State of Mind series - can
be viewed at the Museum of Modern Art, also in New York
His series Stati d'animo - States of Mind - contained similar geometric features, while La risata - The Laugh - created a scene that is broken apart and distinctly abstracted by a loss of structural borders, in line with the Cubist and Futurist demand that audiences dissect the images seen in everyday life, and notice each piece and its contribution to the whole.

Boccioni also became interested in sculpture. In 1912 he published the Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture, in which he advocated the use in sculpture of non-traditional materials such as glass, wood, cement, cloth, and electric lights, and for different materials to be used in combination
in one piece of sculpture.

His most famous work, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913), is one of the masterpieces of early modern sculpture. Cast in bronze some years after his death, the piece is seen as an expression of movement and fluidity. It is depicted on the Italian-issue 20 cent euro coin.

Boccione's Dynamism of a Cyclist (1913) is on display at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice
Boccione's Dynamism of a Cyclist (1913) is on display
at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice
Boccioni’s father was a government employee whose job required him to make frequent changes of location. Soon after Boccioni’s birth, the family relocated to the north and he and his older sister Amelia grew up largely in Forlì, Genoa and Padua. At the age of 15, in 1897, Boccioni moved with his father to Catania in Sicily, where he would finish school.

In around 1898, he moved to Rome and studied art at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma, where he met Gino Severini. Both he and Severini became students of Giacomo Balla, who introduced them to the modern Divisionist technique.

Boccioni’s style at the time leaned towards the neo-impressionist. It was around the time he was in Rome that he produced his 1905 self-portrait, which differs greatly from his Futurism.

After spending time in Paris and Russia, Boccioni moved to Milan in 1907.

Boccione's best-known sculpture is Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, completed in 2013
Boccione's best-known sculpture is Unique Forms
of Continuity in Space,
completed in 2013
In 1914, Boccioni published his book Futurist Painting and Sculpture, the most comprehensive account of Futurist artistic theory written by a founding member.

The following year, enthused by the possibility that the violence of the Great War in Europe would bring about some of the societal change that Futurists advocated, Boccioni - along with Marinetti, Russolo and other Futurists - signed up to fight as a volunteer.

The battalion he had joined disbanded in December 2015 and Boccioni returned to painting.  But in June 1916 he was conscripted to the Italian Army and stationed outside Verona with an artillery brigade.

During a training exercise in August, Boccioni was thrown from his horse and trampled, suffering injuries from which he died at the age of just 33. Many art historians say that with his death Italy’s Futurist movement was effectively at an end.

Piazza Duomo in Reggio Calabria, where Umberto Boccioni was born in 1882
Piazza Duomo in Reggio Calabria, the city where Umberto
Boccioni was born in 1882
Travel tip:

Reggio Calabria is the oldest city in Calabria, the most important in what became known as Magna Graecia - Great Greece - after settlers began to arrive in the 8th century BC.  A few years after Boccioni left the area, a huge earthquake destroyed large parts of Reggio Calabria, which had to be substantially rebuilt. It is notable now for its fine Liberty buildings and its linear plan.  The best of what could be salvaged of the Greek remains can be seen in the National Archaeological Museum of Magna Graecia, housed in Palazzo Piacentini.


Catania has many Roman ruins, including this amphitheatre in Piazza Stesicoro, which was buried by an earthquake in 1693
Catania has many Roman ruins, including this amphitheatre
in Piazza Stesicoro, which was buried by an earthquake in 1693
Travel tip:

The city of Catania, where Boccioni completed his education, is located on the east coast of Sicily facing the Ionian Sea. It is one of the 10  biggest cities in Italy, with a population including the environs of 1.12 million. Catania has been virtually destroyed by earthquakes twice, in 1169 as well as 1693, and regularly witnesses volcanic eruptions from nearby Mount Etna.  In the Renaissance, it was one of Italy's most important cultural, artistic and political centres and has enjoys a rich cultural legacy today, with numerous museums and churches, theatres and parks and many restaurants.

More reading:

How Carlo Carrà was applauded for capturing the violence at an anarchist's funeral

Luigi Russolo and the phenomenon of 'noise music'

The Futurist behind the famous conical Campari soda bottles

Also on this day:

1956: The birth of micro-biologist Carlo Urbani, who uncovered the SARS virus

2012: The death of three-times Giro d'Italia winner Fiorenzo Magni


Home

1 July 2018

Alberto Magnelli - abstract painter

Self-taught artist whose work became known as Concrete Art


Animated Tension (1953): An example of the abstract art of  the Italian painter Alberto Magnelli
Animated Tension (1953): An example of the abstract art of
the Italian painter Alberto Magnelli
The abstract painter Alberto Magnelli, who became a leading figure in the Concrete Art movement, was born on this day in 1888 in Florence.

Concrete Art is described as abstract art that is entirely free of any basis in observed reality and that has no symbolic meaning. It had strong geometric elements and clear lines and its exponents insisted the form should eschew impressionism and that a painting should have no other meaning than itself.

The movement took its name from the definition of concrete as an adjective rather than a noun, meaning ‘existing in a material or physical form’.

It became Magnelli’s focus after he moved to Paris in 1931. Until then, he had experimented in various genres.

Alberto Magnelli taught himself to paint while on holiday in rural Tuscany
Alberto Magnelli taught himself to paint
while on holiday in rural Tuscany
He was born into a comfortable background in Florence, his father coming from a wealthy family of textile merchants.  He never studied art formally but would spend hours in museums and churches looking at paintings and frescoes. He particularly admired the Renaissance artists Andrea del Castagno, Paolo Uccello, and Piero della Francesca.

Magnelli’s first paintings were landscapes, which he began to produce while on holiday in the Tuscan countryside.  His work was good enough for him to submit to the Venice Biennale, as a result of which he made his first sale in 1909.

By 1915, he had moved towards painting in abstract style, having become part of a circle of artists in Florence in which the Futurist Gino Severini was a prominent member and having met Cubists such as Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger.

After the First World War, in which he did compulsory military service, he continued to paint entirely abstract works but was unhappy that the avant-garde movement in Italy appeared to be supportive of Fascism and returned to painting quiet Tuscan landscapes, and figure studies. These had echoes of the Metaphysical style of Italian artists Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà.

Some of Magnelli's works, such as The Readers (1931), had  echoes of the Metaphysical movement in Italian art
Some of Magnelli's works, such as The Readers (1931), had
 echoes of the Metaphysical movement in Italian art
Towards the end of the 1920s, suffering a crisis in confidence, he almost gave up painting but decided to return to Paris in the hope of making a fresh start. There he joined the Abstraction-Création group.

Following the invasion of France by the Nazis, during the Second World War, Magnelli and his future wife, Susi Gerson, went to live in Grasse with several other artists. Some of the group, including Gerson, were Jewish so they were forced to hide. Because conventional art materials were in short supply, Magnelli created textural geometric collages using materials such as corrugated cardboard, emery cloth, music paper, stitched wire, and metal plates.

He also made paintings on schoolchildren’s wood-framed slate boards. Many of these were geometric compositions constructed from flat areas of colour and inscribed white lines, while others were inscriptions of purely geometric lines. It was the beginning of Concrete Art. He again exhibited at the Venice Biennale and major galleries organised retrospectives of his work.

Following the Second World War, Magnelli returned to Paris which was to be his home for the rest of his life.  He died there in 1971.

The Giubbe Rosse has been serving customers in Florence's Piazza della Repubblica since 1896
The Giubbe Rosse has been serving customers in Florence's
Piazza della Repubblica since 1896
Travel tip:

Florentine artists of Magnelli’s era used to meet at the Caffè Giubbe Rosse in Piazza della Repubblica, which took its name from the red jackets - giubbe rosse - the waiters still wear to this day. When opened in 1896, it was called Fratelli Reininghaus after the German brothers who founded it. The writer and poet Alberto Viviani called the Giubbe Rosse a "fucina di sogni e di passioni - a forge of dreams and passions".

The central square in Sansepolcro, Tuscany
The central square in Sansepolcro, Tuscany
Travel tip:

Sansepolcro, which is the birthplace of Piero della Francesca,  is a town of 16,000 inhabitants situated about 110km (68 miles) east of Florence and 38km (24 miles) northeast of Arezzo. The historic centre is entirely surrounded with fortified walls, built in the early part of the 16th century. The centre of the town is the Piazza Torre di Berta, named after the 13th-century tower of the same name, off which can be found the impressive Palazzi Pichi and Giovagnoli and the 14th-century cathedral, dedicated to St John the Evangelist.

More reading:

Giorgio di Chirico, founder of the Scuola Metafisica 

Carlo Carrà and the Futurist movement

Giorgio Morandi - master of still life



Also on this day:

1586: The birth of 'lost' composer Claudio Saracini

1878: The birth of career burglar and cult figure Gino Meneghetti

Home


30 March 2018

Fortunato Depero - artist

Futurist who designed iconic Campari bottle


Fortunato Depero's 1932 Campari Soda bottle is still in production today
Fortunato Depero's 1932 Campari Soda
bottle is still in production today
The Futurist painter, sculptor and graphic artist Fortunato Depero, who left a famous mark on Italian culture by designing the conical bottle in which Campari Soda is still sold today, was born on this day in 1892 in the Trentino region.

Depero had a wide breadth of artistic talent, which encompassed painting, sculpture, architecture and graphic design.

He designed magazine covers for the New Yorker, Vogue and Vanity Fair among others, created stage sets and costumes for the theatre, made sculptures and paintings and some consider his masterpiece to be the trade fair pavilion he designed for the 1927 Monza Biennale Internazionale delle Arti Decorative, which had giant block letters for walls.

Yet it is the distinctive Campari bottle that has endured longest of all his creations, which went into production in 1932 as the manufacturers of the famous aperitif broke new ground by deciding to sell a ready-made drink of Campari blended with soda water.

It was the first pre-mixed drink anyone had sold commercially and Depero, who was already working with the Milan-based company on a series of advertising posters and stylish black-and-white newspaper ads, was tasked with creating a unique miniature bottle in which the new product would be packaged.

Depero became an important designer in the advertising world
Depero became an important designer
in the advertising world
The conical shape, a little like an upturned glass, made it stand out on the shelves and at a time when the modern and unconventional was considered chic was perfect in helping establish Campari Soda as the sophisticated pre-dinner drink of choice among Italy’s style-setters.

The shape, timelessly modern, has not changed fundamentally in 88 years since and has become an icon of Italian design.

Depero was born either in the village of Fondo or its neighbour Malosco, about 40-50km (25-31 miles) north of Trento, and went to college a little further south in Rovereto, between Trento and Verona. He was apprenticed in a marble workshop, having been turned down in his efforts to obtain a place at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

He first became aware of the Futurist movement on a trip to Florence in 1913 and when his mother died the following year he decided to move to Rome, where he met fellow Futurist Giacomo Balla. Together they produced an extraordinary text entitled Ricostruzione futurista dell’universo (Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe), a manifesto that reflected the core values of the movement, which rejected everything ancient and classical and aimed to free Italy from what was perceived as a stifling obsession with the past.

The establishment tended to dismiss Futurists as cranks, because they admired the speed and technological advancement of cars and aeroplanes and the new industrial cities, all of which they saw as demonstrating the triumph of humanity over nature through invention, and wanted to depict those things in their art.

Il Motociclista (the Motorcyclist) is an example of Depero's art
Il Motociclista (the Motorcyclist) is an example of Depero's art
Yet in many ways, Depero and Balla and talented Futurist painters such as Carlo Carrà and Umberto Boccioni, who embraced a parallel obsession with nationalistic revolution and the overthrow of the hierarchical class system, foresaw how the 20th century would unfold, from the evolution of technology to the explosion of violence and the spread of mass communication.

The movement was ultimately tarnished by its association with Fascism, with which they initially shared similar goals in terms of wishing to build a strong, egalitarian, productive, youthful and modern Italy.  Once the link existed, it was difficult to break and after Mussolini’s regime was defeated there were many Futurists who found themselves shunned.

Depero himself found Italy an uncomfortable place after the Second World War and decided to return to New York, where he had spent a couple of years in the late 1920s, working on magazines and in the theatre and even building a house.  During his second stay, which lasted until the early 1950s, he published an English version of an earlier autobiography, entitled So I Think, So I Paint.

Depero returned to Italy and lived out his final days in Rovereto, where he died in 1960 from complications of diabetes.  A large collection of his work can be seen at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto.

Rovereto's Campana dei Caduti sounds 100 times at nightfall each day
Rovereto's Campana dei Caduti sounds
100 times at nightfall each day
Travel tip:

The picturesque small city of Rovereto, east of Riva del Garda, is notable not only for the aforementioned art museum but for a 14th century castle, which contains the Italian War Museum, and for the Maria Dolens (Mary Grieving) bell, also known as the Campana dei Caduti (the Bell of the Fallen) and the Bell of Peace. The second largest swinging bell in the world, it was originally the idea of a local priest, Father Antonio Rossaro, to honour the fallen of all wars and to invoke peace and brotherhood. Cast in 1924, since 1965 it has been located on Miravale Hill outside the town and sounds 100 times at nightfall each evening.

The beautiful Piazza Duomo in Trento
The beautiful Piazza Duomo in Trento
Travel tip:

The city of Trento is considered to have arguably the best quality of life in Italy, based on climate, surroundings and employment opportunities. With a population of 117,000, it is situated in an Alpine valley on the Adige river between the northern tip of Lake Garda and the border city of Bolzano, about 115km (71 miles) north of Verona. It was controlled by the Austrians almost continuously from the 14th century until the First World War.  In the 16th century, it hosted the Council of Trent, the ecumenical council of the Catholic Church that gave rise to the resurgence of the church following Protestant Reformation.

More reading:

The explosive art of leading Futurist painter Carlo Carrà

Luigi Russolo and the strange phenomenon of 'noise music'

Painter whose work depicted Fascist repression

Also on this day:

1282: The revolt that became known as the Sicilian Vespers

1905: The birth of Modernist architect Ignazio Gardella


Home

20 November 2017

Giorgio de Chirico – artist

Founder of the scuola metafisica movement


Giorgio de Chirico painted this self-portrait, confronting a bust of himself, in 1922
Giorgio de Chirico painted this self-portrait, confronting
a bust of himself, in 1922
The artist Giorgio de Chirico, who founded the scuola metafisica (metaphysical school) of Italian art that was a profound influence on the country’s Surrealist movement in the early 20th century, died on this day in 1978 in Rome.

Although De Chirico, who was 90 when he passed away, was active for almost 70 years, it is for the paintings of the first decade of his career, between about 1909 and 1919, that he is best remembered.

It was during this period, his metaphysical phase, that he sought to use his art to express what might be called philosophical musings on the nature of reality, taking familiar scenes, such as town squares, and creating images that might appear in a dream, in which pieces of classical architecture would perhaps be juxtaposed with everyday objects in exaggerated form, the scene moodily atmospheric, with areas of dark shadow and bright light, and maybe a solitary figure.

These works were much admired and enormously influential.  During military service in the First World War he met Carlo Carrà, who would become a leading light in the Futurist movement, and together they formed the pittura metafisica (metaphysical painting) movement.

De Chirico's The Song of Love (1914)
De Chirico's The Song of Love (1914)
De Chirico’s work in this period, in which he was inspired by the German symbolist painter Max Klinger and the Swiss painter Arnold Bocklin, whom he had met while studying at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts, was extraordinary.

Such works as The Enigma of the Hour, The Disquieting Muses, The Song of Love, The Soothsayer’s Recompense and The Melancholy of Departure, greatly inspired the Surrealists of the 1920s, who were enormously fascinated with the subconscious mind and saw De Chirico as a figure to be revered.

De Chirico never saw himself as a Surrealist, although he had admired Pablo Picasso after meeting him in Paris, yet he was happy to collaborate with the movement for a while, willingly showing his work at their group exhibitions in the French capital.

Yet in the 1920s he moved away from his metaphysical phase and began to embrace the traditional, looking for inspiration towards the Old Masters of the Renaissance, such as Titian and Raphael. 

He became an advocate for the revival of classicism in art and architecture and began to be an outspoken critic of modern art. When his former admirers in the Surrealist movement disparaged his new work, he denounced them as “cretinous and hostile” and distanced himself from them.

The Red Tower, which De Chirico painted in 1913
The Red Tower, which De Chirico painted in 1913
Born in 1888 in Volos in Greece to Italian parents – his mother was a  noblewoman of Genoese origin and his father an engineer hired to work on Greece’s new railway network – De Chirico studied art at Athens polytechnic before moving to Munich with his mother following the death of his father in 1905.

Returning to Italy, he spent time in Milan and Turin before settling in Florence, where the Piazza Santa Croce inspired the first of his metaphysical town square works, entitled The Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon (1910).

He stayed in Paris for much of 1911 and 1912, residing with his brother, Andrea, who was also a painter.  Works such as The Soothsayer's Recompense (1913) and The Mystery and Melancholy of a Street (1914) were inspired by Paris.

It was his time in Paris that particularly influenced the Surrealists, largely because one of the movement’s leading figures, the writer André Breton, happened upon one of his pictures in a gallery owned by the art dealer, Paul Guillaume, and told all his friends.

Another of De Chirico's classics of the  scuola metafisica, The Disquieting Muse
Another of De Chirico's classics of the
scuola metafisica, The Disquieting Muse
The outbreak of war saw De Chirico called up to serve in the Italian army. Stationed in Ferrara, he suffered a nervous breakdown and it was while he was recuperating in military hospital that he met Carrà.

He returned to Paris after the war with his first wife, a Russian ballerina named Raissa Gurievich, but left again after his acrimonious fall-out with the Surrealists, moving to New York and then London.

De Chirico divorced Gurievich and married another Russian, Isabella Pakszwer Far, with whom he would spend the rest of his life.  After returning to Italy in the early 1930s they moved to America to escape Fascism and settled in Italy only after the fall of Mussolini’s regime, acquiring a house near the Spanish Steps which is now a museum dedicated to his work.

He wrote at times as well as painted, and his 1929 novel Hebderos, the Metaphysician, was described by John Ashbery, the American Pulitzer prize-winning poet, as “the finest major work of Surrealist fiction.”

De Chirico attracted controversy in his later years when, disappointed with the lukewarm response to his classically-inspired work, he secretly produced a number of paintings in the style of the scuola metafisica and falsely dated them as if they had been painting during his peak years, greatly inflating their value.

The bustling Piazza di Spagna in Rome
The bustling Piazza di Spagna in Rome, where De Chirico lived
Travel tip:

The Casa Museo di Giorgio de Chirico – the museum housed in De Chirico’s former home – can be found in the 16th century Palazzetto del Borgognoni in Piazza di Spagna in Rome. The house was left to the state by De Chirico’s widow and opened as a museum in 1998. It is opened only by appointment, but can be visited by prior arrangement on any day apart from Sunday and Monday.  There are many of his works on display there.

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice is housed in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal
The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice is housed
in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal
Travel tip:

Many of De Chirico’s finest works of his metaphysical phase are on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City but his 1913 classic, The Red Tower, is owned by the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and can be viewed in the gallery in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, the 18th century palace on the Grand Canal in Venice, where the American heiress lived for three decades.

Also on this day: 

1851 - The birth of Italy's 19th century Queen Margherita 

1914 - The birth of fashion designer Emilio Pucci.










11 February 2017

Carlo Carrà - Futurist artist

Painter hailed for capturing violence at anarchist's funeral



Carlo Carrà, pictured in the late 1930s
Carlo Carrà, pictured in the late 1930s
The painter Carlo Carrà, a leading figure in the Futurist movement that gained popularity in Italy in the early part of the 20th century, was born on this day in 1881 in Quargnento, a village about 11km (7 miles) from Alessandria in Piedmont.

Futurism was an avant-garde artistic, social and political movement that was launched by the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909 and attracted many painters and sculptors, designers and architects, writers, film makers and composers who wished to embrace modernity and free Italy from what they perceived as a stifling obsession with the past.

The Futurists admired the speed and technological advancement of cars and aeroplanes and the new industrial cities, all of which they saw as demonstrating the triumph of humanity over nature through invention. They were also fervent nationalists and encouraged the youth of Italy to rise up in violent revolution against the establishment.

The movement was associated with anarchism. Indeed, Carrà counted himself as an anarchist in his youth and his best known work emerged from that period, when he attended the funeral of a fellow anarchist, Angelo Galli, who was killed by police during a general strike in Milan in 1906.

Carrà's most famous work, The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli. which is housed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Carrà's most famous work, The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli,
which is housed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
As Galli's body was carried to the cemetery, violence erupted between anarchist mourners and the police. Carrà witnessed the clashes and hastened home to make sketches of what he had seen while the images were still fresh. They became the basis for his 1911 painting, The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli.

The abstract painting, which demonstrated strong Cubist influences and is seen as Carrà's masterpiece, shows Galli’s red coffin at the centre of the canvas, held precariously aloft amid a chaotic melee of figures clad in anarchist black, illuminated by light emanating both from the coffin and the sun.

In his memoirs, Carrà described the riot at the funeral, noting that the coffin, covered in red carnations, "swayed  dangerously on the shoulders of the pallbearers."

"I saw horses go mad, sticks and lances clash," he wrote. "It seemed to me that the corpse could have fallen to the ground at any moment and the horses would have trampled it."

Carrà had left home when he was only 12 in order to work as a mural decorator, the work taking him to Paris, where he became interested in contemporary French art, and to London, where he made the acquaintance of a number of exiled Italian anarchists.

Carrà (second left) in Paris in 1912 with Luigi Russolo, Filippo   Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni and Gino Severini
Carrà (second left) in Paris in 1912 with Luigi Russolo, Filippo
  Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni and Gino Severini
This shaped his life when he returned to Italy in 1901 and settled in Milan, where he enrolled at the Accademia di Brera and began to associate with anarchist groups. Along with Umberto Boccioni, Luigi Russolo and Giacomo Balla, in 1910 he signed the Manifesto of Futurist Painters, which emphasised a commitment to the dynamic portrayal of movement in their paintings, with particular reference to scenes of violent riot.

In the event, in the view of art experts, Carrà's Futurist phase ended around the time the First World War began, at which point his work began to move away from the influence of an angry political ideology towards stillness and calm and from motion towards clearer form, influenced among other factors by his fascination with the work of the French post-impressionist Henri Rousseau.

In 1917 he moved into another phase after meeting the surrealist Giorgio de Chirico in Ferrara. Carrà began to include mannequin-like figures in his paintings and the two between them invented the Scuola Metafisica - the metaphysical school, the idea of which was to stress a dislocation between the present and the past, illustrated perhaps by classical figures shown against contemporary backgrounds.

Within a couple of years, Carrà had begun to depart from that phase, his work The Daughters of Lot, painted in 1919, showing the influence of the genius of the early Renaissance, Giotto, who is acknowledged as the first painter to capture true human emotions.

Carrà's political views also changed. He became more opposed to the social reform he supported as a younger man, becoming ultra-nationalist. He found the ideals of Fascism coincided increasingly with his own.

The Basilica of San Dalmazio in Carra's home village of Quargnento
The Basilica of San Dalmazio in Carrà's
home village of Quargnento
In the 1930s, Carrà signed a manifesto in which called for support of state ideology through art, joining a group founded by Giorgio Morandi, another artist with Fascist sympathies and a background in Futurism and the Scuola Metafisica, which responded to the neo-classical guidelines set by the regime in the late 1930s.

After military service in the Second World War, Carrà taught at the University of Milan. He died in 1966, aged 85.

Travel tip:

Quargnento, where Carlo Carrà was born, was originally a Roman settlement, as evidenced by the discovery by archaeologists of the ruins of a Roman garrison. It became a large farming town during the Western Roman Empire, supplying neighbouring cities. Later, the town came under the control of the Bishop of Asti, who made the significant decision in 907 to order the remains of the Christian martyr Dalmazio to be hidden there from raiding Saracens.  The remains today are housed in the Basilica of San Dalmazio.


Carrà's 1914 work Interventionist Demonstration is part of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection
Carrà's 1914 work Interventionist Demonstration
is part of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection
Travel tip:

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice is home to the works of many prominent Futurist painters, including Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Gino Severini and Luigi Russolo. It houses Carrà's 1914 work, Interventionist Demonstration, a Cubist-influenced collage of fragments of paper bearing words, radiating from the centre in concentric circles, said to have been inspired by the sight of leaflets dropped from aeroplanes fluttering down over Piazza del Duomo.

Venice hotels by Hotels.com

More reading:


How architect Marcello Piacentini's buildings symbolised Fascist ideals

The cycle of frescoes that confirmed the genius of Giotto

The anarchist whose 'accidental death' inspired Dario Fo's classic play

Also on this day:


1929: The Lateran Treaty turns the Vatican into an independent state

(Picture credits: Basilica by Tony Frisina via Wikimedia Commons)

Home