Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
A backlash to Venetian conservatism arose from the ranks of Venetian painters experi-
menting in modern styles. Shows of young artists backed by the Duchess Felicita Bevil-
aqua La Masa found a permanent home in 1902, when the Duchess gifted Ca' Pesaro to
the city as a modern-art museum. A leader of the Ca' Pesaro crowd was Gino Rossi
(1884-1947), whose brilliant blues and potent symbolism bring to mind Gauguin, Matisse
and the Fauvists, and whose later work shifted toward Cubism. Often called the Venetian
Van Gogh, Rossi spent many years in psychiatric institutions, where he died. Sculptor Ar-
turo Martini (1889-1947) contributed works to Ca' Pesaro ranging from the rough-edged
terracotta
Prostitute
(c 1913) to his radically streamlined 1919 gesso bust.
Future Perfect: From Futurism to Fluidity
In 1910, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944) threw packets of his manifesto from
Torre dell'Orologio promoting a new vision for the arts: futurism. In the days of the doge,
Marinetti would have been accused of heresy for his declaration that Venice (a 'magnifi-
cent sore of the past') should be wiped out and replaced with a new industrial city. The fu-
turists embraced industry and technology with their machine-inspired, streamlined look -
a style that Mussolini co-opted in the 1930s for his vision of a monolithic, modern Italy.
Futurism was conflated with Mussolini's brutal imposition of artificial order until cham-
pioned in Venice by a heroine of the avant-garde and refugee from the Nazis: American
expat art collector Peggy Guggenheim, who recognised in futurism the fluidity and flux of
modern life.
Artistic dissidents also opposed Mussolini's square-jawed, iron-willed aesthetics.
Emilio Vedova (1919-2006) joined the
Corrente
movement of artists, which openly op-
posed Fascist trends in a magazine shut down by the Fascists in 1940. After WWII, Ve-
dova veered towards abstraction, and his larger works are now in regular robot-assisted
rotation at the Magazzini del Sale. Giovanni Pontini (1915-70) was a worker who painted
as a hobby until 1947, when he discovered Kokoshka, van Gogh and Roualt, who inspired
his empathetic paintings of fishermen at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.
Venetian Giuseppe Santomaso (1907-90) painted his way out of constrictive Fascism
with lyrical, unbounded abstract landscapes in deep teals and brilliant blues. Rigidity and
liquidity became the twin fascinations of another avant-garde Italian artist, Unesco-ac-
claimed, Bologna-born and Venice-trained video artist Fabrizio Plessi (b 1940), from his
1970s
Arte Povera
(Poor Art) experiments in humble materials to multimedia installations
featuring Venice's essential medium: water.
