Oscar Ghiglia, Il Futuro Alle Spalle Hans Holbein Il Giovane E L

Minuti 386 nuovo.qxp_Layout 1 04/07/18 16:58 Pagina 1

n° 386

Oscar Ghiglia, il futuro alle spalle

Hans Holbein il Giovane e l’astrazione del reale

I cinque secoli di San Biagio

Henri Matisse, regista dell’arte

Il bianco, un nulla pieno di tutto n° 386 - luglio 2018

© Diritti riservati Fondazione Internazionale Menarini - vietata la riproduzione anche parziale dei testi e delle fotografie - Direttore Responsabile Lorenzo Gualtieri Redazione, corrispondenza: «Minuti» Edificio L - Strada 6 - Centro Direzionale Milanofiori I-20089 Rozzano (Milan, Italy) www.fondazione-menarini.it NOTEBOOK

In the Farnese Family Horti On occasion of completion of the restoration of the Uccelliere on the Palatine, for the first time an exhibition recounts the history and secrets of the Farnese family’s Horti, one of the most celebrated sites of Re- naissance and Baroque Rome. The exhibition path winds through the sites where there once rose the gardens laid out by Car- dinal Alessandro Farnese in the mid-1500s. It begins with the plan for the geometric arrangement of the plantings in Italian formal garden style and continues with the season of the Grand Tour, when the gardens acquired that romantic air that so fascinated Goe- The Farnese Uccelliere (Aviaries) after the recent the, ending in the early restoration 20th century, when archa- eological research began. On show at the Uccelliere are two sculptures on loan from the Farnese collection at the National Archaeo- logical Museum of Naples and the two busts of Dacian prisoners which in the 17th century decorated the Nin- feo della Pioggia, designed by the Farneses, where mul- timedia installations recreate the original look of the Horti Farnesiani in im- mersive perspective and bird’s-eye views showing rows of trees, pergolas, and water features. The Madonna of the Rose in Trento Recent restoration work has recovered her splendid Madonna in blu (Madonna of the Rose) original colours, highli- ghting the original azurite 2

and the gold decoration; hence the title of the exhibition, Madonna in blu. Una scultura veronese del Trecento, on in Trento from 22 June until 26 Oc- tober. This singular work is displayed as part of the new arrangement of the museum exhibits at the Castello del Buonconsiglio that emphasises both the historic context, which links the work to the sup- pressed monastery of the Augustinian friars of San Marco in Trento, and the iconographic context: the theme of the Madonna of the Rose. The work is one of the very few surviving works of 14th-century Ve- ronese lapidary sculpture. The Madonna is portrayed frontally, enthroned and Jacopo Robusti (Tintoretto): Judith and crowned. One distingui- Holofernes shing characteristic of the work is the nobility of the facial features with their hint of a smile, the same that seems to light the face of the Child. 500 Years for Tintoretto From 7 September 2018 through 6 January 2019, Venice’s Palazzo Ducale is celebrating the 500th anniversary of the birth of Gustave Courbet: Self Portrait with a Black Dog Venetian painter Jacopo Tintoretto, one of the most Wife of Potiphar (1555 Gustave Courbet outstanding exponents of ca.), Judith and Holofernes in Ferrara 16th-century European (1552-1555) and The Rape In the rooms of the Fer- painting, with the exhibi- of Helena (1578-1579), rara’s Palazzo dei Diamanti, tion entitled Tintoretto which is more than three from 22 September 2018 1519 – 1594. About se- metres in length. For the through 6 January 2019, venty paintings by Tinto- occasion, the Kunsthisto- Gustave Courbet returns retto in the Doge’s Apar- risches Museum of Vienna to Italy for the first time tment accompanied by a has lent Susanna and the in fifty years for a retro- core of drawings selected Elders, Tintoretto’s famous spective exhibition presen- with particular reference masterpiece from 1555- ting fifty or so canvases by to the paintings on display. 1556. At the Gallerie del- this 19th-century master Thanks to exceptional loans l’Accademia, a correlated and focussing on his revo- from Italian and European exhibition, Il giovane Tin- lutionary approach to lan- museums, the exhibition toretto, completes this dscape painting. The exhi- includes such large-scale novel panorama on the bition leads visitors through works as Joseph and the great master’s work. the places and subjects of 3

the artist’s representation showing a selection of pie- of the natural world: from ces from the fabulous col- his early panoramas of his lection of more than three native land to his views of thousand works donated the sea, roiling with storms, to this museum by French to sensual nudes in lush antiquarian Louis Carrand greenery and to the hunting in the late 1800s. The Uffizi scenes of his mature period. are showing evidence in Regarded as a master by art of interactions between the Impressionists and ve- East and the West dating nerated by Cézanne, Cour- back to the costumes of bet is an artist who left an the figures in the procession indelible mark on his era in Gentile da Fabriano’s as he ferried French art Adoration of the Magi and from the Romantic dream to portraits of the sultans to painting of reality, and by Cristofano dell’Altis- hence to a renewed love simo. Among the extraor- through the eve of World A room at the Florence exhibition of Islamic art for nature. dinary works on show are War II; it opens with works also several large early 16th- created in the early 1900s Islamic Art century carpets from Egypt by local artists, which show in Florence and superb manuscripts, the ascendency of the Se- From 22 June through 23 including the oldest dated cessionist climate that pre- September 2018, the Uffizi codex (1217) of the Persian vailed in Munich and Galleries and the Museo poet Firdūsī's Book of Vienna at the time. The Nazionale del Bargello are Kings, held by the Biblio- visitor is then introduced host to the grandiose Islam teca Nazionale of Florence. to Italian art in the Twen- a Firenze. Arte e collezio- A varied and fascinating ties and Thirties, charac- nismo dai Medici al No- journey through centuries terised by its recovery of vecento exhibition. As early of cultural exchanges and traditional Italian values as the time of Lorenzo il reciprocal influences. in art, the so-called ‘return Magnifico, who received to order’, with paintings Carlo Carrà: Woman at the Sea a giraffe – an animal never Trieste by Felice Casorati, Carlo before seen in Florence – and Modernity Carrà, Mario Sironi, Guido as a gift from the Sultan of Until 2 September 2018, Cadorin, Giorgio de Chi- Egypt, cultural and trade the Civico Museo Revol- rico, Alberto Savinio and relations with the Islamic tella of Trieste is hosting Felice Carena. Concluding world were for the city a the exhibition entitled Mo- the exhibition is a novel lively, many-faceted reality. naco, Vienna - Trieste - section reserved for the The Medicis, with their Roma. Il primo Novecento Roman Secession, evoked passion for collecting, amas- al Revoltella, which jux- through the paintings of sed a considerable store of taposes works by local ar- several protagonists of that high-quality artistic crafts tists with the museum’s peculiar season which, pieces from the Middle collection of works by Ita- from 1913 to 1916, united East: splendid rugs, metal lian and international ta- numerous artists of diffe- vases featuring exquisite lents. The title refers to rent origins and training polychrome decoration, the influence of Munich in a moderately avant- and glass, ivory and ceramic and Vienna on Trieste in garde but very well-defined items. In the late 19th cen- the years in which the city vision: works by Italian tury, Florence saw the rise was part of the Austro- artists Armando Spadini, of important private col- Hungarian Empire and to Plinio Nomellini, Felice lections thanks to several the exchanges – both du- Carena, Lorenzo Viani great Italian and foreign ring and after that period and Alberto Martini flan- collectors who were likewise – between the artists of the ked by works by artists in enamoured of Islamic art; city and its territory and geographical propinquity, their bequests have consi- Italy. The tour comprises such as Teodoro Wolf- derably enriched the city’s seven sections that cover Ferrari and Virgilio Guidi. museums. The Bargello is an arc from the early 1900s n° 386 - luglio 2018

Oscar Ghiglia, the Future behind Him

The parabola of an artist from his late-Macchiaiolo origins to his discovery of modernity in Paul Cézanne

above Natura morta con foglia rossa below Ritratto della moglie Isa [Morandini]

‘In Italy there is nothing; I have been a fate not uncommon among Italian everywhere. There is no painting wor- artists active in the years between the thy of the name, I have been to Venice, two wars, many of whom suffered to the studios. In Italy, there’s Ghiglia. that sort of damnatio memoriae reserved There’s Oscar Ghiglia and no one for intellectuals of success in the Fascist else,’ Amedeo Modigliani shouted, Ventennio, whether or not they actually so clearly and strongly as to leave no had to do with the regime. room for doubt and to merit mention Oscar Ghiglia was born in Livorno in Anselmo Bucci’s Ricordi parigini in 1876 and in his home city he began (1931). Given such an opinion by frequenting the art milieu as a self- one of the masters of the early 20th taught painter; at Guglielmo Micheli’s century, it might seem surprising that studio he met the young pupils of this Ghiglia fell into complete oblivion painter, also a native of Livorno: after his death in 1945, but this was Amedeo Modigliani, Anthony de 2

Witt and Llewellyn Lloyd. In 1900, Ghiglia moved to Florence, where he shared a rented room with Modigliani and, on the advice of Giovanni Fattori, who was teaching at Florence’s Ac- cademia di Belle Arti, enrolled in the Scuola Libera del Nudo. Among the protagonists of Florence’s intellectual and art circles were many exponents of international culture, from British art critic Bernard Berenson to a group of German artists that in- cluded Arnold Böcklin. Ghiglia began to participate in the exhibitions of the Florentine Società Promotrice and in 1901 debuted at the Venice Biennale with a self portrait which was favourably received by critics. He repeated this success at the next edition, with his Ritratto della moglie Isa. The correspondence in this period between Ghiglia and a very young Modigliani (who was born in 1884), of which numerous letters have come down to us, testifies to both men’s impatience with the ‘home front’ art scene, myopic and limited, and to how to his older friend Modigliani confided his reflections, ambitions and his anxieties about the roles of keep trying to see Cézanne; you will La Camicia Bianca (Donna che si pettina) art and the artist. At the same time understand, then, how the past is the the Venice Biennale exhibitions offered future.’ Ghiglia not only an important show- One influential figure in Ghiglia’s case for his production but also the circle of acquaintances in the early opportunity to familiarise himself 20th-century Florentine intellectual with French post-Impressionist paint- milieu he frequented was Ugo Ojetti, ing; in particular, the works of Les author, journalist and essayist, a dom- Nabis – Felix Vallotton, Édouard inant figure in Italian culture between Vuillard and Maurice Denis – set the the late 19th century and the first half pace, to a large extent, for his style in of the 20th; his work as a scholar and these years, which was characterised art critic is preserved in numerous by lacquer-like colours in extensive books and collections of essays. Ojetti fields, as in La tavola imbandita (1908) and his wife Fernanda were the subjects or in La camicia bianca, painted the of some of Ghiglia’s most significant next year. The year 1909 was a decisive works in the period from 1908 to one for the artist: his meeting with 1910; for instance, the portraits of Gustavo Sforni, a collector of the Ugo Ojetti nel suo studio (1909) and works of Cézanne and Van Gogh and of Signora Ojetti al pianoforte (1910). later was Ghiglia’s patron for many The portrait of Ojetti appears to be years (offering him a yearly recompense a sort of ‘manifesto’ of what painting to guarantee himself the right of first meant for Ghiglia in that moment of refusal on all of Ghiglia’s production), his career: the figure of the man of allowed Ghiglia to study Cézanne’s letters is treated in the same manner work. To his friend, Livornese painter as the objects that surround it, in a Renato Natali, who in 1913 spent a balancing act that of calibrates forms year in Paris, Ghiglia wrote, ‘I am and colours and freezes them in a sus- happy that you like Van Gogh, but pended moment, in a stupefied silence 3

that goes beyond time; gesture and gaze lose any significance of momentary fortuity to rise almost to the value of archetype, but at the same time, every thing is equal to every other thing: the eye that fixates on the viewer through the lens of the monocle and the rose petals fallen to the table, the porcelain blue of the smoking jacket and the polished surface of the desk. Giovanni Papini’s acute eye notes this stylistic evolution which leads the painter to ‘represent, externally, not things and objects but an emotion, a mood, by means of simple, com- monplace figures.’ For a long time, Ghiglia shunned the exhibition circuit and withdrew to Castiglioncello, immersing himself in that particularly clear sea light that shines in the canvases of his beloved The Futurist years saw him ‘cloistered’, from the top, clockwise Signora Ojetti al pianoforte master Fattori. These were years in extraneous to that tourbillion of Ugo Ojetti nel suo studio which Ghiglia’s research focussed actions, manifestos, journals that char- Tavola imbandita mainly on interiors and still lifes, com- acterised the period: his collaboration positions in which clearly marked- with Leonardo magazine, founded in out forms – drawing on the lesson of 1902 by Giovanni Papini, ceased with Cézanne – are exalted by use of bright the turn toward Futurism impressed colours. Ghiglia’s progressive move on the publication: this fact also ended away from post-Macchiaiolo naturalism Ghiglia’s friendly relations with Papini, led him toward those ‘hyper-realistic’ who had been his admirer and sup- effects that make him a precursor of porter and had dedicated to him an the immobile atmospheres of Magic enthusiastic article, published in 1908 Realism, the movement in painting in Vita d’arte, praising his style as suc- which, in the second half of the Twen- ceeding in ‘going beyond faithfully ties, counted among its primary ex- realistic effects in favour of synthetic, ponents Felice Casorati and Antonio pure pictorial suggestions.’ Donghi. In 1920, Ojetti wrote about Ghiglia’s pag. 4

art in Dedalo: ‘Painting is, for him, not a way of inventing or dreaming, but a means of understanding, order- ing, dominating, enjoying the real and of making it, with art, precious, durable and desirable: precious above all for he who views it, loves it, enjoys it.’ That same year, Ghiglia began showing again; he participated in the exhibition organised by Ojetti at the Galleria Pesaro in Milan, devoted to Arte Italiana Contemporanea and in 1926 at the Prima Mostra d’Arte del Novecento Italiano, organised by Margherita Sarfatti with the intention of ‘calling up, solely in the interests of work and beauty, the best forces in the new generations’. Three years later, Ghiglia exhibited again at the Galleria Pesaro with two of his children, Valentino and Paulo, also painters. Although he had mended his fences with Papini and Soffici after World War I, Ghiglia no longer participated in the artistic debate, preferring to paint: above all, still lifes in enchanted, rarefied atmospheres, such as hisRose rosa of 1936. Ghiglia’s last appearance above Paulo con la barca below Tavola imbandita at an exhibition was at the Seconda Quadriennale d’Arte Nazionale, held in Rome in 1935. To Ghiglia. Classico e Moderno, Viareg- gio’s Centro Matteucci per l’Arte Moderna is dedicating a monographic exhibition, until 4 November 2018, of more than forty paintings that trace the creative parabola of an artist, for- gotten for too long, who was a par- ticipant in and whose work stands as testimony to three intense decades in Italian art. federico poletti n° 386 - luglio 2018

This brief citation fromThe Idiot is It was then that Holbein began an ‘I like looking at in a sense mirrored in the diary of intense period of production of religious Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina, Dosto- works, which continued until he that painting,’ evsky’s wife, who recalls that at their moved to England. viewing of The Body of the Dead Christ His art was shaped both by German muttered in the Tomb by Hans Holbein her expressionism inherited from the late husband was ‘as if stunned’ and she Gothic, the influence of which is man- Rogozhin, after a feared the onset of an epileptic attack ifest in the Dead Christ in the Tomb, pause . . . ‘That brought on by the disturbing effect and by the objectivity of the Italian of that vision. Renaissance, with its peculiar mix of painting!’ the It was one of the first recorded cases the sacred and the profane. In partic- of a phenomenon, only recently named ular, the influence of Leonardo da prince cried out, as and studied, in which in the presence Vinci is apparent in many of Holbein’s of artworks of great pathos people works; it is probable that between though struck by can fall into a state of confusion: Stend- 1523 and 1526 he travelled to France, hal’s Syndrome. where he could have seen the late an sudden thought, These examples give us the measure works of the Florentine master. In ‘Why, a man could of Hans Holbein the Younger, born 1526, spurred by the effects of the in 1497 in the important economic Reformation and the iconoclasm of lose his faith and commercial centre of Augsburg, the time and probably on the advice in Germany. He received his earliest of Erasmus, who recommended Hol- looking at that training in art from his father, an ac- bein to his friend Thomas More, the complished painter; in 1515 he moved noted Catholic humanist, statesman painting!’ to Basel, at the time a lively centre of (F. M. Dostoevsky, The Idiot) culture and humanistic thought, where he met many personalities including Erasmus of Rotterdam, who became his close friend. In the drawings made by Holbein during his stay there, we see the early expression of a free spirit, detached and ironic, qualities that contributed to winning him favour with the mercantile upper middle class of Basel, of whose exponents he painted numerous portraits. In 1517, with his father, he participated in the decoration of the facade of the Herten- stein house (destroyed in 1824) in Lucerne. The designs were in Renais- top Hans Holbein the Younger: The Body of the sance style, perhaps the consequence Dead Christ in the Tomb - Basel, Kunstmuseum of a stay in Italy, although no record left Portrait of Edward, Prince of Wales (later of the trip survives. Edward VI) - Washington, National Gallery of Art 2

above Portrait of Thomas More - New York, Frick Collection right Portrait of Henry VIII Liverpool, Walker Art and author, the artist moved to Lon- don. Here, he met with increasing success as a portraitist. In the meantime, Thomas More fell out of favour with the King Henry VIII due to his refusal to accept the Act of Supremacy of the king over the over the Church in England and to disavow the authority of the pope. This stance marked the end of More’s political career and indeed of his life, as he was accused of treason and be- headed. Having thus lost his principal friend and protector, Holbein approached the London correspondents of the Hanseatic League, for whom he painted a great number of portraits. These individuals were not overly in- terested in works of a religious nature, preferring to have themselves portrayed with the symbols of economic, commercial and cultural power. Holbein’s new protectors also commissioned him to produce decorative works, such as an Arch of Triumph on occasion of the coronation of Anne Bo- leyn, Henry VIII’s second wife. Beginning in 1533, a considerable times to portray Henry’s future wives. portion of Holbein’s time was reserved But he was much more: he was the for work for Henry VIII, of whom artificer of the image of Henry VIII be was appointed official portraitist and also the builder of an archetype thanks to a word from politician that pointed the way to future repre- Thomas Cromwell, the king’s prime sentations of power. minister. Holbein was so important We know many of Holbein’s works for the king that he was sent out several only from the preparatory drawings 3

above Portrait of Charles de Solier Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister

left The Ambassadors - London, National Gallery

in the royal collections at Windsor harmony achieved through rigorous Castle. The canvases, many of which application of perspective; the result have been lost, were always painted is a sort of precarious but sophisticated with an incomparable master’s touch; balance between realism and abstrac- if the composition of the head-and- tion, between the Gothic tradition shoulders portraits is inspired by such and Renaissance humanism. prototypes as Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, Holbein’s acquaintance with Erasmus the richness and solemnity of the full- of Rotterdam and Thomas More im- figure portraits shows many affinities pregnated his works with humanist with Flemish art. But Holbein even ideas rooted in rationalistic doubt on took on the culture of Mannerism, the one hand and in unshakeable re- which he probably came to know ligious belief on the other. through the Italian painters in the They are works pervaded by restless, service of the English court. constant research and, behind the ap- Due to the fact that the majority of parent superficiality of the portrait, his monumental works have been by a profound awareness of the world lost, Hans Holbein the Younger is they portray. The personality of Hans remembered primarily as a portrait Holbein the Younger dominated the painter, one of the greatest of all time. art scene of his time, in his native Ger- He welcomed influences from every many and in Switzerland and Eng- quarter and integrated them harmo- land. niously to compose an original lan- In 1543, a pestilence (the plague or guage, in a way an international syn- the still-mysterious ‘sweating sickness’) thesis without equal in early 16th- swept through London and did not century painting. spare Holbein, who died at age 47 in In short, we could say that Holbein’s the full flower of his maturity and art is based on drawing, as an indicator fame. of the exactness of the expression, and on composition, conceived as spatial lorenzo gualtieri n° 386 - luglio 2018

A ‘temple’ renowned for its Renaissance motifs and compositive forms that anticipate the Baroque The Five Centuries of San Biagio

Architectural details of the church of San Biagio in Montepulciano

The church of San Biagio stands on a frescoed image of the Madonna move flat lawn at the foot of the ancient its eyes and blink. At the same time, town of Montepulciano; a cypress- other miraculous events occurred in lined road announces and leads to the the town; it was not long before word ‘temple’ – so-called for its monumen- of these prodigies made its way out of tality – conceived by Florentine architect the valley – and construction of the Antonio da Sangallo the Elder. great temple was begun under the au- We are at the point at which the Val spices of Pope Leo X. d’Orcia and the Val di Chiana valleys The year 2018 marks the 500th anni- unite: perhaps the best possible setting versary of the laying of the first stone to point up the grandiosity of the for the new San Biagio (15 September church, faced entirely in soft-hued tra- 1518). The celebrations organised for vertine which like amber changes the occasion reconstruct the art and colour as the light varies. The monu- history of the monument; an exhibition ment was raised on the site of the re- is devoted to the temple’s furnishings, mains of an early medieval pieve initially installed between the late 1500s and dedicated to Saint Mary and subse- the Baroque 17th century. quently to Saint Blaise, an Armenian Antonio da Sangallo the Elder, who physician remembered for curing suffe- almost always worked in the shadow rers from throat diseases and still ve- of his older brother Giuliano, was nerated as their protector. It was decided called in to design the temple; only to build a new church on the ancient after Giuliano’s death did Antonio ruins following a miraculous event begin to design independently, em- that occurred on 23 April 1518, when bracing felicitous contaminations – two maidservants and a farmer, at what including the early 16th-century Roman remained of the old building, saw the stylistic repertory – and renewing his 2

lexicon, thereby acquiring greater expressive weight. The design for the church of San Biagio shows traces of all the influences circulating in Italy in that period: reworking of classical motifs, Renaissance interpretations, recovery of composite forms. The century had just begun and research into the design models experimented in earlier eras was well underway. One of these was the central-plan model, studied by the Renaissance architects and occasionally adopted by Brunelleschi, as in the rotunda of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence, and by Alberti in the church of San Seba- stiano in Mantua. The model was widely reproposed towards the end of the 15th century and Bramante drew on it for Christianity’s most ambitious project, Saint Peter’s Basilica. The love for the central plan among the architects of the 1500s was such that the suspicion that they were pursuing pagan ideals and that the design for Saint Peter’s in this form represented a triumph of earthly values was voiced; but these were exasperated considerations founded on the erroneous supposition that Christian churches must necessarily be on a cruciform plan. There is no doubt that there are strong points of contact with Antonio’s brother Giu- liano’s church of Santa Maria delle Carceri in Prato, but in comparison with it, Antonio’s temple shows significant differences that distance it from the ‘family’ style and bring it closer to Bramante’s ideas for the construction of Saint Peter’s. Like the church in Prato, San Biagio is on a Greek cross plan and its exterior is structured in two superimposed orders; the interior of San Biagio is richer in elements, with denser ribbing, careful use of the orders and great coffered arches on which the drum of the dome rises. The choice of a central plan design was perfect for the chosen site, since ideally this form requires a particular type of setting, preferably an open space, to best express all its complexity. These were the premises for a con- above Maestro di Badia a Isola (attr): Madonna with Child and Sant Francis a lato View of the church of San Biagio 3

struction that was quite evidently in- fluenced by Bramante’s ideas for Saint Peter’s: it could even be said that the church of San Biagio represents a point of encounter between the Florentine tradition and the monumental con- ception by the architect from the Mar- che region. The Greek cross plan and the twin bell towers at the sides of the facade (of which only one was completed) cor- respond exactly to Bramante’s ideas for Saint Peter’s as they emerge in the little remaining evidence of his first design: a few floor plans and an elevation shown on a commemorative medal minted in 1506. The Florentine architect would seem to have mitigated Bramante’s ample Roman classicism in the Tuscan manner View of the interior and the main altar to create a slimmer, more linear version. San Biagio, differently from Bramante’s thought out eurhythmy of compositive design for Saint Peter’s, is made up of and ornamental elements makes the volumes that are simply juxtaposed, church a sort of compendium of 16th- with no attempt to create a fusion of century architecture. the forms; deprived of the softening The bell tower is divided into three effect of any curve connecting the bands presenting the architectural parts, the parts remain discrete and orders in sequence: Tuscan, Ionic and squared-off. The heads of the projec- Corinthian. The feeling of solemnity tions, exception made for the curved projected by the exterior corresponds extension of the apse, are flat and to an elegant sobriety in the interior. framed by pilaster strips; the apse has The main altar boasts a stately 16th- no vault connecting it to the dome century reredos; the statues of Saint and, likewise, in the drum the pilaster John the Baptist, Saint Catherine of strips seem to fracture the cylindrical Siena, Saint Agnes and Saint George form to the point of making it appear were sculpted and added in the next polygonal. century. At the centre, the fresco of The exterior compositive scheme repeats the Madonna with Child and Saint on the three facades and is essentially Francis attributed to the Master of a horizontal division into two sectors, Badia a Isola, who worked in the Siena although with some variants on the area in the 13th-14th century. At the main face, The lower portion accom- sides of the altar are two 17th-century modates the entrance portal while the choirs; the one on the right has hosted upper portion is divided into five sec- the church’s pipe organ since 1781. tions, with a large window in the central portion. A comprehensive and well anna martinelli n° 386 - luglio 2018

‘I have always been conscious of another space above Les Codomas ©Kunstmuseum Pablo Picasso, Munster inhabited by the subjects of my dreams. I was searching for something other than real space’ Although he was known primarily as works began to show influences of a painter, during his long creative life the post-Impressionism of Paul Henri Matisse, one of the great masters Cézanne, Paul Gauguin and Paul of 20th-century art, used a wide variety Signac, which remained forever con- of expressive techniques. He was an stants in his production and were es- illustrator, etcher, sculptor, set designer pecially evident in his treatment of and even a costumer, both for the colour. theatre and for haute couture. Matisse came into the limelight on A polyhedral personality, Matisse ap- occasion of the 1905 Paris Salon d’Au- peared on the Paris art scene in the tomne, where he showed Woman with last years of the 1800s after having a Hat and The Open Window: here, abandoned his study of law, much to the view from the window is the har- his father’s disappointment. After a bour of the Collioure locality in period during which he frequented Provence, where in the summer of the atelier of Symbolist painter Gustave 1905 Matisse and André Derain ex- Moreau, Matisse approached the perimented with a new manner of artists of the preceding generation – painting. Strong colours dominate and Van Gogh in particular – and his the canvas and seem to rage at the style turned completely around. His viewer – to the point that the critics Poésies 05 ©Kunstmuseum Pablo Picasso, Munster 2

labelled the painters adhering to this movement Fauves (‘wild beasts’), pre- cisely because of the violence of their anti-naturalistic colours, in clear con- trast to traditional painting. As a pro- tagonist of French expressionism with his ‘colour revolution’, Matisse was a precursor of the avant-gardes: colours are no longer realistic and do not serve representation of reality but rather expression of a vision of art and life. Following his Parisian experience, in 1917 Matisse moved to the Cote d’Azur: it was the start of his so-called Periode Niçoise, during which he formed unbreakable ties with the world of theatre. His first commission for a theatrical work came in 1919: his sets and costumes for Sergei Dagliev’s Ballets Russes production Jazz – Le Clown and title page ©Kunstmuseum Pablo Picasso, Munster of Chant du Rossignol reflected the love for decorativism and Oriental art that was to characterise all of Ma- tisse’s later work; the artist began to see himself as an ‘art director’. He placed the theatre at the centre of his aesthetic and regarded his models as ‘actresses’; he even said, ‘My models, human figures, are never just “extras” in an interior. They are the main theme in my work. I depend absolutely on my model.’ Henri Matisse. Sulla scena dell’arte, from 7 July through 14 October 2018 at the Forte di Bard in Valle d’Aosta, explores the artist’s relationship with the theatre and his production of works linked to dramaturgy. Besides canvases, drawings, sculptures and graphics, the exhibition also presents La Nageuse ©Kunstmuseum Pablo Picasso, Munster rugs, clothing and jewellery – collected by the artist and loaned to the exhibition by the Matisse family – in which from representation of the human orientalising decoration predominates. figure and toward abstraction, and Africa, Islamic culture and the Orient he began using the papiers découpés were heady sources of inspiration for technique: he cut out shapes from Matisse, who evokes the sensations, painted paper and arranged them into the colours, the scents and the forms pinned or spot-glued compositions; of his wellsprings with the elegant with this peculiar technique, which arabesques which are almost always he said was ‘drawing with scissors’, present in his canvases; he journeyed he created strong chromatic effects. to Morocco and Algeria several times, With his papiers découpés, Matisse ar- but he also went to Russia and Italy rived at pure abstraction, creating dy- to broaden his horizons, to find in- namic, lively effects that contrasted spiration, to collect objects of every with his backgrounds. He first drew sort. the forms in pencil; when he cut them Matisse let himself be guided by his out he simplified them and at times love for Islamic art as he drifted away left white margins; taken singly, his 3

colours have no value but they acquire using colour. Le Cauchemar ©Kunstmuseum Pablo Picasso, Munster significance through juxtaposition, During his long career in art, Matisse harmonic or dissonant as it may be. worked in many styles and as many Matisse’s best-known work is surely expressive techniques; he constantly the painting La Danse, produced on skipped from painting to drawing, commission for Russian art collector from sculpture to collage, never ceasing Sergei Shchukin. It represents a mo- to experiment and create; he produced ment of extreme synthesis: the blue more than a dozen illustrated books, of the sky, the green of the earth and ‘livres d’artiste’, in limited editions, the red of the fluctuating nude bodies, intended as collector’s items, as works the only three colours/elements in of art – besides of course as reading the composition, alone succeed in material. His first book, Poésies (1932), conjuring a vortical, Dionysian dance includes mythologically-inspired that seems never to stop. images based on texts by Stéphane Referring to his works, Matisse said, Mallarmé; his masterpiece in this ‘Composition is the art of arranging genre, however, is Jazz (1947): forty in a decorative manner the diverse el- lithographs inserted among 130 pages ements at the painter’s command to of text written in longhand with a express his feelings . . . A work of art fine brush dipped in black ink. Like must be harmonious in its entirety: a jazz musician, Matisse, here, created any superfluous detail would replace a work composed of ‘variations on a some other essential detail in the mind theme’ in which the subjects are the of the spectator. Composition, the circus and its actors, mythology and aim of which should be expression, souvenirs of his travels. The phrases is modified according to the surface and thoughts interspersed among the to be covered’; in a rather simple cage, images can be read or not read, as Ma- but one constructed on geometrisation tisse said; their function is to act as a of the space, Matisse finds the inner sort of ‘background sound’ against freedom given by the light, broadly which the plates stand out. Several open, and by construction of planes plates from Jazz, such as Icare (Icarus) pag. 4

and L’Avaleur de Sabres (The Sword where the artist spent the last years Chapelle du Saint-Marie du Rosaire - Vence Swallower), have become true icons of his life confined to a wheelchair. of modern art. Matisse considered this great creation Matisse emphasises his colour through the masterpiece of his existence. In use of flattened forms and controlled 1951, a year prior to his death, he lines; he thinks outside of tradition completed the project for decorating and follows his visions; in Le Cauchemar the whole liturgical space, in which (1947), a print from a stencil pasted his idea of exaltation of life and the on paper, he constructs a representation beauty of light merge under a veil of of a nightmare on a yellow background spirituality. The dominant colours in with black undulating forms at the the chapel decoration are the blue margins: a white humanoid figure is and yellow of the windows that draw ‘scratched’ by red slashes and an angular the viewer’s attention and create beau- blue figure draws and concentrates tiful plays of light on the light-coloured the viewer’s attention, acting as the facing walls, which in turn are decorated focal point of the entire plate. Red, with images drawn only in outline. blue, black, yellow and white: with The exuberance of the colour, on the just five colours, Matisse succeeds in one hand, and the simplicity of the creating an image that communicates line on the other merge perfectly in a sense of disquiet and mystery; an a space in which the artist succeeded image that recounts strong emotions. in bringing to bear all the forms of One of the artist’s last creations was expression, from set design to etching, the decoration of the Chapelle du he had adopted during his long life Saint-Marie du Rosaire for the convent in art. of the Dominican sisters of Vence, elena aiazzi n° 386 - luglio 2018

In 1918, Malevich White, a reached the ‘zero point’ of painting, Nothing Filled and stopped. But since then, with ‘non-colour’ has been a Everything continuing source of inspiration

Kazimir Severinovich Malevich: White on White – Saint Petersburg, State Russian Museum

In 1909, Wassily Kandinsky observed having drawn from the many and var- the colour white as the symbol of a ied currents in art that ran through world from which all colours had dis- the period straddling the 19th and appeared, a world so elevated as to 20th centuries, rode the wave of Cu- also appear to be without sound. Not bism and Futurism as he moved more a dead silence; rather, one rich in po- and more toward abstraction. Among tential, a sort of pause that interrupts the masters of abstract art, Malevich without concluding. Kandinsky used stands out for his different basic ap- the sense of hearing to define the proach: according to him, ‘the object colour white which, analogously to in itself is meaningless’; pictorial ex- what happens with sight, where it be- pressions must not be abstracted start- comes the absence of colour, it becomes ing from models existing in reality. the absence of sound: a non-colour It is not a question of responding to that yet contains all colours and all psychic needs to approach what one sounds; a promise of rebirth; merely perceives, to mentally distil the sensible a pause, rich in potential. world to transmit it at the emotional A few years following these observa- level; one must, rather, take another tions, in 1918, art, with white, touched look at the basic elements of painting, an unsurpassable point, reached a which in and of themselves must per- finish line beyond which it was im- force be already abstract, outside of possible to go. That was the year in reality, including the colour, which which Malevich’s Suprematism reached must free itself from aesthetic and its pictorial apex with White on White. symbolic valences if art is to find a Kazimir Severinovich Malevich, after way to live an independent life: this his early creative experiences and after is Suprematism. 2

White Square represents the attainment of the ‘zero point’ in painting. ‘I have transformed myself in the zero of form and through zero have reached creation, that is, suprematism, the new painterly realism – non-objective creation.’ Malevich’s thought on the ‘zero’ announces the point of departure for a new art, an art beyond the zero: ‘the natural object is meaningless . . . all that counts is the supremacy of pure feeling.’ He divorces himself from what painting has always been, a process of approaching and drawing back from chimerical and absolute mimicry, taking it toward the infinite, to the ‘zero point’. To go beyond is suprematism, to move towards a type of painting that is pure creation, such as to express only itself. Thus the square, a static and non-naturalistic form, a non-object that can circumscribe many other forms. And Quite a few years were to pass after above thus, accordingly, white, a ‘silent’ Malevich had touched that extreme Ben Nicholson: 1934 (relief) - TATE non-colour that contains all other before we again saw approaches to © Angela Verren Taunt 2018. colours. And, therefore, White on this cold colour-non-colour that lends bottom Lucio Fontana: Spatial Concept: Expectations White, in which two quadrangular itself to making absences and emptiness - Washington, DC - Hirshhorn Museum forms in different tones of white com- emerge. A ‘scientific’ colour, since penetrate and a barely-perceptible science has demonstrated its chromatic line indicates the perimeter of one richness, and a ‘psychological’ colour area with respect to the other. It is a because its allusions to absences and work on the edge, an endpoint at empty places that fill with ‘everything’ which everything cancels out in the make it a perfect mental container. most absolute purity of white, for A colour that can serve to host concepts Malevich the best colour, if not the only one, useful for definition of an abstract mental locus, a non-place, the place of nothing, of essentiality. It is an extreme work, beyond which not even Malevich ventured. He gave up painting and devoted his time to theorising the philosophical system of Suprematism. And when he did return to his brushes, he did so in a completely unexpected manner, again approaching that art he had wanted to destroy, beginning to track back through tradition in a sort of intellectual repentance, or re- discovery of the ancient masters of the Renaissance or the extrema ratio of Suprematism. Hypotheses abound. After all, when only the brushstrokes permit distinguishing the forms, when all that is left is white, there is nothing beyond. There is only white, that ‘nothing’ which at the same time contains ‘everything’. 3

on the pictorial surface – and many artists tried their hands at working with it. In the 1930s, British artist Ben Nicholson did so with abstract- geometric neo-plastic works that play with lightweight forms in an absolute non-colour, forms that are declared and perceptible (although barely) only because they are in low relief. But since 1950s, white has been used with increasing frequency. In 1951, Robert Rauschenberg creaked his revolutionary White Paintings: five works made up of different num- bers of modular panels painted completely white with a roller. Pure, im- maculate objects, surfaces on which even the most minimal of variations in the light are observable. The impact that went beyond the visual arts world, even inspiring John Cage’s 4’33’’ (1952) in which a musician remains seated, immobile at the piano, for four minutes and 33 seconds, allowing sensations and ambient sounds to surface. Piero Manzoni addresses the theme with his Achrome series (1957-63), in which, while stressing the absence of colour, he works with his surfaces to obtain particular effects: he leaves the canvas, previously soaked in kaolin and glue, to dry, entrusting creation of the work to the transformation of types of white, because only white Daniel Arsham Bound: Figure - London, Pippy Houl- the materials as they undergo a process can go where other colours cannot. dsworth Gallery independent of him. A suspended White has the ability to make things artistic gesture, curbed to allow the visible, allows us to see more nuances. image to manifest on its own. Lucio Absence of colour makes it possible Fontana as well, in his Tagli, many to open up space for forms and textures, times used a completely white canvas such as those of the Cretti produced for a colourless spatialism that becomes in the 1970s by Alberto Burri: surfaces purer as it tends toward a perfection that recall parched clayey soils etched which, besides giving value to space, by cracks provoked by drought. But alludes to the infinite. even the scratched and scathing works Figurative art is out. Reality surrounds of Cy Twombly’s white universe us and there is no need to capture it (1950s-1960s) revolve around the on canvas; any recognisable form must expressive valences of white. Then be excluded; all that has meaning is there are the more recent works by the pictorial gesture as such, in its Daniel Arsham, in which the canvas essence; what counts is not what, but melds with the wall and the plaster how one paints. Robert Ryman, a is modelled, rippled, crimped and difficult-to-define painter, also does corrugated, even imprisoning human it, touching the extreme to which it figures. The list could go on: it has is possible to arrive with these premises: been a long time, a hundred years of square plates completely covered by abstraction ‘in white’ from that ‘zero a more-or-less uniform layer of white. point’ set and surpassed by Malevich Again, the perfect, stable geometry 1918. White fascinates, and the temp- of the mute square and all the possible tation to use it is contagious; many