Showing posts with label Giacomo Balla. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Giacomo Balla. 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


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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


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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


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